My house is filled with birds. I mean – FILLED.

I don’t mean live birds. I only have one of those.

But my art, pillows, pens, screensavers, candleholders, purses, journals, lamps….you name it, there’s probably a bird on it.

This is because birds make me happy.

And depending on how my day is going at any given moment, I might not be feeling particularly happy about anything else. Some days I like my work and some days I don’t. Some days I like the people in my life and some days I don’t. Heck, as I wrote about last week, some days I like me and some days I don’t.

But just let me set eyes on a bird-shaped figure or form, and a little spark of happiness is reliably ignited once again.

I have learned the hardest way possible – through 20 years of battling and then recovering from an eating disorder, depression and crippling anxiety – that for me, growing happiness happens best tiny mincing step by tiny mincing step. It is not a “big leaps” kind of enterprise – at least not in my personal world.

This is because a big leap might intimidate me too much. It might scare me – the me who is used to small bursts of fleeting joy just every so often. But small steps – tiny hops – little flutters of happy-joy here and there – these I can confidently welcome and even expand upon no matter how challenging my day or my life might become.

In time perhaps I will be ready for big leaps. Truthfully, I hope so. But I am also finding that perhaps it doesn’t really matter  – because when I string together small bits of happiness one behind the other, the result is sustained joy.

Which is exactly what I have always wanted anyway.

Today’s Takeaway: How do you experience and grow bits of happiness in your life? Are you a “tiny steps” or a “big leaps” kind of happiness-builder – or do you fall somewhere in between? What do you do to notice and grow happiness and joy in any place it appears in your life?

Origami bird photo available from Shutterstock

I don’t always like myself. There, I admitted it.

Also, sometimes I know why I am out of charity with myself. But sometimes I don’t.

I suspect that sometimes it is just habitual self-loathing – residuals left over from two decades of battling anxiety, depression and an eating disorder in times when no one (me included) knew what an eating disorder was. As such, I was regularly submitted to such (un)helpful queries as, “Why don’t you just EAT?” and “Why do you have to BE like this?”

If only I knew.

Sometimes, new experiences trigger those old feelings to come flooding back again. In fact, sometimes I still have those exact same questions about myself – and I still don’t know how to answer them. The truth is, I don’t know why I am like this or that – ever. In the same way that I don’t know why some mornings I bound out of bed full of positivity and other days I feel like I’ve been ambushed in my sleep, I don’t know why some days I am high on being me and other days I would cheerfully trade personalities with pretty much anyone.

That is just the way it is. Each new morning comes and I just never know what I’m going to get.

What I DO know how to do now is practice good self-care even when I am not feeling like it. I never used to be able to do that. I wore my heart (probably my head, really) on my sleeve to such an extent that I couldn’t exercise compassion when I was feeling aversion. I had a stringent “earning” system that required that my emotions and thoughts be on the same page before I could extend even the basest of human kindnesses towards myself.

If I wasn’t thinking kind thoughts about me, I wouldn’t be feeling them. And if I wasn’t feeling them, I sure as heck wouldn’t be thinking them. As you might imagine, I was rarely kind to me back in those days.

Today, self-kindness is a required default. I can deal with my thinking and my feeling later. But I must lay a foundation of self-kindness and self-care first. That is today’s prerequisite. The reason for this is simple. If I am not kind, I will not be honest. I will not be honest because I will be scared, and scared people tend to lie if they think the truth will get them in more trouble. I may not like myself sometimes today, but I am not scared of myself anymore.

I think this is because, as I shared earlier this week in my post about Brene Brown’s new book “Daring Greatly”, today I can tell the difference between being someone bad and doing something bad. There is a big difference, I have discovered, between needing an attitude or a behavioral adjustment and being a bad person who does not deserve to be here.

The latter is to be expected. The former is impossible – at least in my world today.

Today’s Takeaway: How do you do at good self-care even when you are having a difficult day in terms of self-esteem or self-regard? Do you easily separate what you do from who you are? If you struggle, how might studying more about the difference between doing and being help you practice better self-care during troubled moments in your life?

Woman caring for herself photo available from Shutterstock

Certain books just demand a purchase, because I already know I will read them cover to cover and more than once. I will probably also blog about them here and elsewhere and mention them (unsubtly, continuously) to my friends, family members, mentees and others at every opportunity.

Ergo, they are worth the (in this particular case) $26+tax I shelled out for them.

Speaking of which, “Daring Greatly” is the second Brene Brown book I have purchased. It is a decision I wholeheartedly applaud myself for.

In fact, sometimes I am quite simply awed by the fact that this great researcher and humanitarian lives and works right here in Houston, the city where I also live and work. She does talk about eating disorders quite a bit in her work studying and teaching about shame and vulnerability. This of course is not surprising – now. But it sure would have been back when I was struggling so hard to overcome my own eating disorder!

“Daring Greatly” gets right to the heart of why things feel good or bad, why we love some teachers (and bosses, and family members) and loathe others, why we feel the way we do about ourselves and others and this world we all share and – most importantly – what we can personally do about it.

Please read “Daring Greatly”. If you need more convincing, check out this quote:

Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage. In a world where scarcity and shame dominate and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It’s even a little dangerous at times. And without question, putting ourselves out there means there’s a far greater risk of feeling hurt. But as I look back on my life and what Daring Greatly has meant to me, I can honestly say that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, and hurtful as believing that I’m standing on the outside of my own life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen.

Preach it, Brene!

==> Learn more about “Daring Greatly” and Dr. Brene Brown HERE

Today’s Takeaway: (If applicable) how would ‘daring greatly’ transform your experience of being you in your own life? What would it take? How do you feel about your efforts to dare greatly to date? Is there anything you would like to change?

Lately I have been attempting to learn a new skill. Yet again.

This (I am told) will keep my brain’s neural connections young and spry. At what expense, however, I am not yet sure, as the rest of me is beginning to feel a bit peaked from tackling this particular challenge.

The challenge? I am trying to learn to follow my heart rather than my head.

I know I can do it, too. That is part of why it is so irritating when I don’t. I followed my heart when I decided I was going to recover from my eating disorder even if it killed me in the process. And I recovered – 10 years to date and counting.

I followed my heart when I quit my high income white collar oil company job and headed off to India to “search for myself.” I did find me – a much more interesting, well-rounded and healthy me than the me I had left behind.

I followed my heart when I founded MentorCONNECT, an enterprise I was completely and totally unqualified to either found or lead. We are in year three now and (by non-profit standards at least) quite the hit with our constituents.

I have followed my heart at certain times and in certain key ways over the last 42 years to date, and each time I have done so I have experienced great satisfaction and success. Following my head has yielded a much lower satisfaction and success ratio, yet I continue to let it mislead me day after day.

The biggest problem seems to be that I often can’t tell the difference between head- and heart-talk in the moments when I am making decisions. I might be stressed out, pressed for time, beset by a long and growing to-do list full of decisions to make, exhausted to the point of not caring, or simply inattentive. Or all of the above.

My head is also very good at making a strong case for itself using language like “you should,” “you must,” “you will regret it if you don’t.” If I am not listening to it very carefully, it sounds a lot like my heart – kind and caring and wanting only the best for me, even if achieving that best means worrying me half to death in the process.

But my heart doesn’t worry me. My heart speaks softly, slowly. My heart is not – EVER – in a hurry. My heart sounds like the voice of reason when my head is masquerading as the voice of truth.

My heart uses small, simple words that can cut through even a case of skyrocketing blood pressure with a solution that just might save my life – and actually has in the past.

My heart sounds like God….I think. Or at least it sounds like somebody God or whatever connective influence binds us all together might send to talk me down off that oh-so-enticing ledge.

Most importantly, my heart is always RIGHT.

Oh, I so so so want to learn how to follow my heart not 10 percent of the time, not 50 percent of the time, but 100 percent of the time!

Today’s Takeaway: If this is a path you, too, are traveling, what works best to help you remember to follow your heart rather than your head?

Woman with a heart photo available from Shutterstock

A few years ago a mentor recommended a book called “The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources.”

As always when a mentor recommended a resource, I promptly went out and bought it.

I then (again, as always) read it. But it didn’t really resonate.

I was having struggles with money back then – struggles that looked less like an inability to balance my checkbook and more like a love triangle where the third party insisted on remaining anonymous.

I had hoped reading the book would help me discover the identity of the mysterious (and seriously pissed-off) second suitor….and the cause for my ongoing financial crises. But as it turned out, all it did was make me feel guilty for not wanting to immediately run out and give away all my money to the poor.

Such was my limited understanding back then.

A few months ago, thanks in large part to a “mystery health problem” and the several expensive diagnostic tests the doctors ordered, I found myself back in that very same love triangle once again. Why couldn’t I just get ahead and STAY there? Why must a financial crisis always arise at the precise moment when I had reassured myself (just five minutes prior) that all things green and profitable were finally right side up for good?

I remembered “The Soul of Money” at this time and went hunting in my book case for it.

In this second older and somewhat wiser reading, I was immediately struck by what author Lynne Twist calls the “three scarcity myths”: there is not enough, more is better, and that’s just the way things are.

In each of these myths, I could clearly perceive my own financial thinking hard at work affirming and proving each one. I saw how I believed these things – or at least had been living like I believed. I saw my own money hopelessness unfolding and growing, rising higher and expanding wider until it touched all other elements of my life from love to career to fun and health and faith and all the rest.

Just when I felt myself circling the financial hopelessness drain, I turned the page to find a new section entitled, “Sufficiency: The Surprising Truth.”

Here Twist claims that our soul and our finances are inextricably bound, that the latter carries the intentions of the former out into the world like a carrier pigeon charting our course. I can’t pretend to comprehend this….yet. But I do understand that underneath all of my red-highlighted financial “issues” there exists a deeper belief that money is a divine resource rather than the necessary evil I’ve long been making it out to be.

Along with the three scarcity myths Twist outlines the three sufficiency truths: money is like water, what you appreciate appreciates, and collaboration creates prosperity.

I am so eager to experience each of these three sufficiency truths in action in my life, as I at this point feel full to overflowing with experiences of their scarcity counterparts.

I haven’t experienced them yet. But I am hopeful – so hopeful – that this time, as I read and study and contemplate and reconfigure and grow, I surely will.

==> To learn more about author Lynne Twist and “The Soul of Money” click HERE

Today’s Takeaway: Where could you perhaps hope for a healthier, more uplifting and inspiring relationship with your own finances? Have you read “The Soul of Money” or another book with similar aims? What has your experience been of working with yourself to strengthen and grow all of the resources you have, including but not limited to money?