Category: Living My Inspired Life

Finding Joy When Life is Stressful

Finding joy when life is stressful seems impossible. Yet these are the times joy is most needed.

How I Found My Joy

Inspiration for joy came to me in many different ways. All these ideas have one thing in common – taking action.

  • Connection with positive friends
  • Looking for beauty in nature
  • Noticing synchronicity in everyday occasions
  • Asking for help

Connection with Positive Friends

Although I’m a caregiver to my husband and elderly mother, I also choose to surround myself with positive friends. This is the primary way I find joy when life is stressful.

One example is a nearby cousin, Tom, whom I’d only seen at sad occasions during the last year. His brother and parents passed just before and during the pandemic.

Look for L. Anderson, my grandfather

Tom called me to ask a favor of helping him deliver his car to a mechanic shop located between our respective homes. He enjoys eating out and offered to take me to lunch in gratitude. Our conversations centered around sharing past adventures and our mutual interest in the family genealogy. We made a pact to discover the location of our great-grandfather’s home in the late 1800’s.  We spent a Saturday afternoon at the local county historical library, pouring over platte maps.

Looking for Beauty in Nature

During 2020’s restrictions, I discovered nature in my yard. It was wonderful to visit the many plants, some that I had installed specifically to attract butterflies and birds. In contrast, the declining health of my husband and mother pulled me farther out into the world of nature.

Although I walk every Saturday morning with a gardening friend in the gardens of Bok Tower, this week I twice answered the call of a wilder place. Last Sunday I went to a local state park and took my dog, Sugar. The pain in my arthritic knees reminded me that I have walking poles hidden under my husband’s hunting camo in the garage.

When I decided to head to Bok Tower’s wilder side, Pine Ridge Preserve, I dug out the poles, cleaned off the cobwebs and brought them with me. As I used the poles to steady my stance and distribute the force away from my knees, I thought, “Why have I ignored these tools hanging in the garage four years!”

Noticing Synchronicity

There have been so many instances of synchronicity, it’s hard to know which to share. Mostly, I’ve been drawn to reach out to like-minded people through my online groups.

One such person is Miggy Rodriguez, of Infinite FlowInfinite Flow. I’ve known her over a year, liked her Facebook comments both on our private groups and in our personal pages. Finally, I reached out and we had long telephone conversation. She asked me where I lived in Florida. Although she lives in North Carolina, her father lives right here, in the same small town I live in. And her sister literally lives off the same street as me. That’s extreme synchronicity.

You might wonder why that brings me joy. It’s rather simple really. For me, synchronicity is proof of a higher power guiding and helping me.. helping you.

Asking For Help

This has shown up in myriad ways. Not only have I asked friends for help navigating the complex medical world of my husband’s cancer, I’ve learned how to ask for help in small ways too.

Now is the time of oak leaf drop in Florida. I asked my landscaping person to help me by blowing the leaves on our circular drive into piles. When I checked on his regular lawn care tasks, I found him raking the leaves into piles. We worked together to get them into a garbage can.

When you ask for help, joy is doubled. Both people benefit in this giving and receiving exchange.

Final Thoughts

This coming week, consider finding joy when life is stressful. It’s a combination of a choice in your thoughts and taking positive action.

Smiling,
Dawn

Three Tips on Finding Your Values

There are many, but today I’m sharing three tips on finding your values. This step is crucial to living a fulfilled life. For me, I had vague ideas on what was most important to me.

The Three Tips

  1. Understand the concept of values
  2. Explore your personal values
  3. Hone in on your top three to five values

What Are Values Exactly?

I want to be clear, I’m talking about personal values that serve as the basis for our goals toward achieving fulfillment and ultimately our life purpose. This article on Physiopedia.com is an in-depth explanation of personal values and beliefs.

Furthermore, values are what you feel is important to you.

How Do Values Affect Me?

If your thoughts and actions are in synch with your values, you are happier, that is, you are calm, centered, content.

Conversely, if your thoughts and actions are based on the values of others, you may be anxious, unsettled, jittery. Empaths are often unduly influenced by the values of others. My blog about empaths will help you discover if this is your reality.

How Do I Discover My Values?

Here is a list of values with further hints on using it. Now, let’s get to it!

  • Gather a notepad and pen or pencil
  • Find a quiet place and sit upright
  • Close or soften your gaze
  • Take three slow cleansing breaths
  • Relax your neck and shoulders
  • Sink into your hips and feet
  • Notice how your body feels
  • Slowly open your eyes and start reading each value aloud
  • When a word resonates somewhere in your body, write it down

My Three Values as Example

Here are my values; Honesty, Tranquility, and Purpose

If I follow these values in my thoughts and actions, I’m extremely happy and carefree. It’s fairly easy if I’m alone and in complete control of my environment. Rather, since I don’t live a monastic life alone, I often struggle to live these values.

Let’s see examples where I’m successful:

  • Honesty: I use my love of creative cooking to create a healthy, gluten-free, dairy-free salad for lunch.
  • Tranquility: While caught in Interstate-4 traffic, I tune into the Spa channel on Sirius XM, smile, and calmly allow merging traffic to, well.. merge.
  • Purpose: Quiet morning time is spent meditating and writing my blog.

Now for the opposite:

  • Honesty: Feeling stressed, I open my overhead kitchen cabinet where ‘fun foods’ like wasabi peas and dark chocolate are stored and grab something, stuffing it in my mouth before anyone sees my loss of control.
  • Tranquility: While caught in Interstate-4 traffic, I tune into the 70’s on 7 channel on Sirius XM, pound my palms on my steering column, and switch lanes over and over to ‘get ahead’.
  • Purpose: Quiet morning time is spent checking email, all my social media channels, reading newspaper headlines and getting sucked into someone else’s drama.

Is There a Theme Here?

Absolutely. The theme is self-care. Once I discovered my values, all I needed to do was practice self-care by respecting myself and these values. And yes, I fall off my self-care regimen all the time, forgetting to honor my values. Above all, I start again.

May you explore my three tips on finding your values and use the list of values to discover a calmer way to live with ease.

With honesty, tranquility, and purpose,
Dawn

Oh How I Love Coffee in the Morning

Oh, how I love coffee! To insure I have fresh coffee as soon as possible in the morning, I prepare it the night before. Sometimes I buy beans and grind them just right. Always I draw clear, cool water into a large Pyrex measuring cup; twelve ounces of water per serving, 2 tablespoons of coffee for every twelve ounces of water. Yes, I actually read the directions on the package.

How This Affection Began

My first memory drinking coffee was next door at my grandmother’s dining table. I was probably five years old or so. My Swedish grandparents had coffee and a sweet every afternoon. If I happened to stop playing outdoors and knock on their door from the garage, my grandma would bow down and give me a kiss and hug, inviting me in. Then she’d pour evaporated milk into one of her teacups about halfway, add sugar and then enough hot coffee to stain the mixture a light beige.

I felt so grown up having coffee with them, listening to their conversations in Swedlish.. a combination of Swedish and English that I never learned. Perhaps they preferred the privacy of speaking a language my sister and I didn’t understand. The only words they taught us were “tack så mycket” and “varsågod”. These mean “thank you so much” and “you’re welcome”. My sister and I also learned to count to ten, but I’ve long forgotten that.

My grandmother was born in America, but lived her early life on the farm as if they were still in Sweden. They spoke Swedish, attended church in Swedish, and continued the tradition of fika, the coffee break. The men would eat a hearty breakfast, return to the farmhouse for lunch and then return once again for the afternoon coffee break with a sweet roll. As the oldest child, my grandmother must have learned how to make a Swedish coffee roll at an early age. When I was a little girl, she often made cookies, froze them and pulled one out for me during her afternoon coffee break with my grandfather. It seems they always had a slice of her homemade cinnamon coffee ring.

Coffee Brands We Love

When I realized Swedes drank more coffee than any other ethnic group, except for Finland and the Netherlands, I understood why it was so important in my family.

At one time, I subscribed to the Swedish Gevalia coffee club, drank coffee from around the world, earned an airtight ceramic storage canister and loved every minute of the strong coffee, lightened with half and half and sweetened with sugar.

Soon, the chain, Dunkin’ Donuts arrived near me. After my first cup, I was converted from Gevalia to the Dunkin’ house blend. There were times I’d feel the pull of Starbucks when I was living in Denver, but since I had to pay extra to drink a palatable cup, I opted for McDonald’s coffee when I was away from home. You see, I bought Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in bulk before the chain arrived in Denver. I could always brew my favorite cup at home.

Why Somethings Still Matter

Oh, how I love coffee. It’s clear to me why coffee brings me peace, is a type of love in a mug, and will never be replaced by tea. There are too many beautiful memories, aromas, and love mixed up with it.

Do you have a similar experience with coffee, tea, or one particular food? Do you find comfort in it?

I’d love to hear about it in a comment, email or we can continue discussions when you sign-up for my newsletter.

Tack Så Mycket,
Dawn