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What Is Joy vs. Happiness? To Find Your Peace, Balance, and Purpose

joy vs. happiness

What is joy vs. happiness? Joy is happiness, but happiness isn’t always lasting and isn’t internal joy.

The feeling of joy is something you learn in life.

If you go on an experiential retreat, it will only be life-changing for you with your active participation. Similarly, internal joy is deep and can only be fully captured with your own recorded real-life experience.

Words on paper just don’t give the meaning of joy, the richness in feeling that it is. Internal joy brings peace and purpose. No anxiety, worry, or fear.

Written simply on paper, joy is an internal feeling of peace and contentment.

Sometimes joy shows up as an action you take, as you leap For Joy! or you can’t help but smile With Joy.

Those are outward body expressions of the joy that’s already inside you. The happy endorphins can kick in giving you a feeling of being on Cloud 9, but that’s a more celebratory joy that’s fleeting.

Internal joy is different.

You can feel joy even when situations aren’t going in the direction you want. That’s where most people get unplugged from their joy. They can rely on their immediate pleasure (vs. painful feelings) based on circumstances and chasing the next best thing.

It will not give lasting happiness feelings (much beyond the temporary elation effect that wears off), any more than the value of a car appreciating as soon as you drive off the lot.

You know that famous quote passage (written by Alfred D. Souza) that captures the happiness truths in 30 lines long, and starts with:

“We convince ourselves that life will get better after we get married, when we have a baby…” and ends with… “work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching.”

I feel like there should be a recent song made from these wise words that don’t get old, but do get missed.

Where to begin to find joy vs. happiness…

Focusing on growing yourself and letting go where you can’t make changes or they don’t serve you, helps grow your contentment and joy.

No one gets a life instruction manual.

Life just shows you in the everyday process, repeating lessons that weren’t recognized the first time, and often end up in disguised self-sabotage setbacks.

Connecting the dots and getting in your awareness, can highlight and allow you to change your patterns with the same unlearned lesson revealed several steps ago. Gratefully, you get second, third, and fourth chances in life’s forgiveness. It’s never too late or too soon.

But getting set in your ways can put you on an emotional roller coaster, of ups and downs based on circumstances. And you can take the limiting ride as many times as you allow yourself. Until a pain or trial is maybe too much to bear, has reached a tipping point, or you’re forced to find another way.

Relying on those ahead of us, we see all these situations and hardships were designed to help set us up to find joy and a better way up.

I know this because that’s how I lived the first 30 years of my life. Scrambling and learning.

However you made it to an adult, at any age and tipping point, you can choose to grow into your joy and fully get the best from life when you realize it comes from inside you. It was there all along.

You’re fully equipped to embrace your power over your forever joy vs. happiness that’s fleeting.

My story may help you find your joy vs. happiness…

Many people don’t start off knowing how to be joyful or peaceful (different than cheerful on the outside or seemingly having it all on paper).  Nature and nurture didn’t set up growing up that way. Those were the cards I started life with.

Continue reading “What Is Joy vs. Happiness? To Find Your Peace, Balance, and Purpose”

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11 Tips For Winter Allergies + Save Money With Celestial Seasonings Tea

winter allergies

This or every winter, you may feel like you have cotton stuffed up your nose, head, face, or even in your ears. Allergies and winter allergies especially are no fun.

You may even get annoying chest congestion, that starts when you wake up and then once you get going, annoyingly disrupts an otherwise good day.

This article is all about what you can do to have a better winter season, facing winter allergies. Read all 11 tips, as they’re all golden to keep you fit and healthy.

Dryness aggravates allergies, so here are some simple moisture tips:

1. Invest in a small humidifier for every room or place you spend time in.

If you’re a Vata, then dryness is something you face regularly, literally on your face (or scalp), and probably on your cracking hands and sandpaper feet. Winter only aggravates dryness. You need a daily winterizing self-care regimen.

You may find yourself wanting to moisturize your rougher face more often.  Or do glycolic exfoliation, and facial mask pampering.  I have my favorites, but this article is about allergies, so I’ll try to stay on topic 😊

Keeping your body moist with non-fancy products such as Eucerin lotion and pure aloe (clear or Kermit frog green), will help. Every little tidbit helps to keep you calm and your winter allergies, tame.

When I was growing up, humidifiers were these relatively expensive, bulky, and loud machines that took up floor space. And if you’re a decorator, there was no way to dress up the eyesore.

Nowadays you can buy a sleek, inexpensive humidifier at your favorite variety or everything stores like Marshall’s or Home Goods. Table humidifiers are usually less than $20 and if cleaned regularly, you can use them year after year.  Many table humidifiers have glowing neon changing color lights that you can turn on for fun and add cool brightness to your day… we all need that!

You can complement a running humidifier with a Vicks Vapor Rub, that contains camphor, menthol, and eucalyptus. I like that it can open up your nasal passages and wake up a Kapha imbalance if you gently sniff. As the name implies, it’s meant to be rubbed on your skin, and so can help chest congestion

For winter allergies/chest congestion:

2. Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) steaming before you shower. You can do this over a pot on the stove. This is the best thing for chest congestion (coughing up mucus), or if you feel a heaviness to your chest that seems to come on when the weather starts to cool.

Take apple cider vinegar and boil/steam with a water mixture. Inhale and exhale through your mouth so you can deliver directly to your chest. Add more water in the beginning as the vinegar can have a stinging feeling.  Then you know that you’re doing something good.

I recommend doing this before you take a shower, as the apple cider vinegar has a strong odor, that can linger on you and your clothes, and be repulsive to a sensitive Vata.

Thankfully it’s easily washed off by taking a shower. If you are highly congested, performing this practice once or twice per day is good. You want to nip it in the bud, so your chest congestion goes away after a few days. It may come back, but then you may only have to perform weekly or bi-weekly. The longer you let it go on, the longer it stays.

I don’t use the good ACV for steaming, as it will be wasted in evaporation. If you only have the expensive or organic ACV, with the mother (the good milky stuff) that’s good for ingestion, just don’t shake up the ACV bottle, and let the mother stay on the bottom.

Keep doing the other ACV tips and neti pot regimens recommended for fall allergies and ragweed allergies.  Continue reading “11 Tips For Winter Allergies + Save Money With Celestial Seasonings Tea”

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8 Ways to Avoid Stress Eating Anxiety and Holiday Stress

stress eating

Stress eating can be real anxiety for the best of us (that can easily become a bad habit).

Feeling anxious from a negative thought can cause overeating and shoveling food into our mouths. This feeds our natural desire to enjoy pleasure. But then we regret our decision the next day, as it shows up on our body and then can turn into anxious body thoughts (in the mind-body connection).

Below are some ways to break the stress-eating vicious cycle, especially around the winter holidays.

Especially in December, we can’t avoid messages about the new year being around the corner, that brings awareness to what we need to do to finish up the year, and then that reminds us of the hoopla of what happened and disappointments of what hasn’t yet.  We just want peace, joy, and love.

By no fault of your own, holiday anxieties can be triggered in your mind-body, and aggravate stress eating as a comforting behavior that disturbs healthy living aspirations.

One way you can start to change this is to find a healthy set of friends (or a virtual community) who will support you and you can share your successful moments with. Choose these optimistic friends over complainers. You want to leave your near-year ending on a sweet (not sour) high note.  Stay encouraged, growing, believing, and finding new year inspiration.

On that note, I have some holiday stress management encouragement…

Because we all bear some kind of stress as humans. At a bare minimum, you may have been thrown a few monkey wrenches within the year and an uneventful holiday ending.

You may have thought you’ve had enough, and you would just coast the rest of the year and take time off, and then something suddenly came up. You’re asked to make an off-course decision or two, be more creative than you’ve been (thinking outside the box), and work harder in your uphill climb despite facing ups and downs.

You’re not alone.

Look on the brighter side of things, you’re needed and you have a chance to make an impact in some unique way.

Those you-matter thoughts help your inner peace, that you can get back and are just a few steps away in your meditation practice, prayer life, or relaxed walk.

By a simple choice, you can change your mind and attitude just like that if you want to, despite your feelings or moods.

You always feel better than you did after the fact. You never know what thoughts and ideas are on the other side, but the time you put in is rewarded.

You’re better off if you find some way to be optimistic, even if it’s just borrowing a belief. Sometimes you have to just do it, to adopt a new way.

stress eating

Recently I was tasked to virtually decorate my Zoom screen background for a holiday meetup… those are common this year, right?

I don’t how you feel about yourself in a digital world, but coming up with a digital holiday background isn’t in my go-to wheelhouse bag of tricks, and maybe not in yours either. So I dug deep and basically looked around (…isn’t that how we were resourceful when we were younger?), and that led me to bring out the soft felted stockings and artificial decorations from the Christmas storage bin.

I’m an arts and crafts type. As a scrapbooker, I like handmade, decorating with brads and ribbons, and the whole nine yards for anything you can touch and feel… Continue reading “8 Ways to Avoid Stress Eating Anxiety and Holiday Stress”

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Arm, Leg, and Butt Exercises Inspired by Physical Therapy and Yoga

If you’ve ever been to physical therapy, the approach to restorative body healing uses repetitive movements, such as core, arm, leg, and butt exercises. Like yoga, physical therapy exercises are healthy and help to increase your flexibility, strength, and balance.

When you’re not healing from an injury, your body is malleable and wants YOU to work out.

That’s our natural way, like horses and greyhound dogs that are born to race. If they’re not galloping and running, they’ve lost the opportunity to do what they’re happily born to do.  We as humans, similarly are naturally meant to think, be and do.

When we take the opportunity to get active and move, we gain energy and better our health, and that makes us feel better.

If your body could speak, it would say, “put me to work.”But your mind shares back, “I don’t feel like it,”…and then that puts an end to your physical activity. Your mind wins and you actually lose in that moment.

But if you could convince your mind that exercise is easy, effortless… oh, and fun! …whoaa, that could be a game-changer, and your mind, body and you could all be on the same page.

I’ve found (and maybe you agree), that if you find an easy, almost effortless, and rewarding routine, then you would continue doing (like your lifelong healthy eating diet plan)…

Well, on that mission, I discovered some arm, leg, and butt exercises (described below), that give our overall delicate bodies, better results with little effort, that never gets old, and help you stay young and ageless.

Not to mention, the benefit of exercising without a gym.  You can do these exercises when you just need a break (instead of opening the fridge for a snack or when you want to watch a few minutes of television).

If you do get to the gym… we love our gyms! then be sure to make use of the expensive and well-maintained machines. Continue reading “Arm, Leg, and Butt Exercises Inspired by Physical Therapy and Yoga”

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Sixteen Candles and Balancing Aromatherapy Healing Scents

This is more than 16 candles, it’s closer to 66 candles!

Sixteen Candles was one of the coming-of-age comedy genre movies that existed during the Brat Pack Days. If you don’t know what that is or means, don’t worry ‘bout it… if you’re interested in candles and aromatherapy healing, you’re in the right place.

And if you haven’t seen the 80’s classic movie, the Actress Molly Ringwald played the slightly quirky and embarrassed teenager who had a crush on the most popular boy in the school.

Her family forgets her 16th birthday around the planning of her sister’s wedding and all kinds of family chaos. With her signature pouty mouth and rolled eyes typical of  teenagers (…remember those rebellious years?), her character, Samantha, says it all in this one line… “this is the single worst day of my entire life.”

Because when you’re a teenager everything is so magnified and important.

…Long story short, the movie has a sweet ending that includes birthday candles.

You and I have long passed our sweet 16th birthdays, and have created so many memories since. Whether yours was uneventful or memorable, you’ve survived.

And you can choose to live each day like a happy birthday if you’re doing and being well.

I was able to relive my fond memories by bringing out these bright cotton candy pink, white, sunny yellow, and navy blue candles, that have special meaning to me. They’re the ones you can find at the dollar stores. They were also the ones I saw on many kids’ birthday cakes.

sixteen candles

…maybe you have a similar or favorite birthday memory that brings happy nostalgia feelings?

As an adult, you can make your own great memories, and that’s something to celebrate. One way I do regularly in joy and celebration is with scented candles that create a happier mood.

Scented candles can be healing for your soul. The light’s warmth and the aromatherapy effects, positively affect your mind and moods. Candles are powerful and healing. They can define a practice in a special way. You could be meditating, journaling, or just creating a new room atmosphere.

Sixteen Candles

These are my favorite balancing sixteen candles, that are easy to find online or at stores, and come in all shapes and sizes.  There’s also one called “Birthday Cake” that smells like yellow or vanilla cake batter (similar to Christmas Cookie), but I think that candle is retired.

  1. Sand + Fog candles Limoncello
  2. Sand + Fog Mango Tangerine
  3. Yankee Candle Christmas Cookie
  4. Yankee Candle Vanilla Cupcake
  5. Yankee Candle Juicy Citrus and Sea Salt
  6. Yankee Candle Belgian Waffles
  7. Yankee Candle Sugar & Spice
  8. Yankee Candle Tangerine
  9. Yankee Candle French Vanilla
  10. Yankee Candle Pumpkin Pie
  11. Village Candle Orange Dreamsicle – orange and vanilla candles have special powers over anxiety.  If you don’t smell them or they’re sickenly sweet then it’s a good indicator that you’re Vata balanced overall at the moment… or if you never liked those scents, that’s not your natural dosha.
  12. Yankee Candle Fresh Cut Roses
  13. Yankee Candle Lemon Lavender
  14. Yankee Candle Mistletoe
  15. Yankee Candle Balsam and Cedar
  16. Yankee Candle Sparkling Cinnamon

“Continue reading” for more aromatherapy option ideas and some photos of my personal, fun favorites 🙂
 Continue reading “Sixteen Candles and Balancing Aromatherapy Healing Scents”

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