My current favourite quote. I am finding myself having to revert to this quote quite a fair bit this week, and its only Tuesday. Yes, my little sparkles of happiness are rapidly eroding. My liberal carefree daily cycle to work has been replaced with being stuck in traffic in a tin can. My precious lab space - the zone in which I feel happiest has been eroded to half of what I had before, and frankly I have been struggling to find the happiness. This moment, that I have been building slowly towards for the last 18 months is finally here - the site has finally closed (or is closing) in Cambridge, and we are being located 40 miles away. Time to implement happiness project phase II.
Its hard to stay positive and focussed when you're decontaminating an entire lab space, and watching thousands of pounds of chemicals and reagents being tipped into biohazard bags. Its also hard to find the happiness when your closest friends at work - the sisterhood - have decided that this is the end for them, really leaving you alone to face the harsh truth. So yes, dig deep.
phase II, what is it then? Self analysis once again, but the big realisation, making other people happy actually makes me happy. It works for me. So of course my first guinea pig is the child. We played hide and seek, I let her "scare" me so she gets her kicks and we had a cuddle in bed until she fell asleep. That really brightened my day. Buying a coffee for colleauges at work, telling someone you care - seeing that smile that someone has did its magic.
There are actual studies to support this. In science there was an article about how spending on others makes you happier than spending on yourself. For someone like me, I relate to that. Whether its spending time or money, pampering others gives me a great deal of satisfaction - and especially with children, when you get very little back in return for it (in my case a cuddle is a rare commodity), I still don't mind. Action plan for tomorrow - make someone happy, you might find it might just make you happy too.
'Action plan for tomorrow - make someone happy, you might find it might just make you happy too..'
ReplyDeleteThe best part of giving is knowing you have helped someone. The second best thing is not to expect something back, but being a parent you know that already :)
Drude my friend, great to have you back.There is a fine line here however.. some people are takers and so you end up giving and after a while to start to feel used. You have to know what your personal limit is for that :-)
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