Category: <span>Happiness</span>

Lessons from Prufrock

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This is from one of my favourite poets, T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It’s also one of my favourite-ever poems and if you Google it you can read the whole text.

The irony of Prufrock is that he is all let us go! let us go! but really he is his own patient ‘etherised upon a table’. We’re witnessing a consciousness that is destined to be at an eternal crossroads. He’s paralysed by indecisiveness and anxiety – so scared of making mistakes, trapped in eternal hesitation.

In short, he’s going nowhere because his mind is always anxiously dithering about probabilities and possibilities and he never arrives at any decision, never mind any action.

He probably dies in the end, by the way, surrounded by his genteel high society friends, having singularly failed to find any purpose in his life and any answers to his questions.

Well, that ended on a bit of a dour note. I bet you get the moral of the story, though.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

Choose happy

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Ok?

(Possibly my record for the shortest blog post ever. Pithiness is a virtue.)

The Happiness Equation

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This is from @neilpasricha and The Happiness Equation which is all about learning to be happy. I’ve posted before about happiness being a choice and available to you right here, right now, regardless of what circumstances life is throwing at you. So how do you train yourself to choose happiness?

Pasricha writes about the Big Seven ways to gain happiness: positivity, gratitude, meditation, movement, flow, kindness, and regularly unplugging from the speed of the world. As Pasricha says, happy people don’t have the best of everything – they make the best of everything. So, be happy first.

What are your thoughts on this? What’s your personal recipe for happiness?

Life should be an adventure

I went wandering last week while I was in Singapore and found myself in the National Gallery.

I’m reading a book called “A Little Nostalgia for Freedom” and in it Bonham writes: “…a nostalgia for lives not lived, adventures not taken and possibilities surrendered…”. How many of us surrender to habit and the daily grind, only to look back and say “I wish I had”? All the things you didn’t do, all the things you wish you’d said.

Life is short, and there is no predicting when we’re going to go. Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It’s not the time that matters, it’s the person.

So what kind of person are you going to be? The one who embraces new experiences and manages to see magic and wonder in the little things? The one who realises that life is a wonderful adventure?

You don’t need to have big pockets or be a world traveller to be that person. You see, what this is all about is the pattern of living the everyday life and discovering that it is all an adventure.

Life has so much to offer you. Come grab it with both hands.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

Choose happiness

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When are you going to be happy? When you get there? Or when you realise that happiness is already here with you for the taking – and all you need to do is choose it? Yes, I’m telling you that you can choose to be happy. If you don’t know how, come work with me and find out.

Photo: Happiness Ahead, Silvia Otte

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

I choose everything

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What do you think of when you hear the word ‘acceptance’? If we can’t undo or change something, we need to learn how to accept it, rather than living in the ‘what-if’ and the ‘if-only’; all this serves to do is freeze and frustrate us and stop us from taking positive and meaningful action. Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation, and it doesn’t signify giving up. It means understanding that this life has a rhythm, a heartbeat; space for both the beautiful and ugly, both pain and joy. I like the way St. Therese of Lisieux puts it: “I choose everything.”

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I choose this life. I choose everything.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

The power of positivity

IMG_7257The power of visualisation and deciding to be positive. I received lovely feedback from some clients a couple of weeks ago who said that they found me very energising to be around! I do find that positive energy is infectious – not just for those around you but for yourself. It is possible to decide to be happy. There are lots of things we can’t control, but we are certainly in control of how we choose to react and relate to the world. Decide to be positive, and you start to attract positivity.

Photo: Photo: From “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”, Scott Adams

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

#gratitudewall

What are you grateful for today?

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

Make your own happiness

Happy International Happiness Day everyone. There’s one photo here for the hopeful and optimistic, and one for the cynics among you, courtesy of Modern Toss (that’s most of the people I know, then).

The serious message: don’t expect things or others to give you happiness. You’ve got to create your own. You, and only you, are responsible for your happiness.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

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