Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Page A Day Inspiration

More thought provoking questions from my Happiness Project Page-A-Day Calendar.



- What's the most helpful advice you've ever received?
Because I can never answer a question succinctly, I have to answer this in 3 parts.

"Just take it one day at a time." These wise words were actually uttered to me by my high school boyfriend, who was wiser than his years at 16 years old, as I sat bawling my eyes out one day about being scared to go off to college. (I am one of those rare freaks who absolutely loved high school...). He said that to me then, and I've said it to myself a hundred, million times whenever I'm going through something that I'm scared or frustrated about. And it makes me giggle that a high school boy was the source of such sage wisdom.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."
I can't remember where I heard that advice but again it was sometime around the end of high school or early college, and it's remained my favorite quote ever since. I try to remind myself of that when someone does something I don't understand that seems hurtful or ignorant, and in my job as a coach I often get the rare opportunity to peel back the layers of people to learn about the hard battles they are fighting. Reminding myself of this piece of advice gives me pause when I find myself about to judge someone - including myself. (This quote is generally attributed to Plato, although I'm not 100% certain of that. Anne G could probably verify that!)
Will this matter in one year?
This was a very recent piece of advice I came across and I've started trying to use it as a gauge for how much energy and attention I should let my monkey mind devote to any sort of issue that arises. Sometimes it's works, sometimes even when I know the answer is "of course not" I still want to wallow in stressing out for the sake of my own pity party. (Please bring cupcakes.)

Those are my top 3 pieces of advice, although I also had to refrain from quoting line by line the entire book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie which is the best book of advice I've ever read.

-What's your happiest time of day?
I love going to bed. I love the act of getting in bed, piling the covers around me, grabbing something to read, situating Buddy nearby for snuggles, chatting with Matt if he's not working.... and then falling asleep. I hate to admit it, but my favorite time of day is bedtime.

-What were the last 3 books you read?
- Bossypants by Tina Fey
- Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
- My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler (my book club's pick)




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

1 comment:

A Glenn said...

You've given me some research to do and possibly a new blog post to write... no one seems to know where that quote ("Be kind...") comes from! Lots of sources online claim Plato or Philo (both ancient Greek philosophers), but there's no citation as to where it can be find. Usually, that means it's made up. So I'll let you know once I've gotten to the bottom of the quote!

On another note, nice post :) That calendar is giving you lots to think about, I like it.