What Do You Want?

Really. What do you really want that having it will make you happy?

Every day we are being told by way of advertisements what we SHOULD want. And, of course, there are people in our lives who also tell us what we should want, a better education, a better job, a bigger house, etc. Television and movies project images of people they think we should be like, what we should want. We are inundated by messages about what we should want.

But how many of us know what we really want? So few of us take time away from all the distractions to contemplate who we are and what we want.

Is that edge of anxiety you are experiencing a sign of dissatisfaction in your life? What area of your life are you least satisfied with? What is it lacking for you? No, not by someone else's standards. From your own inner senses, where is the most dissatisfaction? Is it from trying to live up to someone else's idea of what you SHOULD have or be? Is it from your bosses idea of who you must be to be successful in your job? Is it from not having all the things you see others have? What is missing that makes you feel good about you?

Where is the real you today? And what are your aspirations? Here are eleven aspirations or goals for many people as put forward in Colin Beavan's How to be Alive.

• Affiliation: to have satisfying relationships with family and friends
• Community feeling: to improve the world through activism or generosity
• Conformity: to fit in with other people
• Financial success: to be wealthy and materially successful
• Hedonism: to experience much sensual pleasure
• Image: to look attractive in terms of body and clothing
• Physical health: to feel healthy and free of illness
• Popularity: to be famous, well-known, and admired
• Safety: to ensure bodily integrity and safety
• Self-acceptance: to feel competent and authentic
• Spirituality: to search for spiritual or religious understanding

Take some time in the next day or two to decide how much of these are YOUR goals, how much would you like to invest in achieving them. Beavan's suggest using a clock face with twelve hours marked on it and you indicating how many of those hours you would want to invest in each of these goals. Try it.

And share what you learn in the comments below.

Happy You, Happy World

Those who know me won't be surprised that when exploring an idea I turn to books. So, I'm reading How to Be Alive: a guide to the kind of happiness that helps the world, by Colin Beavan. (Beavan is the author of No Impact Man , the story of how he divested himself of attachments and lived off the grid for a year.)

I am impressed  with much of his book and wanted to share some of it. For instance,

Your life + all your relationships added together
All your relationships added together + Your relationship to the world
Therefore, your ife + Your relationship to the world 
which means
a. What you do in your life affects the world
b. What happens in the world affects your life
c. You are important to the world and the world is important to you

This reflects my beliefs about how we are instruments that create the tomorrows for everyone. We seldom really acknowledge that we are responsible for our lives to that extent. But we do create our tomorrow by the seeds we plant today. Even at the minute choices of the day we create the atmosphere of the immediate future. Think about it.

Did you know that you cause 600 square feet of Arctic Ice to melt each year? Check it out: http://www.moneytalksnews.com/you-cause-600-square-feet-arctic-ice-melt-each-year/

And then there is something as small as our choice of breakfast. Who really thinks about all that is involved in providing our food - egg, meat, bread, butter, coffee/tea/milk? Yet our very consumption of these creates a relationship, of sorts, with all those who produce them and the ecological effects of producing them.

Are the eggs cage free or produced on chicken farms with chickens given no more than the space of their bodies in the crowded buildings they are kept in. How is the chicken waste they produce disposed of? Do you know? Care?

What do we really know about the conditions of the animals that are raised to feed us? What chemicals are sprayed on the wheat that ends up as flour for our bread? Are the coffee and tea from fair trade growers? Do they have pesticides on them? And what are the consequences to the earth from all of this?

Yes, even our breakfast changes the world. And the important thing is that recognize our personal power to choose.

What do you recognize as parts of your day that impact others?

Check out Colin Beavan's book at http://colinbeavan.com/howtobealive/