Nancy Saltzman’s Blog

This past weekend I attended and presented at a conference titled Camp Widow, a program developed by Michele Neff Hernandez through Soaring Spirits. Two hundred and fifty widows and widowerslearned, laughed, cried, and moved forward together in small groups, large groups, alone, or on the dance floor. It might have been the first time someone opened up to others about how they were feeling and maybe even the first time a person laughed out loud since the death of their loved one. The weekend reminded me of a quote that I have posted above my desk. “Grief needs companionship and acknowledgment, not repair.” Long live love.

It was snowing very hard but I have a 4-wheel drive and I thought I would be fine to drive down one of the hills by my house. When I was almost at the bottom of the hill I saw a garbage truck off to the side of the road. A car had smashed into it. There were five other cars off the road or partly in the road. I stopped my car then started again because I was in the middle of the road. At this point my car started driving itself and did a 180. It was sheer ice under the snow! I was going down the hill backwards. Luckily I sideswiped the car that had already hit the garbage truck (the garbage truck had chains and had done a 360 and crashed into the curb to stop it I found out later) then I was stopped by a truck’s bumper a little further down the hill. With the help of some wonderful people we were able to get my car into someone’s driveway and when everyone else had cleared out — even the garbage truck — my wonderful neighbor Charlie walked from his house to where my car was parked, got in the driver’s seat and started up the hill. Of course we slid back down the hill again but Charlie was able to maneuver the car into a driveway (I might have been screaming, I’m not sure…) then we went down the hill the correct way (not backwards!) then up the next hill and into my garage.

While I was waiting for Charlie to come rescue me I met Brian who lives right across the street from where my car slid down the hill. When I introduced myself he said, “I knew Joel” (my late husband who died in a small plane crash with my two sons 19 years ago). Brian met Joel at the Racquet Club in Colorado Springs when Joel was a pro in the late 70’s and early 80’s and Brian was a youngster. Brian also went to Joel’s tennis shop on Maizeland and saw Adam and Seth when they were infants! I know Brian’s parents because they were tennis players and good friends of Joel and part of the tennis community.

It is a small world. I love living in Colorado Springs!

This is a great article by Tamara Star about the 7 Habits of Highly Unhappy People

I often teach about happiness and what has become exceedingly clear is this: There are seven qualities chronically unhappy people have mastered.

According to Psychology Today, University of California researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky states: “40 percent of our capacity for happiness is within our power to change.”

If this is true and it is, there’s hope for us all. There are billions of people on our planet and clearly some are truly happy. The rest of us bounce back and forth between happiness and unhappiness depending on the day.

Throughout the years, I’ve learned there are certain traits and habits chronically unhappy people seem to have mastered. But before diving in with you, let me preface this and say: we all have bad days, even weeks when we fall down in all seven areas.

The difference between a happy and unhappy life is how often and how long we stay there.

Here are the 7 qualities of chronically unhappy people.

1. Your default belief is that life is hard.

Happy people know life can be hard and tend to bounce through hard times with an attitude of curiosity versus victimhood. They take responsibility for how they got themselves into a mess, and focus on getting themselves out of it as soon as possible.

Perseverance towards problem-solving versus complaining over circumstances is a symptom of a happy person. Unhappy people see themselves as victims of life and stay stuck in the “look what happened to me” attitude versus finding a way through and out the other side.

2. You believe most people can’t be trusted.

I won’t argue that healthy discernment is important, but most happy people are trusting of their fellow man. They believe in the good in people, versus assuming everyone is out to get them. Generally open and friendly towards people they meet, happy people foster a sense of community around themselves and meet new people with an open heart.

Unhappy people are distrustful of most people they meet and assume that strangers can’t be trusted. Unfortunately this behavior slowly starts to close the door on any connection outside of an inner-circle and thwarts all chances of meeting new friends.

3. You concentrate on what’s wrong in this world versus what’s right.

There’s plenty wrong with this world, no arguments here, yet unhappy people turn a blind eye to what’s actually right in this world and instead focus on what’s wrong. You can spot them a mile away, they’ll be the ones complaining and responding to any positive attributes of our world with “yeah but”.

Happy people are aware of global issues, but balance their concern with also seeing what’s right. I like to call this keeping both eyes open. Unhappy people tend to close one eye towards anything good in this world in fear they might be distracted from what’s wrong. Happy people keep it in perspective. They know our world has problems and they also keep an eye on what’s right.

4. You compare yourself to others and harbor jealousy.

Unhappy people believe someone else’s good fortune steals from their own. They believe there’s not enough goodness to go around and constantly compare yours against theirs. This leads to jealousy and resentment.

Happy people know that your good luck and circumstance are merely signs of what they too can aspire to achieve. Happy people believe they carry a unique blueprint that can’t be duplicated or stolen from — by anyone on the planet. They believe in unlimited possibilities and don’t get bogged down by thinking one person’s good fortune limits their possible outcome in life.

5. You strive to control your life.

There’s a difference between control and striving to achieve our goals. Happy people take steps daily to achieve their goals, but realize in the end, there’s very little control over what life throws their way.

Unhappy people tend to micromanage in effort to control all outcomes and fall apart in dramatic display when life throws a wrench in their plan. Happy people can be just as focused, yet still have the ability to go with the flow and not melt down when life delivers a curve-ball.

The key here is to be goal-oriented and focused, but allow room for letting sh*t happen without falling apart when the best laid plans go awry- because they will. Going with the flow is what happy people have as plan B.

6 You consider your future with worry and fear.

There’s only so much rent space between your ears. Unhappy people fill their thoughts with what could go wrong versus what might go right.

Happy people take on a healthy dose of delusion and allow themselves to daydream about what they’d like to have life unfold for them. Unhappy people fill that head space with constant worry and fear.

Happy people experience fear and worry, but make an important distinction between feeling it and living it. When fear or worry crosses a happy person’s mind, they’ll ask themselves if there’s an action they can be taken to prevent their fear or worry from happening (there’s responsibility again) and they take it. If not, they realize they’re spinning in fear and they lay it down.

7. You fill your conversations with gossip and complaints.

Unhappy people like to live in the past. What’s happened to them and life’s hardships are their conversation of choice. When they run out of things to say, they’ll turn to other people’s lives and gossip.

Happy people live in the now and dream about the future. You can feel their positive vibe from across the room. They’re excited about something they’re working on, grateful for what they have and dreaming about the possibilities of life.

Obviously none of us are perfect. We’re all going to swim in negative waters once in a while, but what matters is how long we stay there and how quickly we work to get ourselves out. Practicing positive habits daily is what sets happy people apart from unhappy people, not doing everything perfectly.

Walk, fall down, get back up again, repeat. It’s in the getting back up again where all the difference resides.

No Language for Loss – by Ellie Miller Greenberg.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Radical Survivor.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/susan-estrich/radical-survivor.html

From Anthony Marra’s first novel titled “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”

“Sonja stood and walked to the flat, afraid of what she might hear next. At the kitchen table she examined the glass of ice. Each cube was rounded by room temperature, dissolving in its own remains, and belatedly she understood that this was how a loved one disappeared. Despite the shock of walking into an empty flat, the absence isn’t immediate, more a fade from the present tense you shared, a melting into the past, not an erasure but a conversion in form, from presence to memory, from solid to liquid, and the person you once touched now runs over your skin, now in sheets down your back, and you may bathe, may sink, may drown in the memory, but your fingers cannot hold it. She raised the glass to her lips. The water was clean.” (Pg 120) Yes, it is an amazing book.

I am reposting Nancy Miller’s blog post from this week. It is beautiful and right on target. Thank you, Nancy, for writing this.

Spring is in the Air…and It Feels like a Million Knives Hitting Me All At Once.