Five Minutes of Happy

Inspiration for this post occurred to me yesterday while in the shower. Does this happen to you? Something about water tends to do that for me. Inspiration/information tends to flow better when I'm near water or, in this case, soaked in it.

Have you ever heard the phrase, energy flows where thoughts go? It's the law of attraction: what you focus on breeds more of the same. In my life, I find evidence of this truth nearly every day. Have you ever noticed how your day will just fall into place with whatever mood you select from the beginning? For instance, if you wake up cranky or spitting mad and hang onto it, things will transpire throughout that day to support you in that mode. Parking tickets, running late, dinged ankles, crazy drivers, dropped calls, drama, drama and more drama - all showing up to serve you in your crankiness. How blessed are you? Hey, you asked for it, right?

Conversely, if you start the day in a bright and cheery mood, everything just seems to fall into place to support you in that mode. The morning coffee is perfect, the kids are angels, bluebirds arrive to help you dress and everything just goes smooth as silk all day long. Okay, I may have stretched it a bit with the bluebird part, but you get the picture. Even kinks in your day don't seem to bother you as much if you're in a good frame of mind. And when things really go awry, a positive approach may be the only thing that saves you.

For the past 20 years or so, I've faced some pretty intense health issues. In the face of it all, I've transformed from a healthy (or so I thought,) vital and active woman leading a busy life to someone barely managing a day-to-day existence. Sounds bleak, doesn't it? It does to me as well. This is not my preferred way of being, nor is it even remotely acceptable to me. Proactive by nature, my mind is often sorting through information in an effort to find solutions to what ails me. The overwhelming immensity of it all can inspire exhaustion and more than a little despair at times.

That's where I found myself yesterday in the shower; absorbed in despair. Hubster called a few minutes earlier to remind me of a bill that had to be paid immediately, and I was still in my jammies muddling through what I've taken to calling my Oil Can Days. These are days in which I shuffle around feeling like the tin man from Wizard of Oz after a long, hard rainfall. These are not my best days. Or are they? My inner knowing is that there are blessings in every experience, even if such blessings aren't readily apparent.

So there I am, in the shower, navigating my way toward getting out the door to pay this bill, when all I wanted to do was stay home, snuggling on the couch in my jammies feeling miserable. Yeah...not my best look. And not my best state of being, either. That's when inspiration struck. I had just visited my naturopath a few days prior after receiving a rather challenging diagnosis. I know that Troy will be straight with me, and I completely appreciate him for it. He gave me a lot to ponder, and I was doing just that during my shower. He reminded me that none of us know how long we're going to live, and it's not the length of our lives that really matters. It's the quality in which we live them that truly counts. As such, standing there in the shower groaning about having to actually DO something with my day is not my idea of a quality existence.

Here's where the lightbulb turned on and a totally different thought wandered into the muck: What would happen if I spent the remainder of my shower thinking about something that felt happy? Wait...what? Two seconds before, I was about as far away from happy as I was to the Moon, but suddenly, just thinking about thinking happy thoughts made me feel a little lighter. I thought about a video of my granddaughter that my daughter-in-law had sent me that day, and I smiled before I could stop myself. Suddenly, the water spraying on me started to feel good. I noticed that the Sun was shining though the window. I hadn't noticed that it was a sunny day prior to that moment. Just like that, the room had color - I felt like Dorothy as she opened the door to her sepia-toned little house, and Oz was there in all its colorful splendor.

I know what you're thinking. No, bluebirds did not show up to towel me off. But they could have...in my mind. My point is, the day got better. Just like that. Yes, I'm still experiencing pain. Yes, I'm still facing some scary prospects with my health, but these things are just that much more manageable when I consciously shift my thoughts to something that makes me happy. Happy thoughts inspire gratitude, and gratitude is a healing force in and of itself.

So, no matter how busy, cranky, pain-ridden, frightened or impatient you may be feeling on any particular day, what would your day look like if you spent just five minutes of it thinking about something that makes you feel happy? How would it shift things for you? I mean, everyone has five minutes in a day, don't they? If you break it down mathematically, there are 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. That amounts to a whopping 1440 minutes each day. If you want to look at it more realistically, the average person is awake about 12 hours per day, so this gives us 720 waking moments per day to work with. Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it? After all, what's five minutes when you have 715 more with which to play?

Even the busiest person could find five minutes to devote to happy:

• Hit the snooze in the morning and use it there - breakfast of champions
• Last thing you think of at night before drifting off
• Brushing your teeth
• In the shower :-)
• Waiting on line at Starbucks

You get the picture. Think of it as an emotional investment in your day. Small efforts can create huge changes, five minutes at a time.

Fair warning, though: Five minutes of happy might be a gateway to more. Just saying...