Put Your Past Behind You - 8 Steps to Implement Now

“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”  ~ Deborah Reber

Has this ever happened to you?

You are in a good place in your life, grateful for your lovely house, and happy with most of your decisions and opportunities. The days tick by nicely, until one day someone from your past appears out of the blue. They may be an old flame, an old neighbor, or your friend's creepy uncle. Suddenly, you are transported back in time, back to a day of uncertainty, frustration or grief. 

They say "hello." And their voice brings memories rushing through in technicolor. Or perhaps you never forgot it, not quite being able to let it go.

We all have discomfort in our lives, and much of it is based either in the past or the future. For the most part, we try to learn from our mistakes, or we try not to worry about something that hasn't happened yet. The thing is, emotions are the connectors to strong memories. When we are confronted with our past, those emotions can come flooding back with the memory.

And yet we know, on some level of our consciousness, that allowing ourselves to get pulled back into the past does us no good. When we relive an old moment, our bodies don't know the difference between a memory and a current event. Our heart starts to race as if it is happening now. Our throat tightens, our limbs stiffen, and our thoughts get extraordinarily focused...on this unproductive memory. We lose awareness of ourselves and sink into that old moment. Unfortunately, some of our reactions may also then become old ones. When we have a second to step away mentally from the memory, we may give our heads a shake. "What was I thinking? Why did I just react like that?"

There are other situations in life that we may fall into this unawareness. Where we lose our current consciousness and best decision-making skills. This happens if our brain is hijacked by our fight or flight responses. It happens if we relive a traumatic moment, or if we allow a fear or phobia to take over.

So, how do we put our past behind us? How can we stay present and aware so that our memories, thoughts and emotions don't unconsciously take over?

1. Practice mindfulness throughout your day. This includes being aware of your thoughts, and which ones follow what, down the road to an emotion. Once you can be aware of thoughts and emotions, you will be able to more readily shift them both so that you don't fall into an old reactive habit.

2. Sit in a safe space with a safe person, and, if viable, relive and process that old memory to allow you to work through it and come out the other side with a different frame of mind. If your memory was a serious or traumatic one, please make a counsellor or therapist the safe person.

3. Practice multiple perceptual positions. In a conversation, focus on being YOU. Feel your feelings, notice your surroundings, hear what is happening, use your senses to be as present, in your body and with the other person, as possible. THEN practice observation. Pretend you are the watcher of your thoughts and feelings. What are you thinking? How are your emotions displaying on your face? What are your responses? Ask these questions as the observer of yourself. THEN if possible, observe the observer, as if you are watching yourself, watching the conversation on a movie screen. If this one is difficult, focus on moving in and out between the 1st and 2nd position. If you want help moving into the 3rd position, let me know.

When your daily habit becomes awareness and mindfulness, and observing how you respond and react, you will be more informed of your emotional response and better able to remove yourself from that past moment.

If you are also able to work through some of the more intense emotional moments, you can effectively release the attachment to that memory. There are additional methods to this process that are helpful, but not appropriate through written instruction.

When you find yourself falling back into an emotional memory, try taking these actions in the moment:

4. Take a deep breath, and let it out. Then take another. Focus on your breath. This will help to keep you present.

5. Summon up a positive emotion - think of a moment when you felt love, joy, happiness or peace - then imagine sending a dose of this emotion to the person that created the memory rush. If this feels uncomfortable, acknowledge your discomfort and send it anyways. Like the act of forgiveness, that process is more healing to you, than to them. But there is a chance they may need an extra dose of love, care, or happiness in their life.

6. Like above, Acknowledge your feelings. Allow them to reside in your body long enough for them to dissapate. Stay aware of how they feel in your body.

7. Speak of your discomfort honestly if you can. (“I’m sorry we ended the way we did.” Or “Wow, I’ve thought a lot about you since the last time we spoke.” Or, "I haven't seen you in a while.")

8. Recognize where this emotion is coming from (your past). Then get present.

Life has a way of surprising us, and the surprise isn’t always pleasant. So make an effort to recognize how an old relationship may affect you, and how your current response can inform your future.

Don’t let negative past emotions color the present moment any more than it needs to. Take steps to keep past anxiety where it belongs. If it feels really fresh, then you probably never let go of that moment. Use the steps above to let go of that anxiety right now, before it saps any more of your energy. 

Recognize how far you’ve come since that moment, and take steps to forgive, if forgiveness is needed. 

Whatever the current moment brings, give yourself a gift. Face it with courage and honesty, and move on with a smile and with awareness of all you are grateful for now in your life.

How to Make a Good Decision

Recently I was immersed in both decision making and a frustrating lack of being able to decide. When actions were out of my control, I had to be annoyingly patient. When they were in my control, the decisions were life-altering.

Early last summer, my husband received notification that his large company was closing its operations in New Jersey.

The following month we went on FIVE vacations.

When a BIG decision is beyond your control, focus on the little decisions for a short time

Lucky for us, the decision to go on those vacations had already been made. We just followed our plane reservations, hotel bookings and camping plans. As we absorbed the idea that we may have to move again (we'd only been in New Jersey for three years, so moving was still fresh), we also relaxed in St. Baarth's, and rode roller coasters in Hershey, PA. We saw the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and stayed with friends down the Jersey Shore. Finally, we drove for the last time up to the Muskoka Lakes in Ontario to visit cousins and siblings.

Two Steps to Lessen Fears from the Past

I am scared.

I am 14 years old and two teenager strangers approach me. It is not a dangerous situation. It is in the school hall in between classes and I am safe. My fear is from shyness. My fear is that I won't know what to say or do, and to make matters worse, my fear is what totally tongue-ties me, making my expectations come true.

Today it seems these two strangers expect me to have a normal conversation as they introduce themselves.

"I'm Brett."
"I'm Beth."

silence....

"And what is your name?"

"Oh, I'm Leigh." And I can't imagine anything to say. Nothing brilliant, enlightening or 'normal' comes to my mind. So I make an excuse as to why I'm feeling so dumb-struck.

"I really ran hard in gym today." Only they didn't hear my fear. They don't know that my thoughts are racing so fast that I don't know which thought to catch and spit out of my mouth. And they certainly don't know what running in gym class has to do with introducing myself to them.

But that is how I am feeling, and how I respond. And given that, as a teenager, I created this situation almost every time I met someone new, I became more fearful each time I stepped into a new social situation.

And so at 14 years old, I sense Brett and Beth's confusion. They don't know how to respond to my irrelevant "gym" comment, and in their own uncertainty, they turn around and walk away.

And my fear increases.

How that Fear Affects Me Now

Ok, so that was thirty years ago, and still, in some new social situations I find myself feeling this same fear. A dark cloud looms that threatens to descend, strangling me so that I can't spit my own name out, so that the words that do come out are like rain showers on a sunny day. It feels strange, and part of me becomes 14 again.

We are moving to a new city in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to the sunshine. I'm not looking forward to making new friends. Those situations are like the dark cloud. And I really like the friends I have.

What if I can't make friends like I did here?

Reality is Always Better than Fear

Reality is, I am not 14 anymore, and I have easy conversations with people, familiar and new.

This helps me to quickly move past brief memories.

1. Real is now - the past is gone and the present is the only reality

Fear from the past can bounce back into our minds and emotional memory, but if we acknowledge that this is from the past, then we can focus on the present.

My present reality is that I know we will meet people we like, and we will connect with them. In fact, my husband and I always meet people we like. People are likable, in general. Our children will also meet other children that they enjoy. There will be playdates, coffee dates, and bbq invites.

These people won't be strangers for long.

My teenage memory has nothing to do with today.

Teenagers seem to always have angst of some sort. Their hormones go wild, dragging their emotions one way and another. Some of those emotions stay into adulthood. Others dissipate with the passing of time.

We are not the people we were at 14. Literally. Our body has had time to shed every last cell that was alive in us at 14, and all the cells that make up who we are now did not exist when we were teenagers.

But emotional memory can stay with us or return at uncertain times. When we face change and don't know what is on the other side, old fears can pop up. but they don't stay there for long. They don't have to, because it is the past that appears, and we have the power to place the past back where it belongs, in the past.

When fear pops up at inconvenient times, I sometimes use Tapping to get rid of the emotion behind those lingering memories. Meditation can work too. And sometimes simply being wiser is all I need to know that who I am today is not anywhere near who I was at 14.

I know far more than that 14-year-old did. She coped in her best way possible, and taught me how to overcome my shyness. She had the strength to put herself into uncomfortable situations and risk looking foolish, so that she could learn and grow past the fear.

2. Acknowledge fear and thank it for its lessons

That 14-year-old taught well. She could be the reason I have compassion for others' fear in strange and uncertain situations. She could be the reason why psychology, coaching and communications have been my career focus.

And I can thank her for developing strength and risk-taking, for it is still part of who I am. She is the one who at 20-years-old was determined to lead a song in front of 140 kids and 28 camp counsellors, despite her shyness. She is the one who skydived at 30-years-old.

She is the one who grew to train a couple thousand adults in life and job skills, and who still felt the fear of speaking in front of those adults, yet did it anyway. (And understood why fear might have held those students back from living their life more fully.)

Is it fair to expect all our fears to leave us completely?

I don't think so.

They remind us of who we were, of who we are, and of the journey we traveled in between. I am still traveling my journey, and learning as I go. I know in my gut that life is good, and that on the other side of that fear is something better than I could know from this side. I just have to travel there.

What are your fears? Are any of them holding you back from saying, "yes"? What single step can you take to get to the other side?

Nurturing Death

A beautiful soul, Annie Burnside, describes her friend's last moments with her mother. A beautiful story.

http://www.chicagonow.com/soul-to-soul-perspective/2011/11/my-dear-friend-nurtures-her-mom-in-last-moments/

How to Save a Marriage

By Leigh Harris

“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
~ Theodore Hesburgh

In the past month I found out that three marriages of close friends are in trouble.

When I heard about the first one, a husband who recently left his marriage, I cried. It seemed worse than death. With death there is love. With separation or divorce, there is often anger, despair and fear.

I found out about the next one, a marriage in trouble for the second time (that I know of), and I felt sad. They had tried to improve a trouble spot, but it seems they fell backwards again. Why aren’t they holding on for dear life? I asked myself.

By the time I heard about the third one, however, I felt resignation. Or at least I didn’t feel as shocked. I suppose when you hear about something repeatedly, it no longer surprises you.

...

...to read the full post, please connect to my guest post on Think Simple Now. 

September is Busy: How to Navigate New Commitments

Phew!

Studying in our Tree

We are three weeks into September and I haven't posted a blog since August. I started two new articles but didn't create the time to finish and publish them. In the meantime, I fulfilled my duties as mom-of-2-school-aged-children, soccer mom, committee member, committee leader, 2nd committee member, writers' group member and business start-up investigator.

In September the most important duty is "mom." My kids loved coming home the first 5 days exclaiming, "we don't have homework today, but YOU do!" As they pull out multiple forms each day covering medical, emergency contact, photo release, tell-me-about-your-child, photo payment and volunteer-for-this-committee requests.

September is also filled with new committee meetings, first-meetings-after-summer-sabbatical meetings, and kids sports meetings...er...practices and games.

Moms can feel the overwhelm of being pulled in multiple directions while trying to get used to the new year's schedule. I've heard more than once, "September is the new year, not January."

So true.

But this year felt a bit calmer than most Septembers, and I had to carve out some time in our busy schedule to think about this question: "Why is life running more smoothly?"

How to Deal with Regret

The last time I felt a true sense of regret, I was struggling to keep my car under control as it hydroplaned up a Vancouver Island highway.

Read the full article (How to Let Go of Regret) on Think Simple Now.

More about my role and the rest of the team on Think Simple Now's About page.

Namaste, Leigh

Can You Get There from Here? 3 Keys to Getting Unstuck

Guest post by Angie Dixon

I just connected with a cousin of mine on Facebook, which reminded me of a funny story. When I was eight or so, my parents and I went to visit this (much older) cousin in West Monroe, Louisiana. Then we planned to visit my (also much older) sister in Conway, Arkansas. That’s not the funny part.


The funny part is that my mother called my sister, Sandy, to ask the best route. Seeing that Sandy had lived in central Arkansas for years, everyone thought she’d know the best way to get there coming from Louisiana, in general. And of course they thought she’d get out a map.

What she said, though, was, “You can’t get here from there.”

And she meant it.

Listen Well to Build Relationships

Relationships are created with one person listening, and the other speaking. Create stronger relationships - focus on listening.

The first century AD philosopher Epictetus said, “We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak.” In the need to be heard, be acknowledged or be correct, people forget that listening is one of the easiest paths to honest, authentic communication with another human being.

Have you ever been upset with someone and, in anticipation to meet them, created a defensive argument in your mind ready to start the second you see them? Perhaps you simply wanted them to see your point of view.

What would happen if you enter the conversation with a conscious resolve to hear only their perspective for the first five minutes?

Cluttered House: A Sign of a Cluttered Mind?

Get Rid of Clutter and Change Your State of Mind by Leigh Harris

Clutter affects the environment and energy of your house. What appears as simple overabundance of physical objects triggers energetic and emotional responses.

Think about your own home environment. How do you feel in different areas of your home?

Often you walk in from the garage, and an automatic to-do list hits your mind. Jackets need to be hung up, dinner made, and laundry sorted. Just once you would like to grab a cold drink and head out to relax on the patio, but distractions beckon. With increasing irritation, you notice the hall filled with shoes thrown off haphazardly, or the bathroom floor covered with scattered towels. You would like to sit down and enjoy a moment of peace on the patio, if the mess would just go away.

Each moment has its share of joy and frustrations, but there are moments in a parent’s life when the aggravation of clutter is overwhelming.

5 Minutes is an Opportunity

The last six months have been incredibly busy, as my book nears completion. With a month as an aggressive goal to complete editing, I considered going completely offline for a few weeks.

Instead, I'm going to share with you short excerpts of my book. I hope you enjoy them. Take care - Leigh.

Five minutes is powerful. It changes the course of your day, brings a sense of peace among chaos, or even creates a new future. Five minutes is an opportunity.

Yet, the gift of five minutes is often forgotten.

Thanks to overwhelming responsibilities of being a mother, a wife, and an income earner, in the evening you’d give anything for five minutes of peace - and a burst of energy from your exhausted body. Your spouse, if you have one, would love to see you energized too, but you can only imagine lying comatose in front of the television.

Is it Help or Hindrance?

I like to help others. I have such a deep desire to do this that I itch to make it the top comment on my resume or profile.

Help Others

I’ve always been in a helping profession, even while teaching or directing.

However, with friends and family, I have less objectivity than at work. With family, I want to jump in to rescue, to change, to provide tools. I want to help. But recently I received strong indications that my help was a bit of a hindrance. In one case I sent an email to a few people, full of options of how we all could help some others. Many people do this, but most often they focus on a world crisis. This was personal, between a few people. Though I got a discussion going, some of it was, “what are you thinking, Leigh?” Apparently some levels of help are overkill.

Yesterday I spoke to my sister for a long time. She is incredibly talented, and speaks about brilliant ideas to work with more people in her area of specialty: nutrition. Yesterday I became a coach, instead of a sister. I listened to her wants, then urged her to take action and challenged her doubts.

I could tell she was feeling a bit of stress. When I got off the phone I realized, maybe there is a reason for her hesitations. Maybe she doesn’t need me coaching her about her future. Maybe she can simply enjoy the present and see how the future unfolds. Maybe I can simply listen.

5 Keys to Finding Love

Lessons in finding love can hurt and they can be a steep learning curve. Sometimes I wish I had more answers, sooner, especially when it came to discovering the source of true love.

...click here to read further where it is posted on Think Simple Now.

By Leigh Harris

As Good As They Can Be, by Sally Marks

I recently heard an interview with Maryrose Forsyth, author of The Real Estate of Relationships: Unveiling Practical Dating Solutions for the 21st Century on blog talk radio. For those who are looking for love, you may want to check out the interview for this helpful primer on sensible dating.

However, a side benefit (and an unintentional one on the author’s part) is this book can also be a helpful guide in other relationships as well. Maryrose explains that many relationships end because the couples weren’t looking for the same thing. If you both aren’t on the same page, then the relationship is doomed to fail. The same is true of friendships, work relationships etc. It boils down to our expectations of the person we are involved with.

For instance, my brother, Terry, is an extremely loyal friend. He has friends that have been a part of his life since he was five years old. Many of his childhood friendships stemmed from playing sports. However, as time went on, although Terry is still healthy and active, many of his friends became sick, old and feeble. In one case, his best friend for many years, Les, died. Yet, before Les passed away, Terry visited him in the hospital every day, and he still visits Les’ mom on a regular basis.

How to Know You will Achieve Your Goals

What is your purpose?

Do you absolutely, without any doubt, believe you will accomplish your purpose? Neither do I, except in one case: I know I will publish my book.

In this case, I get to cheat a little, if I want to. For my purpose, I have a safety net: Self publish. This isn't my goal, but perhaps having a backup is just enough for me to build my confidence into pure conviction.

With a backup plan, you can let go of your fear and focus on your dream.

However, for most goals, having a backup plan isn't enough. Want to start your own business? You can't accomplish your goal if you give the idea to someone else to start. Do you want to become a fundraising executive? It isn't the same if you settle for door to door sales (though this may be your first step). The backup is only useful if you continue to focus on your purpose.

So, how do I know I will publish my book? I know because I have commitment. Also, I continue to learn, write and take advice. Beyond these steps, there is one big one. I step over hurdles, without letting them snag me and pull me down. And this is often the difference between success and the backup plan.

It is like being a millionaire. We all want to be a millionaire, but we don't all KNOW we can. There are too many memories of defeat (agreeing to a joint venture that didn't live up to its expectations), lessons gone wrong (investing in a market that subsequently tanks), and poor choices (accepting the first salary offer without knowing there was room for negotiation). Unfortunately, we keep the loss, bad lessons and poor decisions in the back of our mind while we attempt to create a millionaire life.

Those memories which we keep inside only serve to drag us down. Those memories are the sludge that keep us from fulfilling our vision, our purpose.

This is the true law of attraction. We attract what we believe in our unconscious. In order to attract what our passion and purpose is, we must build walkways across the sludge. We must pull our feet out of it.

Feel Your Purpose, with Conviction

Let go of bad behaviors, memories, and whatever else may keep you down. Embrace the success you want until you KNOW it is a pure unfiltered force for the law of attraction. When you KNOW, circumstances come up which may have derailed you in the past. Now they are fleeting moments you easily let go while you fulfill your purpose.

Laura Day, in her book The Circle, calls this your New Reality. It is a powerful process, and includes the ups and downs of real success. Knowing what your New Reality is, understanding your purpose intimately, will help to guide you to succeed.

What is your purpose?

What blocks your path?

How will you move forward anyways, and with conviction?

Filling in the Gap Between Success and Failure

by Sally Marks

There is a unit of time that does not have an official name, but it is a crucial link between success and failure. It is the time between “wanting to do something” and actually doing it. As a youngster, this time period was often prefaced by, “When I’m a grown up.” Later it evolved to “When the kids grow up” or “When I have more time”.

I’ve always been pretty good at meeting deadlines, at least as an adult. I have all my unforgiving journalism professors to thank for that. But when it comes to unofficial deadlines, the game can get a bit trickier. After all, life doesn’t always come with the motivation of a good grade, or the threat of a nasty editor.

I don’t like to think of myself as lazy, or even as someone who procrastinates (more on that later – ha ha). Yet, life threw me a little reminder that I could turn my refrain for “I’ll do it another day” to a life of sloth if I didn’t change a few habits.

A case in point.

I had feng shui practitioner Lisa Montgomery perform her skills and knowledge to enhance and increase the positive qui of my home. One of the cures to prevent negative energy from hitting my happy abode included placing a bagua (a yellow, wooden, octagon with a mirror in the center) over my garage door. The street comes to a T right in front of our driveway, and that can throw a bit of negative vibes our way. This little bagua has been perched in its location for quite some time. Then one day we had a nasty wind storm and the bagua, like Humpty Dumpty, had a big fall. Fortunately nothing was broken. All I had to do was put it back up on its little perch.

How to Feel Fear, Then Respond with Calm - The New Food Safety Act

I almost made a mistake today. Ok, I probably make mistakes every day, but this one was wrapped up in fear and overreaction.

I read a facebook post about the new Food Safety Act. I became afraid. The post provided a link which led me to believe I wouldn't be able to buy some vitamins after the Act went into effect. If I believed the post, it also seemed as if all organic farms, seeds and backyard gardens would be  in jeopardy. No vitamins? No organic backyard gardens? An outrage! Imagine only being able to consume mass manufactured / grown / modified foods. It is simply too Big Brother horrible to imagine.

Unfortunately, I continued to read the comments under the article. "How can the government do this?" I thought, as I read on and on. My heart raced. I noticed my own fear building.

I then made a mistake. I posted the link on my facebook profile, without research. Reaction without foresight or calm.

How could I have dealt with my fear?

Intentions Can Manifest Through Effort and Focus

We all have a purpose in life, and the steps to fulfill it can change from year to year. However, purpose is what gives us the drive to succeed, the target to aim for, the push forward when we hit a rut. When we know we are on the right path, it feels right, and sometimes the universe lets us know it IS right.

My primary goal is writing. It is my new year's resolution, my target, my purpose.

After a couple months of fairly dedicated writing, I started to notice the synchronicities. These are, in my belief, the checkmark from the universe. "Yep, you got it!" "That was the right step." Sometimes the synchronicities relate to my actual writing, and sometimes they simply indicate my power of intention (or law of attraction) is going in the right direction.

It Takes a Village

by Ms Margie

I grew up in a small town called Dos Palos. Everyone knew everybody there and that's where I learned it takes a village to raise a child. Back then, neighbors knew their neighbors and the community came together (it still does). You addressed your elders as Mr. or Mrs., minded your manners and respected yourself and others. Their houses became your home and the welcome mat was out. People took the time to say hello, share a smile, ask how you were and wait for an answer.

I found that there wasn't much I could do without my parents finding out because the village was always looking out. It wasn't out of malice or spite, it was out of genuine concern. My mom always said, "whatever you do in the dark will always come to light." I truly believe this came from Dos Palos' village mentality. It made me think twice about the things I chose to get into. The foundation that developed and the friends and families that were made remain today.

I have since moved to a place called Merced. I brought the memories and my own village mentality with me. I never meet a stranger and always share a smile and a kind word.

As a product of the "it takes a village" generation, I knew how grateful my parents were for the various people who were a part of our lives and how big of an asset they were. It wasn't until I became a mother myself that I realized the magnitude of having a village that loved you, cared for you and looked out for you as if they were family. As a parent, it is comforting to know that so many others have my family's best interest in mind and that my children are aware that they are being watched by a village that wants nothing but the best for them.

It didn't keep my children from getting into things just like it didn't stop me but it created a consciousness and a reminder to maintain a certain level of respect because you know that you're part of something bigger than yourself.

I see my village as a protective barrier that shelters me from the storms, embraces me when I need embracing the most, and a constant reminder that we are our brother's keeper. I look out for them and they look out for me. It is a blessing. The difference it makes in my life is immeasurable and priceless.

Life has shown me that it takes a village to raise a child and I'm glad it did. My children and I are better people because of it.

MsH

http://noroutineaboutit.blogspot.com/2010/11/thankful-heart.html

Hesitate to Jump for Spontaneous Joy?

Joy.

Experience Joy

Bring joy into your life and all else will fall into place. I truly believe that.

Do you wish to:

• Connect more to your children? Play joyfully with them.
• Find the job of your dreams? Go with the occupation which brings you most joy.
• Create closer relationships? Drop the worries and complaints and focus on the joy in your life.
• Connect to universal consciousness/god/source/inspiration? This is easier to do when you consciously feel love, and joy is a powerful emotion based in love.

I know what the answers are, so why do I personally find it so difficult to take the leap into joy on a regular basis?

I believe I've found the answer to that one.

As a parent of young children (7 & 9) I have taken on the serious role of guiding, teaching and role modeling proper behavior, decision making, thoughtfulness and responsibility. I believe this prepares them for life as they grow older. Where does JOY fall into this? My children laugh all the time. They find the smallest events to giggle about. Sometimes they even start to laugh just for the sake of laughing, and when the other follows, their laughter erupts into pure JOY. I don't HAVE to role model spontaneous joy, as they were born knowing that one.

What else?

Spontaneous Joy is about letting go of worries, concerns, habits and control. I think it is the last one that gets to me. What will happen if I lose control? Will I be a bad example for my children? Will the responsive laughter remind me too much of childhood teasing? While I think I'm over that last one, maybe somewhere, deep in my subconscious, it has a role in my decision to maintain control.

These two "answers" seem logical, but spontaneous joy is not about logic. It is about love - for the moment, for those around me, for myself. It is the key to a more fulfilling life.

What is keeping you from experiencing more spontaneous joy? Is the underlying belief really necessary, or even truthful? Can you let go of it?

Now that I've found my answers, I believe I can.