Slap your ass and get happy; Common Traits among Happy People

Day 22 of Your Year to Wellness

Happy Then and Now

I grew up poor lacking the basic necessities of life. We couldn’t even see the avenue for improvement, but my mother did not allow moping or bad attitudes. “If you ain’t happy, you better slap your ass and get happy,” she’d say. Of course I had no idea what she meant. How could I slap my behind and make myself happy. Then one day it hit me, she was saying that she would do it for me but she could'nt, so make yourself happy.

Research in the area of subjective well-being, or happiness found that people who report that they are happy have several things in common; *they are grateful, *they have self-control, *good relationships, *respectable jobs (they find honor in the work they do and are honored by it,) *they feel that they have enough and *they have a world view or belief system that helps shape their lives. While “slap your ass and get happy” was not on the list exactly, I saw that it was there in essence; people who are happy make it happen.

We may have no choice in some of the things that have been done to us, but we do have a choice in how we respond.

I often encounter grown people who still throw tantrums. If they had the mobility to get on the floor to kick their legs while rolling around, they would. These people feel helpless because “someone made them mad.” No one can make you mad, you choose to act out. Telling them this of course creates another kind of tantrum, the poor pitiful me tantrum.

If we are to be happy, we must choose to control ourselves and the way we respond to life. Because I grew up in a great deal of conflict and confusion I find that I often walk away from relationships with people who as the folks say, like drama.

An old boyfriend once accused me of being dramatic when I suggested we talk about a disagreement we’d had. He was gritting his teeth and declaring that I must not be a happy person because I liked drama. He paced back and forth and was almost foaming at the mouth saying “Just look at yourself.” I stood there, one tear rolling down my face watching this sad performance while mentally listing the ways I could break up with him without being hurtful because he was a good person and then it came to me taht people who are not happy really have a hard time being with people who are. It shines a light on their lack of joy so they often seek ways to destroy the peace and if you are not mindful, this contagious disease of unhappiness will affect you too.

Those who are truly happy have a responsibility to the world and it is simply this; shine your light. We can’t make anyone else happy, we can only be happy and allow others to get there for themselves.

·         There is no happiness switch. You can’t just slap your ass and get happy. You either see yourself that way or you don’t. But if people who are grateful tend to be happy, be grateful. The more appreciative you are for the life you have, the better it will become.

·         Happy people attract happy people, and misery likes miserable company. When people are down, they want others to share and agree with their assessment of life. They need to be reified in their belief that the sky is falling. When you are joyous and in the midst of those who are not, you will appear to be unrealistic. You will be told that your joy won’t last and that if you truly looked at yourself you will see that you are not happy. No one can define your world but you. Choose to be happy.

·         Happiness is a choice. When I see despair, I choose to pray, meditate and be hopeful, then I take a practical look at what I can do to help. This is a realistic approach to problems in the world. When the problems are closer to home and I am faced with a bill, an illness or a concern for one of my children, I choose to be hopeful. My mother had another saying, “Tomorrow is another day, things might be better then.” How you see the world is formed by you and continuously developed. Choose to fill your life and your mind with ideas, information, people and work that reflects your desire to be happy.

·         Check your beliefs. We develop our beliefs early in life, they should develop as we grow, but too often we accept them as truth; never seeking to determine if they hold up to as truth and reflect what we desire. When I ‘m at a dinner party with people whom I don’t know and I see that most of them are as uncomfortable as I am, I often ask this question; What did you think was true but later found out was not? I’ve been rewarded with wonderful and hilarious answers; a librarian who thought that popcorn was always popcorn, an engineer who believed that cows really could be tipped and a nurse thought that black women could grow long hair overnight. (Don’t even get me started.)

We all have ideas that need to be adjusted, most of them are harmless but when they affect the way we feel, live and interact, we need to do an overhaul.

·         Love what you do. You can’t get the job you want until you love the job you have. Work is honorable and fulfills our basic need to create and the neccesity to have an impact on something outside of ourselves. When we despise the very way we “make a living” we will begin to detest our own life. Find something about your job that you enjoy and be grateful. When you do, don’t stop. When something about my work annoys me, I reflect back to the joy I felt when I first got the contract. Remember back to the day that you found out that you got the job. Reflect on the hope you had for making a difference and the way you felt about the newness of it all (this can work for a relationships too.) Don’t wait until you lose your job to appreciate it; do it now.

You can’t slap your ass and get glad, but you can remind yourself of all you have, those who love you, that work is honorable and that you believe that your life is in your hands.

My mother had another saying; “Just keep on keeping on.”

Be you, Be well, BE happy

Bertice Berry, PhD.

http://www.ayearto.com

In 21 Days...

Day 21 of Your Year to Wellness

Step by step, inch by inch

It takes 21 days to form a habit.  In those 21 days the mind adjusts to the change and accepts it as an aspect of your existence.

When I have done extensive fasts, and trust me, they are extensive, I long for that twenty-first day. After that day, everything else is joy. On this day 21 of The Year to Wellness, I am excited, uplifted and expectant of nothing but infinite good.

In 21 days I have:

·         Connected with old friends and wonderful parts of my past

·         Recognized two readers were perfect for each other and connected them (They are having the time of their lives.)

·         Learned new things about birds and exercise, got a rutabaga recipe, gave away some shoes

·         Gotten up every day to write even when I had to do it at 3 am.

·         Stayed focused on my health goals

·         Learned to love myself even more

·         Have connected with wonderful new friends

·         Renewed my commitment to wellness

·         Inspired others to inspire others

·         Learned to think and type

Make a list of your changes and developments over these past 21 days.

Today is a day of celebration. This wonderful habit is now a part of my life. If you’ve just joined us, take the time to read the previous lessons. Do them one day at a time. Don’t worry about being behind, because we all end up in the same place; a place of Wellness.

Share what you’ve learned with someone else and keep the wellness going.

That’s it for today, go learn, go love, go BE

Bertice Berry, PhD

www.ayearto.com

No Substitutions for the Real Thing

Day 20 of Your Year to Wellness---one more day to a big milestone

This week I heard from a transformer (don’t you love that) named Beth who posted a comment on an earlier lesson regarding trigger foods. Beth reported that while it’s still a work in progress, she had given up most of her comfort foods—yeah. She pointed out that there were times when she felt that she was doing the old substitution trick of “if I can’t have this I’ll just have that.”

This really got me to thinking about the concept of comfort foods. My mind wandered into what nurses do when they are trying to save a life. The nurse will fill the IV with only what the person needs; nutrients, vitamins, minerals, iron, proteins and electrolytes. But if that person is at their end, the nurse will do everything possible to keep them comfortable and that IV drips the stuff that makes the person feel good.

It immediately occurred to me that we are eating like we are dying; like each meal will be our last and therefore we want everything that gives us comfort. OUCH!

Lately, I’ve been seeing all of those diet substitution foods right next to the real stuff. Fat free and sugar free substitutions sit next to what you really want and so instead of getting the chips, you get the new fat free brand with only 120 calories in 22 chips---really, who counts out chips?

What Beth and I and many of you are finding out is that we have been substituting what we really need for what we have learned to like. The “comfort” foods (What’s so comfortable about pants that have suddenly become too small?) are what we like because they are associated with a good memory. They gave you joy when you felt down, so they have become your go-to-food.

I have been a vegetarian for 39 years but when my sister Christine fries chicken I think my mother is in the kitchen and she just got paid.

When I started out on my wellness journey, I found that what I wanted was not what I needed. I wanted to live, so I began to re-place the foods I had learned to like with the foods I needed to have. I had no idea how many vegetables I had missed out on.

Try new foods and add fresh seasonings. If you want potato chips, try making your own. You will be amazed at how few you eat. When I make sweet potato chips for friends, they all comment on how good the real food tastes and how full they are with so few.

I’m also getting rid of other things that give comfort, but no healing like mindless TV, gossip and small talk. My mind craves new ideas and ways for learning and growing. I need the nurturing friendships that I have and each time I hear from an old friend I feel as if I’ve read an amazing new book. When I connect with someone new, I am renewed and reinvigorated.

When it comes to eating and learning and being, I have decided to live. I no longer want to be made comfortable nor do I want to act as if I’ll never eat again. I am eating and meeting and connecting with the foods and people and ideas that will enable me to heal and to live wonderfully, for now and forever.

·         What have you substituted and replaced for the real thing? Tough question I know but do some life searching and answer truly.

·         Try a new food. Go to the market, ask questions and learn how to prepare it. ENJOY!

·         Find a book that you own but have not read and read it.

·         Connect with someone you NEED to talk to and just say “no” to the ones you need to release.

·         Learn something new and share it.

Thank you for sharing your growth and being a part of this journey with me. You have no idea how much I need you, but I hope you can feel how much I adore you.

Be well, be you, be Real.

Bertice Berry, PhD.

http://www.ayearto.com

Learning to Let Life Happen

Day 19 of Your Year to Wellness

On my bathroom wall, right next to the commode hangs a sign which reads:

Lack of tolerance for petty annoyances destroys significant plans.—Confucius

I need this reminder as I’m often annoyed by life’s petty annoyances, like having to stop mid-sentence to use the bathroom or the interruption of one of my children just as I’ve dozed off to sleep, but life really does happen when we allow it to take our routine off course.

I love my routines. Each morning when I wake up, I meditate, and then I do my mental exercise of thinking on the past, the future then returning to be present. I stretch before getting out of bed and then I get up, making my bed while saying a prayer of gratitude for the bed, my ancestors, my family and friends and life. I routinely wash up and then set out to write for a few hours, drink water, eat breakfast and when that’s done I do my cardio, then yoga. Then after showering and getting dressed, I start my work day--all before 10; I could have been in the army.

Each day, I feel renewed and refreshed for a new beginning. Wellness does not happen over- night, it happens daily. When people tell me how hard it must have been to lose weight and keep it off, I tell them it wasn’t hard at all; that it’s just a series of small changes. The difficulty lies in the consistency. Wellness requires that you adopt healthy habits and do them over and over again.

Sometimes though, we have to let life happen. Yesterday, I started my day like every other, but just when I was about to start my yoga routine, I noticed a bird I’d never seen before just walking about in my yard. It had long legs and long pointed beak so at first I thought it was an egret that had been rolling around in the marsh. Egrets are mainly white, but this thing was the color of my old van; something the manufacture called “chameleon,” having many colors but no one in particular. My sister Christine, our resident ornithologist was out on a morning walk, so I couldn’t ask her for one of her instant identifications.

 I marvel at my sister’s love for wild birds and at her ability to identify the different calls and songs from the multitude of species in our marshy back yard. We grew up on a street that was really just an alley with a small dirt square for a backyard, but Christine always told us that Delaware’s Brandywine park was our real yard and that if we closed our eyes and imagined it, we could see it outside our back window. I now live in a place that looks like the picture she painted for me and my siblings and every day, we all marvel at the natural beauty.

I had a time trying to identify this unknown bird. It walked about calmly searching for worms looking behind the pool and all along the magnificent outdoor mural  painted by one of the original Alvin Ailey dancer turned artist, Juliet Seignious which fences in a portion of my yard. (Wonderful art)

Like me, my yard is cultivated in some places and wild in others. The bird strutted about fearlessly looking for what it needed. Othello my American dog (a mixed-breed of many kinds) looked on as if he too wondered what this thing could be but never made a sound. Without leaving my spot, I looked about for one of our many bird books and tried to take pictures but a camera phone only works so well. Not wanting to experience this alone, I called and awakened my daughter Fatima whose classes didn’t begin until late in the day.

By the time she got downstairs, the unknown creature was gone and so I quietly opened the back door hoping to find him hiding out but I didn’t see him anywhere. Then, in an excited whisper Fatima asked, “Is that what you’re talking about?” I looked to where she was pointing and saw an enormous red tailed hawk perched just a few yards away. I gasped with delight, came quietly back inside and watched until Christine came back home and joined in.

By the time the hawk flew off, Chris had retrieved the bird books and binoculars, and had identified the earlier visitor as well; it was a Glossy Ibis and had never been in our yard before. (All about birds)

When I looked at the time, I realized that an hour had gone by and I hadn’t done my yoga. Then I looked down at my legs and saw that I was standing in tree pose and had been shifting from left to right the entire time.

Wellness requires routines. It demands that we do the same thing over and over again until our practiced habits become success but every now and then, life calls us to be right where we are, seeing everything for the first time as if we’ve never been here before.

·         Create your own 5 things.

·         Be well

·         Love you

·         See things differently

·         Invite someone in.

Be you, Be well Enjoy Life

Bertice Berry, PhD

http://www.ayerato.com

Getting Rid of the Clutter

Day 18 of Your Year to Wellness

When I first set out on a journey towards total wellness, I witnessed many unintended consequences, like being less anxious among strangers and less fearful of forgetting something in the middle of a lecture but there was  another major thing that someone else had to point out for me. One day, I got a call from one of the folks who work at my favorite boutique. He called to say that everyone there was wondering where I was or if something had happened to me. In that moment I realized that as I was becoming more well, I shopped much less---stay with me here.

This was not something I set out to do, it happened on its own. When I made this observation, I began to look more closely at the why and here’s what I came up with. When I weighed 290 pounds I still had to travel, speak to thousands of people weekly and walk about in my hometown. I grew up with the idea that if you’re going to be big, you had to make sure that you looked your best at all times and so I set out to do just that. I wore wonderful fabrics that flowed and announced my presence before I even stepped into the room. My accessories were bold and colorful like me and proclaimed that I was not ashamed of my size or my heritage. I’ve worn platforms since I first discovered them in the eighth grade and so for me, they have never gone out of style. Like most big girls I love shoes (it’s the only thing that we know for sure will fit; we don’t have to disrobe in a brightly lit dressing room to try them on and a good pair will force people to look down at our feet.) I have a wonderful collection of shoes that could be described as art. So when I suddenly stopped shopping the shop keepers all wondered why.

I decided to stop in to say hi, to let the folks at the shop know that I was okay and when I did they were stunned. “Oh I see why you haven’t been here.” One woman exclaimed. “You look amazing and you no longer need to shop. I’ve seen this before.” She said. She smiled and told me that buying beautiful things fills a need when you don’t feel so beautiful. I told her that I always felt beautiful and that the shop played a part in it. She agreed but  pointed out something that I hadn’t seen myself; she said that I may have felt beautiful, but now I no longer had the need to prove it. WOW!

In the first month of my wellness journey, I decided to get rid of everything that didn’t fit. This was a tremendously difficult endeavor. I had too many items that still had tags and I told myself that I had spent far too much to just give them away but somehow I did and I immediately felt lighter. The old clothes that had mocked me each time I opened the closet door were no longer there whining and wondering about when it would be their turn to get out of the closet. I had given them all away. The energy of that release was too delicious to describe. By simply giving things away, I felt lighter and freer. The very next week, I had lost enough weight to wear a dress I had bought but had never worn; I went to get it and remembered that I had given it away. For a moment, I felt a loss and then I decided that giving it away was what I needed to do; it freed up my brain enabling my body to follow.

I’ve come to see that I bought all of those beautiful clothes to compensate for a not so beautiful body. Don’t get me wrong, I always felt good about myself but I didn’t feel good enough. I had to let go of my old things to be open and available to my new self.

·         What can you get rid of? You don’t need to get rid of everything that doesn’t fit but we can all get rid of something.

·         What are you collecting? Is it collecting you? We often try to compensate for areas of our life where we don’t feel that we measure up by holding on to things from the past. These things often represent a time when you believed that life was better and that you were too. Your life and time is now. If you have too many things that you are not using now, pass them on to someone who can.

·         Which five items would you keep? Of the things that you are hoarding, oops sorry, I meant collecting, which 5 items would you keep? What do they represent or remind you of?

·         Why can’t you let go? Make a list of the reasons why you are holding on to things and make the case to yourself that the stuff you are holding onto is somehow important to breathing and thinking differently.

·         Who can you help? When I travel outside of the U.S. I see just how much stuff I have. One of the first things I do when I get home is to de-clutter. I think of who I can assist and often see that the folks I need to help have a lot in common with me. I reach out to single mothers and students who are first generation college kids. I reach out to young mothers and their children and when I do, I can see my own past. Each act of kindness towards someone who is on the same road that I’ve been on helps me to see my journey more clearly.

Free yourself of the stuff you’ve been keeping that’s keeping you.

Be you, be Well and Breathe

Bertice Berry, PhD

http://www.ayearto.com

5 Tips for Dining Out without Pigging Out

Day 17 of Your Year to Wellness

Hanging with Paula Deen, for a good cause brings great results

In today’s lesson I’m taking you away from thinking and forgiveness; topics which require time to master, to a topic you can do today. But keep in mind that although it can be done today, it doesn’t mean that you are done with the lesson. Success is a habit and it must be done over and over and over again to be called success.

Like everything else, dining out requires common sense, but as my mother said “Common sense just ain’t that common. When you apply these tools and ideas to dining you will see that they can be applied to living as well.

When I was growing up, we rarely ate food that was not cooked at home. There was school lunch and the occasional sub from the local Italian sub shop. Back then school lunches were made up of the same foods you had to eat at home and like today, were served by beautiful souls who made sure that no child was left hungry. The subs were a real treat. These hand crafted marvels were a complete meal, salad and all, but if I was ever caught eating in public, or drinking from a juice carton my mother would find out from Robin’s mother who was told by Mr. Brown. Eating in public was not proper, not even in the hood. On a recent trip to Korea I was informed of the change that Starbucks brought to the country. I expected to be told that tea drinkers had become coffee drinkers, and was surprised to learn that the big change was people drinking and eating in the streets. Walking and eating outside before Starbucks was not proper in Korea; just like my childhood neighborhood.

We really are a fast food nation where driving up to a window for take-out is no longer a weekly treat, it is a regularity and for some a twice a day habit.

It’s no wonder that we don’t know how to dine out  without pigging out (you have no idea how hard it is to not type “eat out.”) Yes, the portions are large, but most establishments know that if they weren’t you would not come back. Dining out in a family restaurant is an art. Eating in a fine restaurant is a Picasso. When my siblings and I were growing up, my sister Christine would practice dining in a restaurant. We’d only have a grilled cheese sandwich but we still had to know which fork to use first. Her class in etiquette sometimes took place at the local diner but most times it was at home at our own table. What she taught and what I learned later through observation have taken me to many five star establishments around the world.

Learning to eat in polite company is a necessity for being---- polite. Dining out without pigging out is an integral part of your wellness. Here are those wonderful 5 tips:

·         Eat at home first—this was one of my sister and mother’s common sense tips that I have continued for life. Eat a small salad or cup of soup before you go out so that your hunger is not raging. As a vegetarian, I eat at home out of necessity. I’m often faced with very limited options which have become even more limited in my endeavor to be well. When I’ve eaten a little something at home, I am less likely to substitute the lack of choice and my hunger with potatoes and bread.

·         Research your restaurant—almost every restaurant has a web site which lists their menu options and its ingredients.  Know before you go. Know what you will order and how much of it you will eat.

·         Take your own take-home container—and use it as soon as your food comes to the table. Obviously, I not telling you to do this at a banquet or in a five star restaurant—their portions are already tiny. Eating six small meals a day is much healthier than the one or two huge meals that most big folks eat. By dividing the meals, you are helping your metabolism run efficiently throughout the day. Don’t wait for the server to come back with a container at the end of the meal. If you are like me when I started out, that last one more bite will be gone before the server can even leave. I’m also more inclined to reheat and eat something that is not in cardboard. It’s a small trick I play on my mind which says, that I had something to do with the preparation and this container is not something waiting to be thrown out.

·         Share an entre—I know, more common sense, but some folks are afraid of looking “cheap.” When my manager and sister from another mister Jeanine and I dine out, we call ourselves the Five Dollar Sisters; because that’s about what our meal costs. We split a lunch sized entrée and are more than satisfied with the meal. (Though I do think people are making the entre smaller and smaller when they see us coming.)

·         DRINK WATER—Starbucks is not just changing the way other cultures live, they are also changing the way we get our calories. We are now drinking as many or more than we eat. I love my Green Tea Latte with soy milk and no classic sweetener, but it’s a treat not a staple. When you dine out, order water and drink and entire glass after your meal. When you do you will have a little extra money left to add to the servers tip.

Dining out is a treat and in most of the world, still a luxury. While it requires a great deal of common sense, it should be seen as special and should be treated that way as well.

Breaking bread and sharing a meal is a wonderful way to be well with friends. Do it in reverence and respect.

Be well, be you, be Whole

Bertice Berry, PhD

Order the book a Year To wellness and start your journey today

King Day: On Having To Think

Day 16 of Your Year to Wellness

Thinking sets you Free

“Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of man’s greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you go to The Year to Wellness website you will see this quote from Dr. King. As I started out on my path towards wellness, I used this quote and the concept of solid thinking as a guide. On this day commemorating the life of Dr. King here in the United States, we talk about his service, dedication to Civil rights and his stance as a pacifist but rarely do we remark on Dr. King the thinker. King skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades and entered college at age 15. He earned a degree in sociology (you know I love that) and questioned everything, including the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Which as you can imagine caused quite a stir in his Sunday school.) Dr. King was already a pastor, husband and father when at the age of 25 he began work on his doctoral degree in divinity and completed it at age 26. When you look at a copy of the Letter From A Birmingham Jail in which Dr. King responds to the eight Alabama clergymen who felt that injustice should be fought solely in the courts and not in the streets with marches and protests, you will see that Dr. King pulled quotes and references from his heart and head and argued his points with sound logic and what he called “rigorous thinking.” But what does the work of Dr. King have to do with your wellness; everything. Having to think is what keeps too many in bondage. We blame others, fall back on old behavior and as Dr. King points out, we look for “easy answers and half-baked solutions.” The road to wellness requires critical thinking. It demands that we search for ideas from diverse sources and actually try them, even when they collide with our previous world view.

I grew up learning to pray but meditation became a part of my wellness practice. When I suggest meditation to some, I am often rebuked in the name of Jesus for suggesting something that is out of the scope of their vision. When I have suggested working on your own self I have been bombarded with song lyrics which tell me to lean on the Lord.

We all need to trust and believe, but when we look for easy answers and half-baked solutions, we are signing up for a life of bondage. If we are to be free, we must think and then think some more. The letter from a Birmingham jail is written by a man who was in the custody of the jailer, but in his thinking he is freer than President Johnson.

Wellness requires thought and then thinking some more. There will be no pill or potion for making you whole, you must think.

·         Make a list of all of the things you’d like to improve in yourself. Sit and meditate on what it would feel like and look like. Now think about what you can do today to achieve this.

·         This is a day of service, after you serve your community, think about the service you need to do for yourself.

·         Read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail and then write a letter appealing to you. (Letter)

·         Create a thinking exercise to start your day. How can you learn something new each morning?

·         Share something you’ve learned with someone you love. A good idea is only great when it is shared with someone else.

Freedom starts with our thinking. Set yourself free.

Be You, Be Free, Be a Thinker

Bertice Berry, PhD

Order the book A Year To wellness and start your journey today