Road to happiness...WAW

[gogofo]

Ye, that was a tough letter to read.

Talking about ways to open up and looking at you, here is what I did.

I took the view of myself through the WAS eyes and took her feelings and history of the R as the truth.

It was then I could see why she felt the way she did, empathy is hard for me and I think the extreme view of the WAS helped me feel their pain.

I took her pain and looked inward to try and discover what it was inside me that was creating these actions I showed her. For me it was important to examine my actions, not my feelings behind them. The feelings behind them are not easily translated into our actions. The actions are what they remember and actions, in my opinion, are usually black and white.

I took my actions and examined why I acted that way and if it expressed by feelings. Most of the time my answer was NO, the W never would have understood what was behind these actions.

Once I think I understand my feelings and actions I had to decide if this is who I am and who I want to be, reguardless of what the W thinks.

If you want to keep these qualities, don't change a thing. If you want to change them, I found this introspection to be motivation enough to begin the transformation process.

Only you can change yourself and only if you want to.

When I looked back on myself, I did not like myself and was frustrated and angry with myself. I did not do anything to change or even examine or recognize how I felt during my M. My actions were showing how scared and insecure I felt in myself, not the love and caring I had for my W and others around me.

I think we have similar feelings of insecurity and low self worth.

A big motivation for me was a TED talk by Shawn Achor about happiness and his book "the happiness advantage." I took his methods and applied them to myself for person gain, not just for work improvement.