Deciding to be happy.

Hello everyone. I have been tweeting with a blogger friend lately via twitter and some of her comments about deciding to be happy reminded me of an email someone sent me along time ago. I tend to save them, to look back on, when I need a boost of motivation or reason to feel grateful. I had forgotten about this one, but now I remembered it and decided to share it. Maybe you have heard it before, but the message is worth repeating. You can decide how you want to be. My son commented to me today that I always seem dissatisfied. It hurt, but I thought, I probably do project this. I am always looking to improve, to do better. I have all the reasons in the world to be grateful. Why do I look beyond them sometimes and not project happiness, but dissatisfaction....or in other words...unhappiness??

I am reading a book right now, called The Happiness Project, but Gretchen Rubin. She was a wife and mother, leading a fullfilled life, but she didn't feel particularly happy. She decided to embark on a year long project to make herself feel happier. This included organizing her life, tackling to do projects, working on improving her marriage relationship and on and on. A new project each month. I'm not through the book yet, but I realized that so much of our happiness IS within our control and our mindset. She proved that you can make your world happier and it is within our control.

So to get back to that story...It really illustrates the power of the mind to control our happiness. It is a choice. It is within all of our reach. We can choose and decide to be happy! Just like this sweet man, who decided in advance, he would be happy, and make the most of his new situation.

"The story goes that a 92 year old man, legally blind was moving into a nursing home. His wife had passed away and he had no other choice but to move, since they had taken care of each other and now he was all alone.

He arrives at the nursing home facility where he will live. As health care institutions go, he had to wait for hours before his room was ready, and finally an attendant came to show him his new room. As he led the way he began to talk describing the room, trying to make it seem as though it were something exciting on the other side of the door.

Now if I'm the elderly man that just lost his dear wife of many years, and I have no close family to rely on, I am not particularly worried about whether the room is great or not. In my mind I am thinking this is the last place I will live out the last years of my life, so who cares about the room. Who will come and visit and spend time with me in this room, is what I would be thinking.

But in all the wisdom that comes with growing older, this dear sweet man's response to the description of the room was this;
I love it, he stated with the enthusiasm of am eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy."
The attendant replied, how do you know, you've never seen the room.
The elderly man said "that doesn't have anything to do with it." He went on to say, "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like the room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged,,,it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be THANKFUL for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away, just for this time in my life."

" Then he said, "Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in, so my advice to you would be deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories!"

I know this post doesn' have to do with the BFC lifestyle....or does it? When we choose to be happy, I think we can better navigate our world, our lifestyle and our eating choices.

Speaking of eating choices, on Kay's blog she was talking about a new favorite high fiber white carb tortilla. it's not really BFC approved since we aren't supposed to have the white stuff. That being said, she enjoys it and it helps her to stick to the plan and it's better than a regular old white, low fiber tortilla. Well I just downloaded the new Italian menu and recipes that Jorge is putting out. He asks you to "like" him on facebook and then you will get access to it. Well nothing happens when you do that, and many are complaining they can't get the menu. I went back to the original email, and picked the choice instead that says "click here if you do not have facebook". Then he sends an email confirmation and you get the download. Looks like a regular BFC menu, "italianized"' a bit.  There are a few recipes, and he is talking about his new class that will be coming up in September. However on the recipes, one is for rigationi.....and, he doesn't specify whole grain one bit. What's up with that? Is Jorge giving in the white stuff while in Italy?
Bye for now!

Thought for the day:
Don't worry.....be happy!!!