When you place too many conditions on your enjoyment of life, there is no enjoyment. You can end up working so much to get the conditions just right, that there's no time left to really enjoy yourself.
Let go of the need to have everything just so. Simply and fully enjoy being where you are.
In every moment there is beauty. Rather than striving to make that beauty into what you think it should be, just enjoy it as it is.
Happiness is not something you must prove. Find enjoyment in simply letting it flow.
Instead of working to do happy, be happy. See that the possibilities for joy are far greater than anything you could ever contrive.
There is plenty of joy to be lived in this moment. Let the uniqueness of the moment help you discover new ways of tasting life's real pleasures.
This is a hard concept to actually do - take joy in the simple pleasures. I try to remember to remind myself to look around and see things that I normally wouldn't see. We all get busy in life and forget to stop, look, and listen.
I was having a hard time getting up the enthusiasm and energy to attend my husband's 40th high school reunion last night. I don't really believe in reunions and have only attended mine once and left within 30 minutes - I plain didn't know anyone but 3 people there. The 3 of us with our spouses left and went out ourselves and totally enjoyed the evening. High school was a difficult time for me and I worked a lot, was in band, and didn't associate with a lot of my own classmates. So to me reunions were pointless. I even did a post about them with statistics to prove my point.
The last reunion I attended with my husband was horrific and only confirmed my opinion. Most of the people knew each other - they married within their own community and most still saw each other - so I was the odd person out. Everyone was so busy reminiscing that there wasn't room to get to know anyone else there.
Reluctantly I went last night. This year I found people who introduced themselves to me and wanted to talk to me, and these were even classmates. I learned to stop, look, and listen. I found real caring and real people who cared for each other.
So last night on our way home, I was left thinking about the differences in the last reunion with these same people I had termed snobs and this reunion. I wondered at first if the reason was that when people aged, were they more open to talk to someone else? I realized that no, it was because I took the time to stop, look, and listen to them. The more I did, the more they opened up to me. The more they opened up to me, the more I enjoyed myself. I ended up with many phone numbers and email addresses and promising people that I would contact them the next time I was going to be out helping my inlaws - that we would get together with our parents and inlaws and have lunch together. When I told my MIL today, she was ecstatic because she knows many of these people when the kids were growing up.
The simple things somehow exploded into many things that will find pleasure in not only my life, my husband's life, but other's lives as well. All because I took the time to stop, look, and listen.
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