Wednesday, April 13 – 9am PDT | 12pm EDT
Wednesday, April 20 – 9am PDT | 12pm EDT
Wednesday, April 27 – 9am PDT | 12pm EDT
Thursday, May 5 – 9am PDT | 12pm EDT
Thursday, May 12 – 10am PDT | 1pm EDT
no class the week of May 16-20
Wednesday, May 25 – 9am PDT | 12pm EDT
Morning Poem, by Mary Oliver.
Assignment: Pick a time of day to have a 5 minute reflection at the same time every day. Rate your day (1-10) and ask yourself what made it happy and what made it less happy. Be specific. Pick one small thing you can do differently tomorrow.
Love After Love, by Derek Walcott
Assignment: Once a day, write down three things you are grateful for. Also be aware of thought patterns that are not a friend of your happiness.
Flourish by Martin Seligman is a suggested reference book.
This week’s poem is written by John Izzo
As the fog lifts off the tree topped mountains
A heaviness falls on my soul
Why are you unhappy? I ask
Why are you unhappy
When the birds, trees and grass sing
The only song they know how to sing
Just on the horizon whales breach
Breathing deeply out into the element
They know to be theirs
Maybe, maybe
All this noise, constantly going on inside you
Is merely drowning out the one voice
That already knows who you are
And why you are here
Have you ever wondered
What might happen if you
Simply breathed into everything you already know
Maybe, the conversation itself
Is the source of your misery
Assignment: Be aware of the meditative mindset, the noise, the resistance to something happening that you can’t change, your thinking about the future in a non-productive way.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Assignment: Work on integrating one of the new practices. Take The Five Thieves of Happiness quiz before next week
Five Mantras
I choose to be in the present moment and to embrace whatever is. Happiness is not the outcome I seek.
I am connected to all that is; and if I can contribute to the good of the whole, happiness will find me.
Life is not a contest. I will be grateful for what I have and who I am. I will celebrate the success if others; for when I celebrate for others, I am happy.
I can choose happiness and contentment right now. It is a product of my mind, not a result of what is happening. Right now I will choose happiness.
I am not my patterns. Just because this is my habitual channel, it does not mean it serves me. I can choose a new path.
This week’s poem is written by John Izzo
Two days left to walk
And the way has not answered
The questions you came to ask
What if, when you arrive
All you have are sore feet, aching knees and the same nagging riddles
That drove you to walk in the first place
Consider for a moment The gentle quiet calm of every stream you crossed
The steady stately pose of every tree that granted you shade
The way each bird sang for you Their one true song
And all the weathered smiling faces that wished you well as you strode along
Each stream knew its source and destination
Every tree stood on its own solid ground
No bird longed to fly in some new formation
The answer was never in arrival
But in the walk itself
The way each day you found yourself walking more deeply into the world How each step became itself a lifetime
not merely movement towards a hoped for destination
The way in each face you met a part of the God
you came here to remember
In each moment alive to the world without struggle,
open to everything that might arrive
Two days left to walk and the way had changed the questions you came to ask
Assignment: Choose the best practice for you and do it every day this week.
I will not die an unlived life by Dawn Markova
Suggested reading:
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande