the best of you childhood with the best of your adulthood?

Answer— You get the life you can live TODAY with no one telling you when to go to bed or to eat all the food on your plate.

Are you with me?  Now ask yourself these fun questions:

What did you enjoy most about being a kid?

What activities and games did you find the most fun?

(Luckily, toy stores don’t ID and refuse to sell Legos to anyone over 18.)

If you were anything like me as a kid, besides having a great time playing, you also dreamed of being big, being grown-up, being able to drive a car, being able to stay up late.

As kids, we dreamed of all the freedom we have today.

Now that we have all of this freedom, let’s remember what we loved about being kids and recombine it into our lives.

I’ve heard of research studies that have concluded that children laugh much more than adults.  My fellow adults, there’s nothing saying that we can’t catch-up and match our wonderful kids laugh for laugh.

We had a certain wisdom, and joy and wonder when we were kids, which means we can seek to recall it and employ it in our grown-up years.

Now we would do well to remember to maintain the best of our adulthood too, the freedom, the ability to be responsible, all of our grown-up wisdom and knowledge.

We could call this playful combination of the best of our childhood and the best of our adulthood, our CHOICEHOOD because we are free to choose to live it.

May we all live our CHOICEHOOD to the fullest and savor every minute of it.  Yay!

Game of the Day

How can you combine the best of your childhood with the best of your adulthood to have a truly fantastic CHOICEHOOD?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

These Happy Questions can focus our thoughts and conversations on Happy Topics.  Have fun asking them!

10. What are five things you love about your life?

9. When have you felt happiest during the past week?

8. What makes you laugh?

7. What makes you smile?

6. What hobbies do you love?

5. What do you love about your friends and family?

4. What do you love about the space in which you live?

3. What do you love about the city, town, or countryside in which you live?

2. What do you love about your dreams?

1. What excites you as you look forward to the next year?

By asking Happy Questions, may you receive many Happy Answers.

Game of the Day

How many of these questions can you ask yourself and others today?

Create your own Happy Questions.

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

A few weekends ago, I saw a happy movie that was actually called The Happy Movie directed by Roko Belic.  I highly recommend it.  And movie recommendation from me is an unusual thing because I see very few movies.  (I’m not sure if this makes the recommendation more or less valuable.)

Since seeing the movie I have been thinking a good deal about happiness and I have questions.

If happiness is a central goal of humanity, how does it happen that there is so much unhappiness in the world?

If someone told you that they would give you twenty million dollars and all you had to do was to be constantly happy for six months, could you do it?

I think I might have a tough time with this challenge.   This is not because I don’t believe in happiness and want to be happy.  It’s just that I’m still solving the mystery of consistently creating my own happiness.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy the vast majority of time, but definitely not constantly.

You might well ask, Is it even a practical or worthy goal to be constantly happy?

Great!  You’re already talking like a Happiness Detective.

One thing I think is everyone’s path of clues to daily happiness will be somewhat different.  We have different tastes and wants.  So I encourage you to become your own Happiness Detective.  (Don’t worry! You won’t need to quit your day job).

As Happiness Detectives, even though we each need to do our own investigating and come to our own conclusions, we can still compare notes.

Here is an aspect of happiness I’m presently investigating:

Do things and people and places make us happy, or do we choose to create happiness with the things and people and places that come into our lives?

As I write this, I’m eating some of my favorite food, a veggie burrito and chips at Chipotle, enjoying the upbeat atmosphere and feeling really happy.

Would I feel this happy if I was drinking molasses straight from the bottle and sitting in a garbage dump?

I don’t think so.  Not by a long shot.

Now happiness would not be impossible with the molasses and the dump.  It might actually be fascinating to see what people throw away and if there were any treasures.

And if one had a camping stove and other ingredients one could maybe make molasses cookies.  (Ok, I’m stretching it. But please work with me, the point is that happiness can potentially be created in any circumstance.)

My shrewd deduction from my happiness investigation– it is best when possible to choose circumstances that I have an easy time feeling happy about.

Have fun being a Happiness Detective and investigating what truly makes you happy!

 Game of the Day

As your own best Happiness Detective, what are the questions that you are going to investigate regarding your happiness?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Noise is so normal.  At many times in my life, I thought I had to be noisy and always the life of the party to be cool.  In my view, it was boring and not worldly to be quiet.  I decided to make myself into a person who craved noise so I would fit in.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I have sought out more quiet time and that it’s wonderful.   It’s so relaxing and being relaxed just feels comfortable.  When I give myself abundant quiet time, I find I’m more able to focus, and have more freedom to create an uplifting perspective.

Focus is the act of being able to weed out much information so that you can pay attention to the information that is of importance to you.  I find focus much easier if I actively choose what information I take in.  To me, this means often deciding to drive without the radio on, choosing to limit my Internet surfing, and also not owning a TV.  (I truly love not having a TV in my living space.)

I also find that creating more quiet around me helps me maintain an uplifting perspective on the world.  Think of the perspective you get on the world from taking a walk around your neighborhood on a beautiful day compared to watching a violent movie.  Or even the nightly news.

It might be odd to ask the restaurant you are dining in to shut off the loud music they are playing, but when you are in your car or at home, the noisemakers have switches you can shut off, if you so choose.  You can turn on the quiet.

(Does turning on the quiet make a person cool?  I still don’t really know.  But I do definitely know that at times, it feels very good.)

Game of the Day

When you notice you car radio or the electronics at home seem to be wearing you down or annoying you, turn on the quiet.

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Today, we can expand our lives as big as our dreams.  One of the first ways we do this is to become content with our present lives.  You might say, “But Jason, I want my dreams, not what I’m doing presently, so why are you suggesting that I become content with the present?”  (I can relate, on some days this idea seems like a very counterintuitive suggestion to me, too.)

But let me illustrate how being content with the present is indeed very important to realizing our dreams.  Say we are camping in the middle of nowhere and run out of food before our fifteen-mile hike back to the tiny town where our car is parked.  There is only one restaurant in town, which is called “Bob’s Pretty Tasty Greasy Food and Stuff”. There are only a few things on Bob’s menu, none of which we would ordinarily choose.

Still, we’re almost definitely going to order one of the menu items and not hold out for, say, sushi or grape leaves.  After the incredibly long hike, we compromise without hesitation because we are STARVING.  We will eat practically anything, even if it is Bob’s Wednesday night special, which happens to be “Random Fried Stuff”.

In the same way, if we are STARVING for fulfillment, we will often compromise for much less than our dreams.  So, it’s important to cultivate the awareness of being sated with our present lives because then we’re in a place to really choose to go after our dreams, and not base our decisions on feeling STARVED for instant change.

When we are sated, if our dream isn’t on one menu, we’re willing to travel until we find it or, if need be, learn how to create our dream from scratch.

In our dreams, we often see a change in our circumstances and life situation.  We also see happiness.  It may take time to alter our circumstances and life situation to fit our dreams, but we can live the happiness part of our dreams, right now, today.

When we live this happiness, we begin today to expand our lives as big as our dreams.

Game of the Day

What can you do to become sated with your present circumstances?

How can you live the happiness of your dreams today?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

I think we ought to celebrate the Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks as a Valentine’s Day Hero and I’ll tell you why.  Wikipedia describes the act of heroism that Rosa Parks is commonly remembered for by stating, “On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.” *

We know who Rosa Parks is because she was willing to claim her seat and her importance.  She silently said a Heroic Yes to her own worth.  By claiming her importance, she offered a new level of freedom to the world.  Rosa Parks once said, “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would be also free.” **

Rosa Park sets a vivid example of how profoundly important self-love is.

By truly loving all that you are, you free yourself from the shackles of self-doubt and self-hate.

This Valentine’s Day claim your importance and your seat in the world.  Be your own Valentine first.

Then you can truly give your Valentines to others because your Valentines are full of your love.

When you say, “I love you,” that “I” is priceless.   If you value the “I” that is you as priceless, the “I” that you give when declaring, “I love you” is truly worth more than mountains of diamonds and gold.

Rosa Parks’ self-love and recognition of her priceless value still blesses the world today.

Loving ourselves is truly one of the most profound gifts that we can offer to the people we love and to the world this Valentine’s Day.

 Game of the Day 

How are you going to claim your importance and your seat in the world today?

How will you bask in your love for yourself?

How will you offer this love to others?

Sometimes, I love to just be upset about the weather.  I used to live in South Dakota and the November through March weather would often just make me upset.  Or rather, I would CHOOSE to get upset at this wintry weather.

Any type of weather is a just a circumstance, a circumstance that is largely beyond our control unless we choose to travel away from it.

However, we always can choose how we interpret any given weather circumstance.

Especially challenging are weather circumstances we have looked at in a fixed way so long that the meaning we add to the circumstance seems like a natural part of the circumstance.  For example, I can say that the circumstance “snow” is “awful” as if it is a fact.  The exciting news is that I have the power to separate this circumstance “snow” from my personal interpretation “awful,” which I chose to add to the circumstance “snow.”

A dictionary is a great resource for revealing to us when we add personal interpretations to words.  My dictionary says snow is “precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from the water vapor of the air at temperatures less than 32 degrees F.” My dictionary says nothing about snow being “awful” (which kind of makes me want to go out and buy a better dictionary.)

But seriously, my definition of snow being “awful” is exactly that, my definition.  While I can’t change the dictionary definition of what snow is, I do have the option of modifying how I view snow.  For instance, I could change my personal definition of snow to “snow is joyful”.

Now if I really wanted to change how I experienced snow I would need to keep reminding myself that I have chosen to define snow as joyful.  In addition, I would want to find ways of viewing snow and activities that gave substance to my new personal definition of snow.  For example, I could change my view of snow by observing how soft and peaceful snow seems as it falls.  And I could find an activity that I love doing in the snow like snowshoeing and do it on a routine basis whenever there is enough snow on the ground.  In this way, I could with practice change my personal definition of snow.

Weather is just weather.  “Bad” is a word we choose to add to it as we create our personal definition of a weather circumstance.  It takes practice to alter how we experience weather circumstances that we have long chosen to define as “bad.”  But with practice, we can become content with a wider and wider range of weather circumstances.  From this practice with the weather, we can learn how to alter our personal definitions of a wider and wider range of life circumstances so that we experience greater amounts of peace and joy.

Game of the Day

1. Think of a weather condition that you dislike.

2. Look up the definition of this weather condition in your dictionary.

3. Now think of the personal definition that you add to this weather condition?

4. What new personal definition could you create for this weather condition?

5. What ways of physically viewing this weather condition could reinforce your new personal definition?

6. What activities could you do during this weather condition to reinforce your new personal definition?

Can you imagine traveling to your favorite vacation destination and choosing to stay in the hotel room the whole time with the curtains shut?  There would be reasons to choose this option, of course, spending one’s whole vacation in the hotel room would most likely be more predictable, safer, and less expensive, than going out to explore.  But still we wouldn’t dream of choosing this option.

For when we’re on vacation, we’re primed to explore and try new things.  We are natural explorers.  We savor and delight in what we find.

However once we’re home, it is, at times, much easier for us to fall into routines where we basically live inside our metaphorical hotel room of the predictable, the safer, and the less expensive.

Home Sweet Home can become Home Sweet Dull.

Since we’re in our daily routines most of the time and go on vacations relatively rarely, our home territory is the natural ground for us to develop our exploration muscles.

It is natural to think, “Well I’ve done everything there is to do around where I live;” or “Where I live is just boring.”

I hear you.  I have felt like that at times.  But really consider the following two questions and see if they don’t excite your urge for Home Sweet Exploration.

• How much of the area within an hour drive of your home haven’t you explored yet?

• How many activities, shops, and restaurants within an hour’s drive of your home haven’t you tried yet?

Game of the Day

What is your next step in exploring your home territory as if it were your favorite vacation destination?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Earlier this week, I was late to an event because I had chosen to sleep in.  As I was driving, I noticed that I was telling myself things like, “I’m late,” I’m out of time,”  “That light shouldn’t be red,” “The person ahead of me should go faster.”  It started to seem like I alone was trying to be on-time against all the lights and all the other cars on the road that were in my way and slowing me down.

Then I suddenly had the thought, “Hey! You know Jason all of these other people on the road want to get to where they are going and want to be on-time too.

Then I start doing more thinking and came to the conclusion that we are all are in this together.   If we are courteous to each other and relax; we all will have an easier and more pleasurable time reaching our destinations in a timely matter.  And even those frustrating traffic lights are just there as confident conductors to aid us all in this process.

Then I realized that even time wasn’t the enemy.  I could appreciate the ten minutes I still had to possibly get to my event on-time.  I didn’t have to resort to clock abuse by trying to beat the clock.  (Can you imagine how many times a day people all around the world try to beat the clock?  And that poor clock, all it’s doing is minding its own business ticking.)

How often do we feel all alone as we try to achieve our goals, be it to arrive at our destination in a timely fashion or some other goal?

Everyone has goals they are trying to reach, whether their goal be to run a marathon, make their next mortgage payment or simply eat their next meal.  (And the weary clock might simply have the goal of there being one day when nobody tries to beat it.)

We all are traversing the pathways of life together.  As we go towards our goals, it seems reassuring and peaceful to remember, that far from being small, isolated individuals alone against the world, we are all engaged in life together with everyone else in the world.

May each of us (and everyone else in the world) reach our goals in plenty of time.

(And may we no longer threaten harm upon the clock, but hug and comfort it because every minute we see it tick off is another abundant minute that we get to be alive.)

Game of the Day

The next time you are running late as you drive to your destination, how can you feel more connected to everyone else on the road?

What will you do to appreciate the time you have to get to your destination instead of trying to beat the clock?

 Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Recently, I was deeply inspired by a good friend who had been painfully sick for the past two weeks.  As she talked, I could feel that she was deeply appreciative to be feeling better.  She actually seemed to be basking in her renewed feeling of well-being.

And as for the last few weeks of her life, was she bitter that she had had to endure tremendous pain? Was she angry that she had to take two weeks off work and participating in the activities she loved?  Amazingly not!  Her attitude was quite the opposite.  She was grateful that she had had the chance to catch up on lots of reading and journaling and highly appreciative that so many people had supported her when she was ill. What a refreshing perspective!

When we are physically ill, we almost always have some mental perspective on it.  My perspective whether I have a stuffy nose, a skinned up knee or something more major is almost always, “I don’t want to be sick” and “I don’t want to waste time being sick.”

I doubt I’m at all unique in either of these perspectives.  In fact, I bet those two statements are actually something most of the world would agree upon.

Inspired by my friend’s example, it occurs to me that adding more words to those “I don’t want” statements can powerfully change our perspective on being sick.  The phrase we could add to these “I don’t want” statements might be, “so what I do want is.”  And then we have the opportunity to fill in the blank.   An example of this addition is, “I don’t want to be sick, so what I do want is to be healthy.

When you make the “so what I do want” addition to your thoughts and conversations when you are sick, you immediately begin to turn your thoughts and emotions from being sick towards being well.  This switch motivates you to focus on your method of recovery, on being in good humor (and even having fun) and on being appreciative of the people around you as you recover.

While saying the words, “so what I do want is” and filling in the blank when you are sick doesn’t instantly take away your illness or pain, or substitute for any other medical or healing modality, it does afford you the capacity to see beyond the present circumstance of your illness.  With this capacity, you begin to move your thoughts towards the renewed health that you want and to even enjoy the process.

Game of the Day

Put this blog post in your mental medicine cabinet and take it out whenever you need it.

]]> http://heroicyesproductions.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/when-you-feel-sick-focus-on-what-you-do-want/feed/ 0 heroicyesproductions images-42