I'm supposed to feel happy! Aren't I?

 

A few days ago a friend of mine said to me, "Why are you smiling all the time? You can't possibly be that happy. You must be just good at hiding it." 

Lately I've noticed that a lot of people in my life are wondering if there is something wrong with them because they don't feel happy all the time.

Happiness is a funny thing (no pun intended).Think about the messages we are bombarded with every day. Advertisements depicting happy faces... shopping, eating, driving cars, Norman Rockwell style family dinners. Pharmaceutical companies advertising pills to relieve our unhappy feelings (not talking about serious clinical depression here). Is this how we really live?

We were born with the capability to feel a whole spectrum of emotions... sadness, grief, joy, anger, elation, rage, fear. Our experiences take us through many different emotional states and to think that somehow we should only feel happy in each situation is ridiculous and only sets us up to believe that there is something wrong with us.

As we allow ourselves to simply feel whatever emotion is there, we begin to move through the emotions more quickly and not get stuck in the muck of self-created suffering.  We begin to realize that the experiences themselves are emotionally neutral and it is only we who assign the meaning and emotion to them.

Underneath any challenging life situation, and with a little practice, we can still experience the joy and happiness of simply being alive, in a human body, having this incredible experience called life on earth!

Is JudgeMENTAL in the courtroom?

When I was a young girl, my mom made up a game that I used to love. Whenever we found ourselves in a public place where we could observe people,  mom would pick a person or a group of people and make up stories about them.

"His name is Marvin and he's thirty-two and sells cars at the VW dealer."

"Her name is Debbie and she is totally bored listening to him talk about the deal he made this afternoon. She is thinking about what color she's going to paint her nails when she gets home."

The game seemed innocent enough at the time, but when I started to teach it to my own daughter, I soon realized that the game should have been called the Judgmental Game!

I have struggled in the past with being quick to judge others and have really worked on staying open and receptive rather than making assumptions. A deep seated fear of being judged by others was at the root of my judgmental tendencies. I began to notice that, when I was feeling insecure and unsure of myself, I would look outside of myself for approval. Often, rather than risk that I might not find the approval I was seeking, I would look at others with a critical eye. "Well at least I'm not as fat as Mary". "Thank goodness I didn't say something stupid like Denise just said". "My relationship is so much healthier than Sue's".

The problem with judgments is that they are NEVER true! We are all here living, learning and growing. The judgments that we make about others are simply a reflection of our own feelings of insecurity. Judgments are created in our minds, and being JudgeMENTAL takes us away from our hearts and the truth of who we really are.

One of my favorite practices that keeps JudgeMENTAL safely locked in his chambers, is to say, "I see the Divine being that you are." Not only does this work when I feel myself about to judge another, but it's a way to fill myself up with my own approval so that I remember that I don't need it from anyone else but ME!

Finding my TRUE VOICE!

When I was growing up, my name, Sherryl Lin Frauenglass, came with a slew of interesting challenges. Frauenglass was difficult enough for people to spell, but add to that my mother’s unique spelling of both my first and middle names, and you have a recipe for much teasing and general confusion. I was a kid who desperately wanted to “belong”, so having an unusual name was a constant reminder that I was different from the mostly W.A.S.P. kids I grew up with. I so wanted to be a Kathy Smith or a Susan Jones!

As a young adult I began to realize that it was kind of cool to be different and I began to embrace my name. The women on my father’s side of my family took great pride in having a unique name and most of them retained Frauenglass when they married. Even my mother decided to keep Frauenglass as her last name when she and my father divorced.

When I married in my late 20’s, I chose to continue my family tradition and retain my maiden name. It wasn’t until a divorce and subsequent remarriage 18 years later, that I decided to take my husband’s name. At the time, I really wanted to honor Jim by sharing his last name, Haldy, but there were some practical reasons as well. I had lived with a difficult to spell and pronounce name for my entire life and I wanted to try on something shorter and easier to spell. Ironically, it turned out that Haldy does not ring clear when it’s spoken or read. I was constantly being addressed as Sherryl Hadley or Halsey or Holly! So much for simplifying!

A few years ago, as I was developing a media consulting and coaching business, I decided that I wanted something a little more unique and began to use my middle name. In my early 20’s an intuitive astrologer had said that I would be using Lin later in my life and I thought this must be the time she was talking about!

Most of my clients and newer friends knew me as Sherryl Lin and this was my “brand” as I began to develop a clientele. After a couple of years, something began to feel a little off about being Sherryl Lin. I was going through a deeply transformative time in my personal life and it was becoming clear that Sherryl Lin represented my ego TRYING to be something or someone, rather than me just being ME! I’m sure that my family and friends were a bit puzzled when they heard me using Sherryl Haldy again.

Over the past year, I have been in a period of contemplation, reassessment and redefinition of who I am. I began to recognize the voices of others that had taken over my life. I had let other people’s opinions of who I should be define me. I questioned myself daily. “Who am I without my mother’s opinions?” Who am I when I’m not being a mom?” “Who am I other than Jim’s wife.” “Who am I when no one is looking?” Slowly my true voice began to emerge.

From this authentic place, I realized that the name I had been given at birth, Sherryl Frauenglass, was my TRUE VOICE. I felt most at home with this name.

Sherryl = beloved, cherished

Frauenglass = woman glass

Beloved woman (reflected in the) glass THIS IS ME!

HOW DID YOU SLEEP?

"How did you sleep?" 

This was the first thing my husband and I used to ask each other first thing each morning. We would share precise details. Did we wake up multiple times? Did we get up to use the bathroom? Did we have disturbing dreams? Did the cat walk on you too? How many hours had we slept? After several years of wondering why I was walking around so tired and anxious all the time, I finally made the connection. It wasn't the actual quantity or quality of sleep that was making me tired, it was talking about it that was draining my energy!

Without much discussion or hoopla, I decided to stop focusing on my sleep and just go to sleep when I was tired and wake up when my body was ready to wake up. It wasn't long before I realized that I couldn't even tell you how many hours I had slept the night before. I felt more relaxed and rested in general. I finally felt connected to my body's natural rhythm and trusted that I would get the rest I needed.

On my walk this morning, when this topic came bubbling up to the surface, I attempted to figure out what my sleep patterns actually are. Guess what? They CHANGE!!! I tend to be an early riser and usually get up once in the night, but other than that, my body goes its own way!

Trust your body's innate wisdom and flow with your own natural rhythms. Sweet dreams!

GOOD ENOUGH?

On my walk this morning, I decided to take a path that I often choose, that ends at a broken down old fence. When I was about 10 yards away from the fence I started to turn around and in that moment I had a realization. 

When I first discovered this path, I would always walk up to the fence and touch it before turning around. It gave me sense of accomplishment to say, "I will walk all the way to the fence today", and then "anchor" it by touching the fence. When had I stopped doing this? How had I unconsciously slipped into telling myself that it was "good enough" to just see the fence and that I had still done a good job getting in my morning walk?

I have learned that the quickest way for me to build self-confidence is by setting a goal and following it through to the end. If I stop short, even if it's "just 10 yards", there is a subtle thing that happens. I stop being able to really count on myself to do the things I say I will do. I stop trusting in my abilities to follow something through until the end, and my confidence begins to erode. This can have a snowball effect because how we are in one area is how we are in the rest of our lives. 

From now on, I am walking all the way to the fence because I AM someone who does what she says she will do. I can count on ME!!!