Amplified Gratitude

Snowdrops blooming in the garden today!

Sometimes angels sneak up on us and whisper profound, life changing secrets right into our hearts.   One Sunday, Pastor Peter hit me with a message so wise and helpful it took my breath away.

"The opposite of love is not hatred, but fear," Pastor Peter said. It was like he'd given me the secret handbook to life.  The opposite of happiness is not unhappiness but fear, the opposite of courage is fear, the opposite of creativity is fear.

Fear is the one trump card the Crazy Old Lady who lives in our heads has.  Her whole hand is the fear card. 

Fear tells us you're no good, you're self-indulgent, you have no talent, you're embarrassing your family, you're too emotional, you are wasting your time, you are too old, too fat and too stupid....the list goes on and on.

Happiness shrugs it's shoulders and says, "Well it may all be true, but who cares?" It takes our big scary monsters and personal demons and shrinks them down to size.  

Wonderful, just great, you may be thinking. Sign me up for that happiness pill,  book, program, whatever it is because I could really use some tonic for the pile of unpaid bills, the kids fighting, all of the folks who made me mad this week, the harsh thing my sweety said last night and the pile of laundry getting moldy in the basement.

There's no book, no pill, no program. Here's how to let a little squeak of happiness into your life-- amplify your gratitude.  

Just notice what makes you smile, feel a little warmer, a little lighter, stop resisting whatever is happening in your life, if only just for a second. Gratitude puts a stop to the  ceaseless yearning and longing for something else. Gratitude allows us to take delight in whatever is right in front of us.  

When I started noticing the warmth of sunshine on a late winter day, I could, just in that one moment feel a spark of gratitude.  I'll admit it was slow going at first and required effort to find five things I could be grateful for each day. Day by day, it got easier to find gratitude in more and more things.

Research suggests that if you record at five things that you are grateful for each day, you'll feel happier. Just five, every day. Better than a pill more like magic, you'll feel happier!

One of my wise and busy friends, Lisa,--a mother of two, owner of her own business with a husband and two dogs (not sure how Andy will feel about being lumped in with the dogs, but he's friendly, loyal and trustworthy so hopefully he'll take it well) uses DayOne app to take a picture and record a one-word diary entry on her smart phone.  However you choose to record your gratitude, just do it.  

As a way to get you thinking about what makes you grateful here are 10 things in my life that make me feel grateful:

Notes from friends

Hanging laundry on the line

Wearing hats

Taking a walk

Serendipity

Bike Riding

Sweet corn in August

Summer nights on the porch

 

Days spent on the water

Gardens, especially creating beauty in my own garden

And one bonus gratitude

First Snow

Dear ones I'd love to hear what makes you grateful. As a special thank you for sharing I'll be giving away this unique one-of-a-kind painting I made to one lucky winner who shares what makes you grateful in the comments below. Deadline for submissions is next Tuesday.

Dear readers you fill me with gratitude.  Take good care of each other until next week.  And don't forget to leave a comment!

Mad Hatter

Warning: This is a longish post, best savored with a cup of tea and scones.

Did you watch the start of the last season of Downtown Abbey on Sunday?  I'm mad for their hats.

None of the hat wearing ladies on Downtown Abby get a free pass from life.  Still it is a lovely dream to suffer life's indignities: love lorn heart break,  scandal, bad judgement, black mail, money troubles, snipping sisters, loved one's deaths--which none of us escape anyway, from the comfort of a big manner house, with servants and the most divine hat collection.  It would be just my luck to live in the big house as one of the scullery maids with a dish rag covering my head.

I'm not the world's biggest consumer. When the children were little, only their pitiful looks of hunger when there was no food in the pantry got me into the grocery store. When my girlfriends announce a day of shopping, I take to bed with the "flu."

 I own no collections, except hats.  I love hats. I shop for hats, I buy hats. I'm mad for hats.

I covet the hats of Downtown Abbey.

Here are two of my newest hats, added to my collection while shopping the Charleston City Market.

This hat coordinates perfectly with my long camel hair coat,  it covers my ears from frost bite and it has the loveliest bow detail. Fashion, coverage and panache--gotta have it!

This next hat folds in my luggage and is the perfect summer time straw hat.

It's made out of paper and polyester! Do you think the polyester will hold the paper together if I get caught in a rain storm?

I like unusual details in my hats, like the back on this hat which is cut away and has a black Velcro band so that it fits my head.

My head, like Alice in Wonderland, shrinks and grows day to day. Curiouser and curiouser! And now I can adjust my little Velcro tab accordingly. Brilliant!

This could explain why my head swells and shrinks.

I have a whole collection of straw hats that fit no matter my head's size:

Uptown Hat

Grrr, animal print!

The first hat Prince Charming bought me.  He's had to fetch it out of Lake Superior and the Atlantic Ocean when the wind took it for a ride.

The most expensive hat I own.

Floppy beach hat

And another of winter hats:

I'm especially fond of this rich, exuberant number!

This is my "everyday" winter hat.  It's got clever little ear muffs to protect my ears from the wind and cold. Especially important when the highs this weekend are predicted to be near zero.

This hat also has ear muffs, but they look ridiculous when pulled down.

Silly, no?

Brown Winter hats:

I have the hat I wore when I married Prince Charming:

My only regret about this hat is that I didn't add a little blue lace to cover my face.

I have my wonderful berets:

It's the details of these hats that I love, like this button on top of the beret.

Prince Charming might dispute the ownership of the berets, pay him no heed.

“Take off your hat," the King said to the Hatter."It isn't mine," said the Hatter."Stolen!" the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact."I keep them to sell," the Hatter added as an explanation; "I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.”

This cross country skiing cap may look very mundane to you, but when I wear it, I transform into a snow sprite.

Last and most humble of all is the Garden Hat, complete with hole at the crown.

All hats provide mystical transformative powers.  These hats alter my rather hum-drum personality. Wearing one of these hats I become a woodland nymph or a duchess; a woman of mystery or a woman who lunches.

It's the magic of each hat to highlight and bring to the fore some aspect of my personality that delights. I discover characters in myself I hardly knew existed. Breathing life into these characters enriches my life, adding new pleasures each day.

It's all in the magic of the hat.

Can you feel the magic?  Do you have something in your closet that brings out wonderful new aspects of you? Let's meet for tea and you can tell me all about your magic transformation.

Take good care of each other until next week.