One of the enemies of having a great attitude is the presence of a joy robber.What is a joy robber? Joy robbers are the people for whom it seems the sole purpose of their lives is to create grief for others.

Joy robbers are everywhere, and always will be. They may come in the form of a boss, a neighbor, a relative, a new acquaintance, a stranger in the grocery store or behind a customer service counter. They are the people that bother you.

Joy robbers are sent to us to test our good nature with keeping a great attitude. They have the ability to drain you of your own self-love and discipline. Discipline? Yup! If you allow yourself to get caught up in their bad behavior, it keeps you off track. You need your attention focused on your own projects, your daily work or even your own fun. Joy robbers are deadly to success, if you allow them to bother you.

NOW WHY WOULD SOMEONE BE LIKE THIS?

Why would someone sabotage us in the work place, create ill will in the family or at our place of worship?

I believe their behavior stems from their own unhappiness and disappointment in their own lives. People who are not well, also tend to act out and try to rob your joy. Their view of the world, without joy, is not your problem.

Funny thing: when you get rid of that awful boss (a joy robber) who has been so unkind to you and upset you for days on end at your work, you are relieved. Then arrives the new relative who starts something upsetting. Why is that?

I think really it is to just show us that there always will be joy robbers. No matter how long we live, we will always have them in our lives in some form. It is up to us to recognize the joy robber (“JR”) and not to allow them to trap us in their ugly web.

I have worked in many offices, and with many different supervisors. Early on, I realized that no matter how often I changed my work, or it was changed for me, the same people were employed there. Not the same people, but similar types. It was like someone had taken the head of one person and put the same head on another. A different-looking person but with similar bad or great behavior.

I am sure you do this with friends or old co-workers you call them up from a new position, and they ask you how the new place is, and how the people are. You then say, “Oh, we have our ‘Joe’ here, or remember ‘Sally’? We have one of those.”

If you recognize the new “JR” at the new office, you know what you are dealing with. Having the experience from your last position, you are better equipped with how to proceed in the new position.

I would like to add that joy robbers are usually crazy. Why would a happy and centered person want to cause anyone a moment of unhappiness? They would have to be crazy. And so they are. If for no reason someone at work starts to sabotage your work, or you hear family gossip that is just so hurtful that was said about you, look at the source. No, it is not you, it is them.

YOU CANNOT OUT-THINK CRAZY.

Repeat after me: YOU CANNOT OUT-THINK CRAZY.

If someone is starting to act in a crazy way without reason toward you, RUN. If it gets to a point where their behavior can hurt your family, your home, pets or yourself, get authorities involved. Best to file the behavior with the police, get a lawyer, go to Human Resources. Call anonymously if you feel more comfortable, whatever is needed. It is always worth it to handle them in a professional manner, both for your safety and good night’s sleep.

Since YOU CANNOT OUT-THINK CRAZY, it is best not to go toe- to-toe with them. You will never win. They live in crazyland, where nothing makes sense. If you fix what they want fixed, they will focus on another thing. Remember, nothing you do will make them happy.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given by a friend was when dealing with a person in “crazyland.” She advised me not to wear “crazy shoes.” I asked her what does that mean? She said whatever the behavior of this person is, do not get pulled into having the same behavior. Also, do not act the way they make you feel.

Wouldn’t you just want to scream at that awful boss in a room full of people, “You are a bully (or worse). No one likes you.” You’ll most likely lose your job, and the behavior will make you look crazy and out of control. Wouldn’t you love to paint a sign on your door that says, “Stay away all joy robbers and you know who you are”? Crazy behavior. It drains you and demeans you.

We may even wish these people bad, for the agony they may have caused, but that is not the best way to get yourself any resolution. This again is that “crazy shoe” thinking. They will always have a pair of “crazy shoes” waiting. Don’t even check for your size.

THERE ARE LEVELS OF JOY ROBBERS.

Some we see daily, others occasionally. Arming ourselves against these people is taking care of ourselves.

I am a believer that all things happen for a reason. Some reasons we know in time, and others (believe me) I will ask “Why did that happen?” at the end of my time. If all things have a rhyme and reason, why has this joy robber appeared in my life at this time? What have they to teach us?

Joy robbers may serve to direct us to move, to look for new work, put up a better fence for privacy or plan our holidays in China. Look for what the reason might be. They really do push our buttons, to find a better way of life. A better way of processing our world. If you need assistance legally, psychologically, or even spiritually to handle a joy robber, do yourself the favor and get the assistance.

After putting the situation in the authorities hands or not, a good thing to do is to just ignore them. Focus on yourself. Proceed forward to the next new job, or new place of residence or new adventure in your life. To enter into crazyland with any bad behavior on your part, makes them the winner. And we know these people are never winners. You are the winner when you handle issues with dignity and respect for yourself.

A SPECIAL TYPE OF VAMPIRE

There is also the event when you run into a certain person who I’ll call an energy drainer. This is harder. I always have the best intentions to stop and speak to the person. I will stop to say hello. The third degree starts. “So, how’s your business?” Mind you, this is my business, not their business. I say, “Fine.” Then they start with the questions, “How many books did you sell last year?” “Why haven’t you been on Oprah?” I am looking around me; why did I even stop to chat? By the end of the conversation, I am drained and dragging. What happened? This type of person will drain your energy.

I don’t play tennis, but when I meet this kind of character I feel like I have to have a racket in hand to lob the ball away from me. Insulting comment, hit the ball, probing question, hit the ball, sly remark, hit the ball, more probing questions, hit the ball. This is exhausting, for sure. Just limit the time. Look at your watch and say, “Have to go!” You may have to improvise, to just get out of the way of an energy drainer.

Once we recognize that there are, and always will be joy robbers and energy drainers in the world, it is our responsibility to gather the tools to handle them in a way that they do not harm our good nature. With these tools we will process whatever the situation is. They will not rob us of one moment of our joy or good attitude.

Is it this easy? NEVER.

About the Author
Karen Okulicz is the author of three motivational pocket books. For more information visit www.Okulicz.com

Wendy Strgar, founder of GoodCleanLove, released her first book entitled ‘Love that Works: A Guide to Enduring Intimacy’. Good Clean Love was started by wife and mother of four, Wendy Strgar, with the mission to increase awareness of the experience of love and intimacy in the world. Based on a collection of weekly newsletters and original short stories, ‘Love that Works’ offers a provocative discussion on the personal elements of a loving and sexually satisfying relationship. “This book is the culmination of all my work, everything that I believe and hope for,” says Strgar. “I really think I’ll be helping people.”

In 2003, after 17 years of marriage, Founder and ‘Loveologist’, Wendy Strgar, created the Good Clean Product line to first meet her own personal intimacy needs after being unsatisfied with what was available in the marketplace. Most lubricants available are made with petrochemical-based ingredients and parabens that can have negative side effects such as burning, pain or itching. By developing an all-natural recipe for clean ingredient lubricants, Ms. Strgar claims she saved her marriage by eliminating the pain that occurred with intimacy, allowing her and her husband to restore their marriage. She realized that “physically loving my husband gave us the power to heal and unite as a couple”.

This powerful personal experience inspired Wendy to create a family of products using healthy and natural ingredients that make love more accessible in relationships. Wendy’s mission is in educating women about their bodies to help more them create and sustain stronger families, so as Wendy puts it, “that the world can be a more loving place”.

Excerpt: “Committed relationships work best when we approach them as a method of personal growth. Ultimately our loving relationships are the most gentle and effective education we can engage in to become the person we want to be.  The stories, memoir and sage advice in Love that Works is an essential guide in creating resilient, passionate loving relationships.”

Seven years after launching, the Oregon-based ‘love’ company now specializes in a variety organic and all-natural love products, such as lubricants, love oils and edible candy that are sold in stores and online atwww.goodcleanlove.com.  In May 2010, Wendy was the proud winner of the first ever Willamette Valley Angel Conference, that rewarded Good Clean Love a $160,000 prize, allowing GCL to expand giving Wendy the time to write the book she had been envisioning all those years. Good Clean Love supports the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and is continuously working to educate women, physicians and retail stores about the importance of clean and healthy ingredients in love or ‘intimacy’ products. Good Clean Love’s healthy intimacy products have found a home in many natural food stores and pharmacies including Whole Foods and Pharmaca, as well as many spas, gift shops and physicians offices.

‘Love that Works’ will be available nationally through Green Leaf distribution and online at goodcleanlove.com and amazon.com

While plenty of complicated tests have been developed over the years to help people crack the code of their true personality, Fisher Nuts www.fishernuts.com (NASDAQ: JBSS) has found a simple and delicious way to predict who people are.

Forget Meyers-Briggs, forget Jung. Never mind going to a big university to sit through a battery of tests that seem more like torture than fun. Fisher Nuts makes it easy:

If you like salted peanuts, you’re likely an extrovert and very charming; if you like walnuts you are a natural born leader; if you like pecans, you’re loyal; if you like almonds, you’re motivated and conscientious; if you like cashews, you are easy-going.

In other words, you really are what you eat; or at least what you like to eat. What a conversation builder! Say a couple friends are in a passionate discussion about music or art. And at one point, flustered by a response, one says, “You’re nuts!” to the other. Luckily, the guy being besmirched is familiar with the handy Fisher Nuts study. “To be specific,” he replies proudly,” “I’m a cashew, which is lucky for you!”

This revelation can then lead to all sorts of pondering. What kind of nut is your favorite singer, or favorite actor?  Is the person you’re dating the right kind of nut for you? What if you’re a cashew and your spouse is a walnut? Is that a bad sign? What if you’re a peanut/almond blend?

The nutty findings stem from a recent study on nut preferences and personality conducted by Alan R. Hirsch, M.D. founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. Dr. Hirsch has conducted more than 200 studies on sensory phenomena and disorders.

The nut study, commissioned by Fisher Nuts, asked more than 1,000 men and women to select their favorite nut from five unlabeled samples of almonds, walnuts, salted peanuts, cashews and pecans.  After a battery of personality tests, diagnoses were determined for each individual and statistically correlated with the choices of nuts.

Everyone falls into one of five personality groups, as further defined by the nut they choose:

• Salted Peanuts:  dramatic extroverts who crave novelty and thrive as the center of attention.  They are easily bored with the usual routine, and while charming in social situations, are sensitive to criticism and rejection. These are people to take to a party.  They probably love roller coasters and karaoke.

• Almonds:  scrupulous, conscientious, moral perfectionists who have high standards for themselves and others.  While intensely motivated, they tend to become over committed at work or home, taking on more projects than they can comfortably complete.  Hands-on approach to problems makes almond-lovers ideal workers.

• Pecans:  devoted, loyal, true friends.  Overly generous, pecan lovers will consider others’ needs before their own. Dependable, they are most comfortable with the usual routines of life.  They are tenacious, committed team players who don’t require adulation, and are satisfied sharing accolades with their friends, family or co-workers.

• Cashews:  empathic, easy-going, well-adjusted.   Cashew lovers make the perfect spouse or parent.  Calm and level-headed, they can be depended upon in times of crisis or emergency. A cashew is a good person to have around when the plumbing goes awry or the lights go out. A cashew just knows what to do

• Walnuts:  aggressive, achievement-oriented, natural leaders.  Competitive, successful, driven, intolerant of defeat.  Walnut lovers demand the best at work and at home.  They are easily irritated with the routine side of life. They cannot tolerate life’s inconveniences such as being stuck in rush hour traffic or waiting in long lines.

“Through selection of food pathways, one’s hidden true self is symbolically revealed,” reports Dr. Hirsch.   “Nut (choices) can unravel the hidden mood, personality and motivation.”   He explains that while societal and cultural norms do influence our food choices, it is indeed possible to tie nut preferences to personality.   “The foundation of the personality is laid at age 3-5 years,” he says, “concomitant with the formulation of food preferences,  like personality, (food preferences) once formed, remain intransigent throughout the lifespan.”

The study was a natural for Fisher, which processes and distributes nuts globally. What kind of nut is the company itself? That depends on whom you talk to.

“First and foremost, we wanted this to be fun and informative,” says Julie Nargang Director of Marketing – National Brands with John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc., owner of the Fisher brand. “While there’s obviously some humor involved, it’s also worth noting that there’s a whole scientific field built around people’s food preferences and what that says about them. By combining the two, we can bring attention to the fact that nuts are a healthy and wholesome snack. And they liven up recipes for baked goods, salads and other food favorites. Nuts and fun go together; look at the places they wind up: parties, celebrations, sporting events, movies and family board games. There must be a connection!”

Nargang notes that as part of the fun, Fisher has launched a consumer quiz that focuses on the nut personality findings. Consumers can access the quiz online at www.fishernuts.com or at Facebook.com/fishernutsbrand to find out just what nut they are.

John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc., founded in 1922, is a leading processor, marketer and distributor of shelled and in-shell nuts and extruded snacks that are sold in multiple distribution channels.  Their products can be found under the company’s Fisher and Sunshine Country brand names and under a variety of private labels.

For more information about Fisher products visit www.fishernuts.com.

Join the Facebook Fan community atwww.facebook.com/fishernutsbrand.

Sustainability is the catch phrase of this generation, it means learning how to use current resources in a way that does not harm the future. We hear about this in terms of building homes, cultivating food, and rethinking our natural and energy resources Basically, we are finally being compelled to listen to the voice of indigenous wisdom to our lives in such a way that we can meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This wisdom is rarely applied to love, which, I believe is the source of energy from which all else springs. Why then is it so difficult for so many of us to maintain our loving relationships? What skills and insights can we bring to our love relationships to allow them to flourish and sustain our lives into perpetuity? These questions are at the core of the mission of Good Clean Fun- we exist to increase the awareness and experience of love in the world.

About Wendy Strgar:
Wendy Strgar, the owner and founder of Good Clean Fun, manufacturer of all natural love and intimacy products. Wendy is a sex educator focusing on Making Love Sustainable, a green philosophy of relationships which teaches the importance of valuing the renewable resources of love and family. She has learned that physical intimacy is an important component of sustaining healthy loving relationships through her own marriage of over 23 years.

Wendy has studied natural health care and has used homeopathic remedies, aromatherapy and energy healing techniques with her four children, family and friends for the last 20 years. She formulated her Good Clean Fun products to meet a personal need for healthy lubrication products after the births of her 3rd and 4th child. She researches and advises on a range of healthy products for enhanced intimacy and provides information on the negative health impacts of many of the petrochemical ingredients found in common over the counter intimacy products.

Wendy speaks about Sustainable Love and is working on both a book and dvd on the topic. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, a psychiatrist, and their four children ages 8-17.

Dear Heather,

How do I find enough love in the moment, in order to rise above total and complete irritation/misanthropy? Sometimes I want to beat people up. Help!

-S.O.

Dear S.O.,

Take a deep breath sista! While it may appear that people are irritating and need to be beaten with a stick, in truth, that’s just a manifestation of your ego placing others as separate from you. Trust me; I know it can be difficult, especially when you’re getting cut off in traffic. But in order to live consciously you must connect with the love within yourself. And then spread it to every person you meet.

So how do you find this love, you ask?

First, connect with the love you have for yourself; it can make things a lot easier when you need to conjure it up in an aggravating moment. Remember, we are all just people. Follow the recommendations below to feel the love, even in the most irritating of moments:

Write three things you love about yourself. Every day. Go to a mirror, read them out loud and finish it with, “I love you S.O.” I know it will feel uber cheesy at first, but this practice works. Within 6 months of doing this practice daily, my self-esteem significantly improved. I stopped focusing on the things I didn’t like about myself and was drawn to the beautiful parts of who I am. It works!

Watch Kundun, a movie about the Dalai Lama’s life. It illustrates what true love and compassion looks like. For the Chinese government, no less – not an easy task.

Meditation will connect you to your true self, and thus bring out the love. Try Jack Kornfield’s Meditation for Beginners, or do this simple exercise – this works particularly well when faced with a perturbing situation:

-Begin breathing deeply from your belly.

-Close your eyes (if you can).

-Imagine that every thought coming into your head is a leaf floating gently down a     river.

-Breathe into each thought that comes up, and scatter it down the river.

-Continue doing this until you feel calm.

If you can implement these three conscious living action items, you will immediately begin to feel the love. For yourself and your fellow man. I promise.

Much love,

Heather

About Heather Strang:

Heather Strang is a writer and success coach passionate about conscious living. Her writing has appeared in national blogs, books and a host of print and online publications including The Twenty-Something Manifesto, Women’s eNews, NicoleWilliams.com, Amaze magazine, White Apricot, The Oregonian, Portland Tribune, NW Women’s Journal and many others. She also writes the highly visible Eat Wheat-Free, Dairy-Free and Low Sugar blog for women seeking healthy food alternatives. When she’s not writing, you’ll find Heather meditating on the beach, creating new recipes and exploring the possibilities of the universe.

It is said that the game of love is everyone’s favorite game, and yet even with all the new technologies designed to help us connect, more and more people are opting out of the game, preferring to live alone, than to risk another bad relationship outcome.   This preference reflects a deep change in our collective human psyche, for it used be that what lovers feared most was loneliness. Now being caught in a static or unsatisfying relationship is even more troubling.  Wanting to be together, to build a family is no longer enough.

Just in the last couple of weeks, I have spoken with several people who have expressed this sentiment and when I pressed the point and asked if they were to meet a compatible, kind and intelligent partner, would they truly feel like there wasn’t room in their life to accommodate them.   There was a brief pause, and then “I’m not sure” was as close as they would come to an opening.  Our modern age has made it is easier to be passionate and maintain passion about a pet or favorite sports team, than a lover.  What has happened to the game of love?

Memories of childhood games on late summer evenings remind me of what the game of love once meant to us.  As kids we understood that it was the play that mattered. Winning and losing both reflected their original root meanings which were “to desire” and “to be set free.”   Capture the flag in the dwindling light of the sky or a full neighborhood game of hide and seek was an apprenticeship in freedom.   Pretending was rich with  excitement, as we all shared in the wonder of not knowing the outcome. And yet we all knew that no victory was ever final, there was still tomorrow night.

Lovers from our past shared one secret; they all knew that it wasn’t about winning or losing, it was the play that was essential.  Playing allows us to experience freedom from duty and necessity.  It is a primary condition of creativity and allows us the self-conscious delight of living out alternative realities.  It is what makes us so deeply human.

Nowhere does this ring more true, than in our most intimate moments. Adding playfulness to sexual desire invites new friends into the bedroom: imagination and fantasy.   Invite these allies to any passionate encounter with an openness to play, a willingness to pretend, and the freedom to live in the wonder of not knowing the outcome. Saying yes to this game of love, keeps life fresh and while it offers no guarantees of long term winning, it does promise to share glimpses of what we all desire most of the magical influence of love.

Rewarding our instinct to love creates the self confidence to transform a private secret to a public force with the power to renew life and transmute human defects into loveable qualities.  We are, after all, most loveable when we love. Playing this game doesn’t guarantee a life without bruises or the happy ever after story that we all long for.   It will however teach you about all the many ways you can love, and love again…

If love is so healing why does it hurt so much?  This is a good question with  difficult answers.   Love the verb is a constant practice of feeling compassion, giving the benefit of the doubt and struggling to feed our goals and desires, as well as those of whom we love. This aspiration is a juggle even in the most functional of relationships; and the score rarely comes up   50-50.

Approaching our intimate relationships with the intent of an action verb is realistic, if not a bit daunting. The romantic version of the verb, the measure we use for our love relationships, reflects the illusion of love as a vacation.   We sit side by side in some beautiful natural location and the only action required is offered by the love that we feel, washing over us, filling us, just as easily as the nearby waterfall washes over and fills the streambed.  Physical intimacy carries the potential to generate this experience; flush with heightened hormones and released tension; lovemaking seems to encompass all of what is love.

These peaks of love are profoundly healing and sustaining.   However it is unrealistic to expect that these experiences should encompass all that is love.  When we are unable to show up for those we love, the feelings that we bear are the polar opposite of what we feel when we succeed in these relationships.  It doesn’t matter if the slight is intended or a consequence of life’s competing demands.  Generating the love, sometimes is our work alone.   Three thousand miles from home, I am unable to care for my youngest daughter who came down with the chicken pox.  I also somehow managed to have missed the start of the tradeshow that I traveled all this way to attend.

More often than not, there is no malice intended in most of love’s disappointments.  Life frequently tests our ability to forgive the intrusions to our peace of mind and to sustain the pain and longing of someone we love and cannot show up for.    We must be willing to balance the hardships, bear the ache in our heart in our relationships if we expect to experience the vacation of love’s working for us.   If we are unwilling to sustain the work of love, all we ever get is a brief glimpse of a paradise, fading fast enough that it is easy to dismiss.

Illness is as much a part of our human condition as is wellness.  Most of what we do in life can be traced back to the basic human drive to be happy and well.  The times that we feel most fragile are made more bearable when held in love.  Unfortunately, the courage and intention to sustain each other during the daily annoyances is sadly often more than we can bear.  The number of people who report feelings of relief at the end of their long-term relationships continues to amaze me. Loving each other is the hardest work we do and what we do with that work defines our life in health and illness.   Although I feel bad about not being the mother I want to be this weekend, I hope that I return to the work with more resolve to stay with it. 

Dear Heather,

Dear S.O.,

Take a deep breath sista! While it may appear that people are irritating and need to be beaten with a stick, in truth, that’s just a manifestation of your ego placing others as separate from you. Trust me; I know it can be difficult, especially when you’re getting cut off in traffic. But in order to live consciously you must connect with the love within yourself. And then spread it to every person you meet.

So how do you find this love, you ask?

First, connect with the love you have for yourself; it can make things a lot easier when you need to conjure it up in an aggravating moment. Remember, we are all just people. Follow the recommendations below to feel the love, even in the most irritating of moments:

Write three things you love about yourself. Every day. Go to a mirror, read them out loud and finish it with, “I love you S.O.” I know it will feel uber cheesy at first, but this practice works. Within 6 months of doing this practice daily, my self-esteem significantly improved. I stopped focusing on the things I didn’t like about myself and was drawn to the beautiful parts of who I am. It works!

Watch Kundun, a movie about the Dalai Lama’s life. It illustrates what true love and compassion looks like. For the Chinese government, no less – not an easy task.

Meditation will connect you to your true self, and thus bring out the love. Try Jack Kornfield’s Meditation for Beginners, or do this simple exercise – this works particularly well when faced with a perturbing situation:

-Begin breathing deeply from your belly.
-Close your eyes (if you can).
-Imagine that every thought coming into your head is a leaf floating gently down a     river.
-Breathe into each thought that comes up, and scatter it down the river.
-Continue doing this until you feel calm.

If you can implement these three conscious living action items, you will immediately begin to feel the love. For yourself and your fellow man. I promise.

Much love,
Heather

“Gratitude is the heart’s memory.”  French proverb

I have generally not been a sports fan in life, but living with my husband for over 20 years and raising two sons has trained me in the importance of the game.  Tonight we shared a real loss as we watched the dreams of our star quarterback slip away with a hit to the knee. He stood on the sidelines watching his team lose their chance at a national championship.  This is the game of life we watched play out.  When we predict how things will turn out for our teams and our selves but usually we can’t quite imagine all the possibilities.  It is often the thing that you couldn’t imagine, that you often can’t see coming- even when it is barreling down on you like a linebacker.

We can never imagine the full range of possibilities, if we could imagine all the possibilities it wouldn’t be called a game, which by it’s very nature is unpredictable and exciting -like life.   I always tell my boys, especially after they lose, that you can’t ever win if you can’t risk losing.  The losing is what makes the winning real.

Our personal quests for love and success carry the same risk and excitement.  Sometimes, the cards you are dealt are winners and other times- they lead us into situations that are not that different from tonight’s sad loss.  The boys on the team will have to come home and figure out how to try again.  They will have to be willing to risk it all again, which requires enormous courage after you lose- especially on ESPN.  Even when we lose in private, with no one but you watching it takes great courage to try again.  Finding a way back into a difficult relationship or a challenging situation requires gratitude.

It is through our heart’s memory, the place where we store the love in our life that we find that what we have is enough.  It is through feeling grateful for both our efforts and the efforts of the people that we love that we can turn denial into acceptance, chaos into order and confusion into clarity.  This is what champions must do with defeat and I think the only noble path to live a life that gives as much as it takes.  Having the chance to play in the game is enough, even when the golden win isn’t what we are left with.

This is the week we set aside to be thankful.  This year consider being thankful for your heart’s memory- the inner store of loving thoughts and connections that has given you the courage to keep going.

I have always believed that what we all want most is to be loved.  The feeling of being loved and worthy is a universal gateway to happiness and satisfaction

It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

We all long for happiness…  I would say that these things might just be one in the same.  For the sake of argument, let’s just assume that they are. We are happiest when we feel loved and valued and least happy when we feel unlovable and unworthy.

If it is all as simple as that, why then do we so often find ourselves unhappy and dissatisfied with our life and our relationships? In Daniel Gilbert’s ‘Stumbling On Happiness’, learn the scientific research that shows that we continuously miss the happiness and love we want, because we often don’t even know what it is that we’re looking for.

Our imagination of our desired life Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”  W.S. Coffin

Telling the truth in relationships is perhaps the most challenging aspect of relating.  Not doing it makes relationships impossible.  It is difficult because it takes time to know our own truth and because often even as we get it, truth is as changeable as the days we live in.  The wise among us know that there is no truth with a capital T- and yet there is without a doubt, lies.  That the truth isn’t something we can grasp and hold on to, it makes the job of living with integrity deeply intentional.

We all see things as we are, rather than as they are. We all struggle to find the courage to reveal our own perceptions and feelings in our closest relationships.   This is where the world becomes dangerous in relationships; the unexpressed and the lies take up the ground between us.  Even if we can’t articulate why, we feel ungrounded and fill in the gaps with all kinds of drama and elaborate language to compensate.

Recently, I have experienced   the weight and reality of this as I watch the demise of the marriage of some close personal friends.   It is shocking, when the final disclosure of cheating and infidelity comes out.  Usually though, in retrospect, you could see it coming for years.  During the time we spent with our friends during the years when they were” together”, there was always this unspoken space left for the unexpressed- the untruths, and the detachment that grows around it.   It was like there was someone else in the room that no one wanted to acknowledge.   Sometimes after another glass of wine, this voice would spill out of someone’s mouth, leaving awkward silence and a shared recognition of a place to dangerous to tread.  Someone would change the subject quickly.

I would often leave those gatherings feeling slightly off- wondering what I could have said that would have given the truth some air.    I wish now that I could have said something that would have made a difference but I know that making the commitment to live authentically in my own relationship is work enough.   Jamaica Kincaid said “I am not at all interested in the pursuit of happiness.  I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.”

Although, I wish it wasn’t so, I am coming to believe that sometimes the work of sustaining a relationship that has integrity over time is not always congruent with our own search for happiness. And yet on the other side of sharing a relationship, which is deeply authentic, there is a satisfaction and comfort to life, which exceeds fleeting happiness.  When I speak to groups, I my first lesson is always to give up the idea that your relationship will be or should be easy, or that it exists to make you happy.   Relationships exist to teach us how to love and be loved.   And while, there are moments when relationships feel easy and make us happy, having those feelings are not a reasonable barometer of whether the relationship is working or not.

A more honest gauge of whether your relationship is working is the measure of trust and safety that the work of telling the truth builds into it.   Because I can tell my husband that  ” I feel lonely in my marriage” and that he can hear it, doesn’t necessarily fix it, but allows me to live it differently.   Feeling lonely in my marriage is an honest place, by saying it and feeling it, I have the chance to let it transform.   It doesn’t mean that it will transform him; it might just need to change me and my relationship to the silence that he is more comfortable living in.    Either way the expression keeps us both honest and in touch with each other and the real struggles that living together entail.    In a small and dangerous world it is truth and love that keeps us safe.