Happiness: Are you willing to pay the price for happiness?

by Tammy York

Millstones for Happiness

This morning, I met a friend for a yoga class. She was not in a happy or even a good mood. Crossing her arms, she glowered at the classroom before throwing a mat onto the floor. Anger and frustration radiated from my friend as we took our seated staff poses.

For the next hour, the instructor led our class through a variety of restorative yoga poses from child’s pose to downward dog and from gate to baby cobra and finishing with corpse pose meditation.

After yoga class, it was easy to see that my friend’s energy had shifted dramatically – she was smiling.

I asked, “How are you feeling?”

“I was super angry and now I’m not,” she smiled. “I tried to pick the anger back up and get mad again, but I can’t… I’m too,” she sighed, “happy.”

Pick It Up Again

That phrase caught my attention. “Pick it up again.”

A perfect way to describe how sometimes we choose to be angry with someone or something. What we don’t realize is that we are literally CHOOSING to be that way. We are picking up the anger and lugging it around with us.

I was my own worst enemy because, for a long time, I carried A LOT of anger and resentment and pain. Each day I woke, and I chose to be angry, resentful, and in pain. I chose to carry those millstones around my neck and let them pull me down into the deep dark waters of depression. I allowed them to prevent me from living.

After much time spent in moving meditation, I came to the realization that I didn’t need to carry those stones. That indeed they were not my weight to bear. That was the day I set the anger, resentment, and pain down and walked away from them.

That day, I forgave myself for someone’s trespasses against me. I realized that I had to forgive myself so that I could free myself and move on with my life.

No one has the power to wave a magic wand and forgive someone else – the only person you can truly forgive is yourself.

“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

~ Anonymous

Anger, resentment, pain, frustrations – those were emotions I was choosing to relive. The trespass happened. It was in my past but I was choosing to relive it day after day after day. I was allowing it to dictate my life by preventing me from living my life.

When I started to feel myself turning towards sinking into the dark waters of depression, I asked myself one simple question, “Is this my weight to bear?”

If the answer was no, then I looked in the mirror and told myself, “This is not your millstone. Sit it down and walk away from it.” I pictured myself sitting down a millstone (or five) and walking away. I know this sounds goofy but it worked.

If the answer was yes, then I asked, “Then what action can I take to alleviate, repair, restore?” Whatever the first answer was, I did. One day the answer was, “Take yourself to a movie. Be kind to yourself.” Another time the answer was, “Paint a heron.” I learned to not question the answers that came but to trust the answer would fulfill some part of me that needed to be restored or repaired. Little by little, I rebuilt myself.

Not every day was perfect, but over time and with practice I was able to free myself from a lot of other people’s millstones.

What Millstones Do You Carry?

Think right now of what millstones you are carrying that aren’t yours.

Maybe someone stole from you and you are angry about it. Maybe someone lied to you and you are hurt that they sacrificed your faith in them. Maybe someone physically or emotionally hurt you and you are mad at them.

All emotions are valid.

However, you must take action to move on, to live your life.

You can decide to not carry their millstone. You can set it down. You can walk away from it.

Once you realize you are choosing to experience the pain, anger, frustration, or hurt and that you can choose to not relive those emotions, you can be like my friend after yoga class – you can choose to not pick it back up again.

You can choose to live and be…happy.

Public Speaking — My True Love

by Tammy York

My First Time Speaking in Public

The enormous inflatable green and gray right hand with canary colored nails banged into my fellow high school students’ heads as I made my journey to the front of the room. It was a gargantuan prop from the small movie theater in town. I had to deflate it just to get it through the doorway.

Now, I was desperately seeking air…any air… to blow that thing back up — in front of all my classmates.

Somewhere in the process, I realized I’d made a horrible mistake.

That teaching a “How-to paint your nails” to a class of my peers was a lot harder than teaching it to the cat.

That teaching a audience of predominately male classmates how-to paint their nails with patterns and designs was not going to go over well.

That painting a giant plastic hand’s colossal fingernail with the tiny brush provided with the nail polish was a ridiculous proposition. Their blank stares proved it beyond any doubt.

The room went from a pleasant spring day to insanely hot deep fiery pit in hell.

I wanted to put anything between me and the audience. To shield myself. To hide.

My cheeks felt as if they were melting off my face.

My heart pounded. A bright metallic ringing filled my ears.

All semblance of spit dried up and perished in my mouth.

I tried to swallow back the panic.

I struggled to resist the building urge to bolt but now that the hand was inflated — there was no way I was getting through the door with it — and I had to return it.

My field of vision narrowed to a singular portal that focused on my friend sitting in the last row.

Thank God breathing is automatic because at that moment my thoughts had derailed.

One thought rose up above the tintamarre, “YOU NEED TO TALK NOW!”

I started talking.

My voice cracked.

My hands shook.

My heart hammered in my chest.

But, I kept talking.

I could feel the adrenaline surging like hitting the crest of a great wave right before it falls out from underneath you. The feeling of standing at the edge of a plane’s belly looking down thousands and thousands of feet — getting prepared to plunge headfirst into an abyss of clouds.

The feeling of pure possibility Pure joy.

At that moment, I was irrevocably hooked on public speaking.