Happy Soul: Life Through a Child’s Eyes

Every day holds an exciting range of possibilities. As a child, she wakes easily and with great enthusiasm.
“Good morning, Mummy!” she squeals, “this is going to be the best day ever!”
The energy she carries is fierce. It sees her leaping to her feet and skipping down the hall for the very prospect of another day like the day before. “Can we do craft again?” she asks, so excitedly that one might think it was a new venture, certainly not an activity she partakes in daily.
Breakfast is an effort, as distractions stall the necessity. So enthralled, she needs to be reminded to eat, as though living purely in the moment causes her to temporarily forget the plate that waits to nourish her. “What’s that, mummy?” she asks, pointing at a lonely web in the high corner of the room. An explanation prompts one of the first renditions for the day as she begins to sing Incy Wincy Spider at the top of her lungs.
“Beautiful singing, darling,” her mother says.
“Thank you, darling,” she replies.
The rest of the day is routine. It is safe. But in her safety, the child learns to express. It is through that expression that a vibrant rage of emotion is witnessed. If she falls over, her life is indeed coming to an end and she is not afraid to show it. Tears fall down her face and she wails with the pain, lets it consume her in that moment until there is nothing left. In that time the demon is vanquished, not left to fester within her until the emotion brims over into dangerous levels.
Outside, she learns about the world around her. She speaks to the animals, and they speak to her. She understands them and they love her for it. In that moment, the world is endless, with possibilities above what we have been told are safe. She could fly, if she wanted. She could be a healer, a race-car driver; the only limits are the vast boarders of her imagination. The only inhibitions, those she has been told to hold caution with.
She does not wish to sleep. Exhausted, she carries herself into bed to await the five stories she managed to coax her mother into reading. There, they cuddle and immerse themselves into a world of foxes with socks and magical pet shops. If the day was too long, she will fall asleep in amidst, dreaming of the simplicities that brought her more joy than any range of complexity. If her determination allows it, she will wade through the stories, and wait for a song that lulls her into the rest that will see her waking with equal enthusiasm the following morning.
There are no laws to instruct us that we should all eventually grow out of this joy for life. And yet, at some point, we are taught to. At some point, the child within us is silenced. What a sad day for our soul, that day is.

Happy Soul: Finding Love

Have you ever woken up in the morning and just ‘known’ that the day was going to be a bad one? Every bit of your body aches, your heart is heavy and you shift from room to room to get ready to repeat the day previous. You eat the same bowl of cereal, shower for the same amount of time only to dress in the same uniform. Nothing has changed, but the dark energy consumes you. Have you ever noticed that these days almost always do end up being horrendous or exhausting?

You get home with your whole body rejecting everything and everyone. You lash out at loved ones just because you need a vent and they are the only ones you trust to keep loving you despite your temper. You sit on the couch and ‘zone out’ to meaningless television shows, desperately searching for drama, just so that you know that someone else’s life is worse than yours.

It’s easy to write off these days, in fact, it’s easier to leave them behind you completely. You justify the coincidence by saying you have some deep-seeded instinct that allows you to predict such things. But have you ever stopped to wonder if maybe you were the cause? If we wake with negative emotions, hatred, hurt…could it be possible that those thoughts shape our entire day just because our perception has changed. A million wonderful things could happen in the space of those 24 hours but because our mind is only open to registering the hurtful, that’s all we see.

Not convinced? Scientists now believe that our reality may in fact be a reflection of inner justifications, that our outside world is actually a product of our inside world, rather than the contrary. In fact, “the brain processes four hundred billion bits of information a second but we are only aware of two thousand of those” (Dr. Joe Dispenza). In our association with our ‘reality’ we just happened to misplace around three hundred and thirty billion bits of information per second that we did not process, either because we couldn’t comprehend or our emotion and biochemical make-up of any individual day affected our outlook.

If our mood is powerful enough to affect our perception, what do you think it is doing on a deeper level? If it has the ability to affect our sensations, what might it be doing internally, to our cells? “There is a part of the brain called the hypothalamus…it’s like a little factory and it is a place that assembles certain chemicals that match certain emotions that we experience” (Dr. Joe Dispenza). The chemicals are known as peptides, they form hormones that latch themselves to the cells of our bodies and affect our very chemical make-up. These cells become addicted to the hormones we feed them. If we are constantly feeding our body with positive, loving peptides then on a daily basis we crave that love. We begin to search for people, places or things that offer us those feelings so that the cells in our body can receive that ‘kick’. But it works the other way around too. Have you ever known a person who is so hard-done-by that they believe the whole world is against them and can’t snap out of such negative thought patterns? Not only do their cells crave people, places and circumstances that feed them that kick of self-worthlessness, but they begin to deprive their body of essential nutrients that are blocked by the angry, carcinogenic cells they have allowed their body to produce.

Challenge: Happy Soul challenges you to wake up in the morning and do something to show yourself (and the world around you) love. Open your eyes and prepare for a beautiful new day. Look in the mirror and see past the little things that make you feel worthless. You are not worthless. You are incredible, remarkable and completely unique. Look into your eyes and send yourself love. Choose foods that fill your body with love and health. Choose friends that encourage you and make you feel happy. Find little parts of your daily life that brings you joy. There are always choices in life, if you are willing to make them.

Happy Soul: What Do You Believe?

Believe in your convictions. It’s something we are always told, from when we are young children. Believe in yourself; believe in your ability to make a difference. At what point do we lose that? Somewhere along the way we join a crowd, adapting principles that we are told will get us further. We start to go with the grain, because it’s easier than going against it. We start believing that we need to fight violently to preserve a sense of patriarchy that a few big-pocketed moguls work had to ingrain us with. As young as primary school, we are taught about borders, and the lines that separate us from them. It is beneficial to a few profit-seekers for an entire nation to be ready and willing to go to war at the drop of a hat. If we are running low on oil, we need soldiers who are willing to fight another country for it. Worst of all, we have been taught about judgement. We learn to judge ourselves, and the people around us, so that we lose our hope of standing up for what we believe in through fear of reticule.  By extension, we have learned to hate.

At Happy Heart Happy Soul, we believe in fulfilment. By living your life with integrity and a peaceful heart, you can achieve a sense of freedom that no war could ever grant. Health is not an image offered to us on the cover of a magazine. It starts in the soul, and radiates into every aspect of our lives. If you were to have 15 minutes alone with yourself, what would you learn? If you were to sit in a quiet room, listening to your own consciousness, would you feel peace or shame? So often, people that I have spoken to prefer a busy life, not wishing to have too much time alone with their own thoughts. I propose that this is because our thoughts have so often been handed to us by another. Not believing we are good enough comes from trying to be like somebody else. Not believing that we are smart enough, brave enough, strong enough…these things are materialistic images offered to us by those who want us to occupy our thoughts with a sense of mediocrity. Rebellion can be avoided by a group of people who are not willing to stand up for what they believe in. Take some time to get to know yourself again. Find love in the small imperfections that make you perfectly you. Can you imagine how damaging it would be to your body to fill it with feelings of inadequacy?

Above all, discover what you truly believe in. Break free from preconceived ideas and discover your own affirmations. Only then will you begin to see through the unnecessary that has become so much of our life.

I believe in peace trumping war every time. I believe that collectively we will achieve freedom, but separately we will achieve only hate. I believe in the simple things, in the sunrise and the freshly blooming daisies. I believe that they can be so much more beautiful than any object that money could possibly buy. I believe in the pursuit of preservation, in learning how to work with the earth instead of destroying it. Above all, I believe in making a peaceful stand against those who try to rule by telling us how we ought to live and what we ought to fight for.

What do you believe in?