December 30, 2008
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Still Happy
I’m running on a sleep deficit, and have been doing so for days and daze. If I could get a good night’s sleep, I might be able to remember how long it has been since I had good night’s sleep. The sub-zero weather (down to minus 30°F now), and the demands of the new wood stove for a steady supply of fuel, plus the fact that Doug’s alien sleep cycle has cycled around to where it roughly coincides with my own, have resulted in my getting an average of three to four hours of sleep for the past few nights.
This might help account for my having forgotten in yesterday’s entry, Happiness, to mention one of the most important ways we can sabotage our happiness or enhance it: self-talk. If we tell ourselves things that elicit unpleasant feelings, we feel things we don’t want to feel. If we tell ourselves happy things, our sweet little nueuro-electro-chemical systems respond with dopamine and happiness. It is marvelous how that works.
I have heard it said that just smiling can make us feel happy. That never worked for me, but it might work for you. Consciously working the smile muscles just makes my face uncomfortable, but hearing something funny (even if it is just me talking to myself silently) or thinking a happy thought, gives me happy feelings. Maybe it puts a smile on my face, too. Maybe it doesn’t. That matters less to me than what’s going on behind the face.
Historically, I used to talk myself into fear, sadness, misery and rage on a regular basis. Education and therapy set me on the road toward breaking those habits, but it has been a long road. I’m sorta hard-headed, and when I tried “affirmations,” a form of “positive” self-talk that has us telling ourselves a lot of things we want to hear, I would sometimes come back on myself with a skeptical, “Yeah, right.”
One of the stupid and harmful things I used to tell myself was, “I’m lonely.” That was really no more true than some of those incredible sunshine-and-butterflies affirmations, but it took me quite a few years to catch on and come back with, “No, I’m not lonely. I’m alone and I’m enjoying my solitude.”
Lately, there have been a few times when I would have enjoyed a little quiet solitude. We’re keeping all the cats in and the door barred so they can’t open it. A houseful of restless cats isn’t always fun. I remind myself that their mammalian body heat is useful, and I don’t need to remind myself that I love them. When it comes to picking up the things they knock over, I remind myself that I’m the one with opposable thumbs. Whatever works, works.
Here are some of the things I have found useful to remind myself from time to time:
The Emotional Self-Sufficiency Tool KitLitany against fear:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass
Over me and through me.
And when it has gone past
I will turn the inner eye
To see its path.
Where the fear has gone
There will be nothing.
Only I will remain….from Dune
by Frank Herbert“Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don’t matter
and those who matter won’t mind.”
Theodore Seuss GeiselIt is equally spiritually unevolved to take offense
as purposely to give it.What others think of me is none of my business.
Do nothing to damage your self-esteem.
Time to go feed more wood into the fire and warm my chilled self in front of it. A large portion of Alaska is under a big, cold area of high atmospheric pressure. There was an oil refinery fire at Valdez last night and today there are destructive winds there and in other coastal areas. No wind here, just cold. You’d think we were in Alaska or something.
Comments (11)
I am still learning that Ppl and things don’t make me happy.
so hard….
I love this album. And I’m making a point to do some smiling today
Beautiful post. I remember living in a colder, damp climate, feeling as though nature itself was against me, and creating my own little mental sphere of isolation. I could have used these words then; luckily, I came through it and have learned much since that time about being happy. I still struggle at times, but it’s better now. I can’t remember who said it, but it’s more or less true: “we are about as happy as we make up our minds to be.” Cheers to you.
Man, 30 below, ouch. I bet spit freezes before it hits the ground. I am glad you are keeping the kitties safe inside. Tell Doug it’s his turn to pull an all-nighter (or an all-dayer) for his Momma. Makes me grateful for my 60º apartment…
Oh…and affirmations have to be true in order for them to work. Like “I am a lovable human being” is a spiritual truth. So is “I am an ordinary woman” which paradoxically makes me feel better than anything. It makes me a part of. I have the most negative mind of anyone I know so affirmations are like a lifeline. I don’t go all sunshine and butterflies. I keep it pretty close to the ground.
…you’d think ya think?
Concerning the sleep thing. I have been droning for the last five years and I still have a problem with circular breathing. However, trying to cycle breath while playing the didgeridoo (mine is a cheap PVC substitute) I get a really powerful exhalation and in some ways a detox. I vibe with this post. Since 12 I have done open throat chants extending my exhalations and inhalations greatly over a 30 to 40 minute period. Usually right before bed, if I have taken some melatonin about four hours earlier, I might take in a little protein like a boiled egg or a slice of cheese(tends to keep blood sugar down and also regular) and I will then either throat chant or drone…I believe what comes out of the mouth can detox the body too in a different way than going to the bathroom, sweating or clathration would. But the breath is not the spoken word.
You are right on with the self speak. I got the fortune of reading a powerful book by a Dr. Maas called “Sleep Power” and it was based on some lengthy and quality research into sleep. Up in Maine, it roughly never got past 20 below in a lifetime I hardly remember now. But there was a type of coal oil or some sort of oil they used for the furnaces up there that made the logs obsolete. Wood is some work and a half! But I remember the room being cold as a child and there were old quilts, wool blankets, moose skins above and below me, sheets were just too sheer and would not hold the heat in and we had both dogs and cats that would burrow up with you and right as you got down to a pair of thermal skivvies, I remember hitting all that cover with a slight cold shiver and then drifting off to a deep sleep because I warmed up and at the same time I hit a deep sleep.
When I had the priveledge of time, I would go during winter break in Old Towne and wigwam it…same effect, get cold and pass out warming up…one thing to this day, I remember being in the cold and sleeping as the deepest and often most vivid sleep I ever had. All sorts of really good memories have flooded my mind as I read your post..the life death new life cycle of the body is so dependent upon a deep restorative sleep…even now, I have been neglecting that more than usual….you deserve such a delightful, deep and restoring rest…I have wondered how the varying sunlight patterns would affect circadian rhythm there.
Maybe you function better than me under conditions of sleep deprivation. Then again, I’ve been (until last nights/days 14-hour sleep) much more sleep deprived than you. But I do deteriorate quite a bit. In those circumstances, I don’t want to carry on much more than half-retarded conversations, because everything requires more mental exertion.. I start getting “stupid”, and eventually quite un-coordinated.
Affirmations just make me sick. Ugh. Don’t like them, and they’re too ritualistic/repetitive. I doubt they’d do much for me in terms of reconciling an incongruity between thoughts and feelings.
I prefer just keeping my thoughts in check and going about “right thinking” in other ways.
I’ll tell you something funny: last night I went to Adelaide, and on the way home the Christian guy in the car was telling me how his mum sold a scarf to the daughter of a tarot reader who works in Rundle mall (I think). The next day his mum went down to Adelaide, and she saw the tarot reader wearing the scarf. Her reaction was something along the lines of: “NOOOOOOOOO, I sold the scarf to a witch!!!”. Then the Christian started talking about their demonic powers and I had quite a chuckle: he has no idea that I communicate with one on a regular basis. And an awesome one, she is.
It’s nice to know that you’re happy.
People’s belief systems.. well, I often prefer to use a broader term - ”worldviews” (sometimes the similar, “conceptual framework”) fascinate me, and I’m always interested in how they develop. Yours, his, mine, etc
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
- Carl Jung. There’s some truth there, I reckon.
@Apocatastasis - I have no such excuse for loneliness. That thought was a stupid habit, a leftover from lonely times in childhood. I might have made that clearer if I wasn’t sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, like doing drugs… very much like doing drugs. Just think: I used to pay to feel this way, and stressed my liver and kidneys, too.
@Jack_Schidt - We have an oil furnace, thermostat and all. When it needed big repair or replacement some years ago, we decided to stop using it and rely on the woodstove. The expense was a factor, but it could have been done if we really wanted or needed it. Now that I think of it, our situation with TV was similar. There was one in this place when we moved here from our off-the-grid home a decade ago. Heavy snow brought down the antenna a couple of times after about three years. The second time, we considered the pros and cons, left the antenna down, and broke the TV addiction.
Wood smoke is less environmentally toxic. The man who supplies our wood salvages it from construction sites, so no trees are killed to keep us warm. The furnace’s electric ignition was useless in a power outage, and they often happen in coldest weather. But the deciding factor was my health. I have allergies, multiple chemical sensitivities, and chronic respiratory disorders. The furnace and its emissions aggravated all of them.
I’ll be able to catch up on sleep as soon as weather warms up (it’s going that way now), or when my son’s sleep phase cycles out of synch with mine again. His personal days are about 27 hours long, and when we’re out of synch it not only makes the night watch easier, it relieves all conflict over computer and game consoles.
Having had blood sugar instability, insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, etc., most of my life, I learned the protein at bedtime routine long ago. It is not that I’m having difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep. I need to get up every few hours to tend the fire. These cold snaps don’t usually last more than a few days, and none has lasted more than two weeks in my thirty-some years here. Doug will be taking the night watch soon, anyway, and then I’ll catch up on sleep.
You like Coldplay? Hmm… get Jeff Buckley’s album, “Grace”.