You Are A Catalyst

Imagine this – you are a person who affects hundreds of people every day. Your thoughts and ideas are highly sought after. You are looked up to by people around you. You are a catalyst for other people – you may be a muse for someone, a launch pad, a sounding board, the wing beneath someone’s wings. Sound good? Sound true?

It should, because it is – every single day YOU have the capacity to affect the lives of many others – people you work with, live with, travel alongside, interact with in shops and bars, phone, e-mail, text, friends, family, acquaintances, strangers. Don’t believe me? Have you ever had this experience – you are having a rough day, you are fed up, scared, tired, worried – and a complete stranger does you a kindness. And suddenly the world doesn’t seem so bad after all.

That kindness could be letting you out in traffic, beaming at you for no apparent reason, being polite (surprisingly effective), cracking a joke, doing something very random (kids waving at me from the back seat of a car always entertains me on the motorway). You may never see this person again, but they may have had a profound impact on your life, or just brightened your day.

You have the potential to have that profound impact on someone today. And every day. We do not live in an isolated society (even though it feels like it sometimes!) – we are all affected by those around us. And my question is, are you using your impact in the way you want to? Or are you careless with your words and actions, completely oblivious to how you are impacting someone else’s day?

Not just with strangers, with everyone – your family, friends and colleagues – do you have a positive impact on them? Do you encourage them to shine? What’s in it for you? It feels great to do something good for someone else – to encourage, to nurture, to be kind and loving. There is no feeling quite like knowing that you have positively affected someone else’s life AND you attract the same back.

- Something to Play With -

This week, make an effort to encourage others – be interested in your loved ones dreams, be optimistic about new ideas, and best of all, live your life to the full and inspire those around you. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave a comment below.

- Beach Card of the week -

Well, it’s just the perfect card to go with this article!! “Help someone else – give them something – a smile, a gift, a blessing, your love.” Ain’t that spooky?

If you like the ‘Beach Card’, come and join me on Facebook where I share a daily Beach Card.

Love

Donna.x

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Champagne Moments

Over the last few days, I have been watching/listening to the cricket test match between England and India (and getting very excited about going to the test match in Birmingham next week!). One of the things the commentary team do is to nominate ‘champagne moments’ of the match – special moments which warrant a cork pop and a raised glass. I love this idea, and I think we should all do this all day every day – nominate champagne moments throughout the day.

Joy lives in small moments, that we often miss in the hustle and bustle of our lives. And our achievements also get lost in the day to day of living. We tend to only notice the ‘big joys’ and the ‘big achievements’, and as they only come along a few times a year, we rarely feel we have anything to celebrate. But that’s such a shame, because most days there is something to celebrate – a project that has progress made on it, a pound lost, a phone call to a friend, a canny purchase of fabulous shoes, a hug with your partner or kids, sunshine, the dog obeying a command, the partner or kids doing the washing up…

…all the small things that make up a life of small joys. So instead of missing them all, and feeling like there is very little in life to celebrate, why not start a practice of nominating champagne moments every day? You don’t have to drink champers every day, the practice is to celebrate, not become a boozer! You could raise your evening cup of tea to the ‘champagne moment’ of the day. Every day, notice all the small things you enjoy, all the small things you achieve, all the moments of happiness and joy that would normally pass you by and designate each one a ‘champagne moment’.

My champagne moment nominations so far today are: sitting in the sunshine doing my morning pages, a great session with a client this morning, a bird flying into the window and being ok, attaching ribbon to the window so birds won’t fly into it anymore (love it when I achieve something practical), my cricket tickets for next week arriving (YAY! So far this is the winning moment for me!), writing a lovely blog post. Woohoo – 6 potential champagne moments already and it’s not evening 3 in the afternoon yet! What are your ‘champagne moment’ nominations for today?

Love

Donna.x
Photo by Nino Andonis

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Wallowing in Happiness

One of the things that ‘happy people’ have in common is that they wallow in happiness. They look forward to things (not just big things), they enjoy the memories of things (not just big things), they are grateful for good times they’ve had, they appreciate good things as they happen and make a big deal of them. ‘Unhappy people’ on the other hand tend to dwell on how much life sucks, wallow in the bad things that happen, and pretty much ignore the good stuff. I know this because I used to be unhappy. And now I’m generally happy.

And one of the big things that has changed is my focus. Instead of wallowing in and dwelling on the ‘bad’ stuff that happens on a day to day basis, I wallow in and dwell on ‘good’ stuff and I make a point of noticing that I am enjoying whatever it is that I am enjoying. Not all the time, I’m not perfect…but when I have a bit of a visit to negative town, I can get out pretty quickly because my habit is to focus on, pay attention to and be grateful for ‘good stuff’. And we all have ‘bad’ stuff and ‘good’ stuff happening every day. Not just the big stuff that only happens once a year/lifetime like birthdays, christmas, promotions, marriages, holidays. But little things, like the sun shining, clean washing, a tidy desk, a laugh with a friend, a stranger smiling at you, someone letting you out in traffic.

That’s why, over at my facebook page, I have started to focus even more on ‘the good stuff’ every week. Every Monday I ask “What was the best part of your weekend? And what are you looking forward to this week?” and share my thoughts. Every Wednesday I tell you one of my favourite things, and ask what one of your favourite things is. And every Friday I ask “What was the best part of your week? And what are you looking forward to this weekend?” So everybody who ‘likes’ this page will be reminded to focus on what’s good in life. It’s a small thing, but it is SO powerful. So why don’t you come and join me over at facebook.com/donnaonthebeach? And wallow in the small happinesses in life.

Love

Donna.x

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If You Chase, It Will Run

What are you chasing after in your life? Money? Success? Boys? Girls? Happiness? When you chase after anything, it runs away. Let’s take happiness as an example here – you don’t have to ‘find’ happiness or chase it. You can be it, right now. No matter what’s going on around you, you can be happy now.

Try this:
What has been the best thing about today (or what will be the best thing about today)?
What was the last thing that really made you laugh? (see tomorrow’s blog for my FAVOURITE joke of the decade – it’s GENIUS!!!)
Talk about something that makes you happy – cuddles with your kids, sunshine, great music, your dog’s joy at seeing you when you’ve been gone 3 minutes, friends, lie-ins, singing, dancing, starlight…

Stop chasing what you want, and start EXPERIENCING it now instead.

Love

Donna.x

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Don’t Get Lost Along The Way

From Abraham-Hicks Daily Quote:

You have been oriented that you must pay a price in order to get somewhere, and in the process, you’ve come to believe that getting there must be really important, therefore, it must be your purpose. And we say, but if you’re not getting to joy, then you’ve gotten nowhere. Joy is really where you’re going.

Yes! I couldn’t agree more! We want most of the things we want because we think we will get more joy, freedom (joy), peace (joy), love (joy), security (peace…joy)…but it is putting the cart before the horse to go ‘there’ to get joy. Get joy right here, then skip, hop, laugh, run along to the next place in joy. Don’t get lost along the way and turn away from joy – make joy your highest intention, your biggest goal, your most important thing on your ‘to-do’ list.

Love

Donna.x

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Creating Money by Sanaya Roman

Creating Money by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer is a positive book about creating wealth – not just financial wealth, but happiness too. It shows the clear link between being relaxed and happy and enjoying your work, and money coming in. Their style is very gentle, encouraging, inspiring and along with the ideas they present, there are specific exercises for you to do to bring more money into your life. If you’re not satisfied with your financial health at the moment, this is a great book to start changing your experience with money.

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Count Your Blessings.

The happiest people on earth realise how much they have (even when they have ‘nothing’ in material terms). How often do you count your blessings? Make a point of listing 5 things daily that you are grateful for – especially when you feel there is nothing to be grateful for! For example, you have the wonderful resource of BlissQuest, you have access to clean and plentiful drinking water, you have air in your lungs – blessings indeed!

Love

Donna.x

PS this tip first appeared in the BlissQuest newsletter – to sign up or to book a one-off session with me, go to http://www.blissquest.com/Donna_Higton.html

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Feel Happy Now by Michael Neill

Feel Happy Now by Michael Neill is an easy to digest, fun book about…happiness. Michael gives very specific exercises to up your happiness quota – my favourite being ’swimming with the en-dolphins’!

This is a ridiculously easy exercise, which does not involve a trip to the sea, vast amounts of money or for you even to leave your chair to feel better.

If you are not as happy as you know you could be, check out this book and Feel Happy Now!

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The Serenity Reminder

This is BY FAR the best picture I have EVER taken! Isn’t it beautiful? I have this as my screen saver, I’ve been sharing it with everyone I know, and I am getting notecards and posters made from it! Yes, I love it!

Not just because it’s a beautiful image, but because it reminds me of that holiday mellowness that I am bringing back into my “real” life. One look at this picture and I am instantly transported back to a magical moment – relaxed, happy, (well fed, but that is incidental!), tranquil, serene. The sad truth is that most of our lives are not as relaxed, happy, tranquil and serene as we would like, so we need these reminders.

So, what reminders do you have surrounding you? To-do lists, clutter, mayhem? Or beautiful tranquil scenes that remind you of great times?

Maybe it’s time to go through your photo album?

Love

Donna.x

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OnTheBeach – The Dutiful One

I was talking to a friend last week about going to the inquest into my uncle’s death – which I don’t want to do. So why are you going then, she asked? Excellent question…and the answer is that I don’t know. Actually, I am now not going to go, because as Claire most excellently reminded me, I don’t want to! Why was I going to go? Simply put: Duty. I felt it was my duty to my family to go.

It was quite amusing to me to realise what I was doing, because I will rarely do anything I don’t want to do…unless I feel it is my duty to do so! I am obviously a very well brought up girl. What are you doing that you don’t want to do out of duty? Attending the Christmas work party every year even though you never want to go and have better things to do? Going to the 80th birthday party of Great Aunt Maude, who you haven’t seen since you were 5? Doing the usual ‘Friday nighter’ even though you are shattered and skint?

What about your duty to yourself? To your health and happiness? Robert Louis Stevenson said “There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.” To do the particular duty of going to this inquest, I would be actively making myself unhappy. In order to ‘do right’ by my family! It’s insane, and incidentally, they are not bothered that I don’t want to go. Maybe your duties aren’t quite so horrible, but check with yourself why you are doing them.

Is it because you feel you must or you will be rejected in some way? Or is it because you genuinely want to do it? If you’re anything like me, part of the reason you don’t want to do it is because you feel you have to! Pure contrariness. Or we make up that ‘so and so would be unhappy’ if we didn’t do something. For my part, I would rather my friends and family said no to me, rather than do something for me just because they think they have to!

I’m a big girl, I can take a ‘no’ – after all, I say it often enough. It may be too much to simply say ‘no’ to a duty you’ve already agreed to, but once you realise that you do not want to do something, you can change things around so that you can also do your duty to yourself. I’m still traveling to London with my Mom for the inquest, but while they are at the hearing, I will be either spending time with my cousin, or being a tourist in London. I’m sure my uncle won’t mind I’m not making a misery of myself on his account.

- Something To Play With -

What duties do you have to your work, your family, your friends? What do you do ‘out of duty’ (maybe even automatically)? Do you really want to do this? If your only duty was to your own health and happiness, what would change for you? Want to share how this article affects you? Leave me a comment below.

- The Personal Bit -

I’ve had a very productive week this week – for the last year I’ve been playing with ideas of books and courses I could create to help those who do not want one to one coaching. And I am finally making some progress! It’s amazing how much you can get done when you set a timer and leave your e-mail/internet alone for a few hours. My free ebook will be finished by the end of this month…and you guys will be the first to get a copy – it’s the biggest secret in happiness…and after that teaser, you will just have to wait…

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