Photo by Derek Kolb.
Since my divorce three years ago, my older daughter has come up with some real gems. Forget all the self-help gurus in the world–my teenager’s guidelines for joyful living boil down to these three.
1. Never take advice from unhappy people.
That might seem simple, but how often do we really think about it? I’ve had lots of people–family, friends, colleagues, divorce counselors, strangers on the street, celebrities, teachers–tell me exactly what I needed to do to be happy since I became single again. I followed much of that advice, thinking that because I was in a stressed and devastated state of being that certainly I didn’t know what I was doing. Following the advice just made things worse and I ended up second-guessing myself and not pursuing some beautiful opportunities. It was a 16-year-old girl’s simple statement that “I never take advice from unhappy people” that turned all that around. I decided that I would take relationship advice only from people who themselves had happy, emotionally healthy relationships with their partners and with people in general. Once I started to see how people applied their own advice to their own lives, I found myself much happier…and often quite amused. 2. Stop at “happy.”I think the old version of this might have been “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Too often, we make changes because we’re restless, bored, or pressured by outsiders. Things can be really good and we’ll keep tweaking and messing with them until they’re in a less satisfying state. We can be in a sweet relationship and feel we need to keep looking for something better and lose what we have. The guideline to follow? If you’re not happy, by all means change something, anything, to see how that changes your situation, but don’t keep fretting over something that you really like. When you reach the point of being happy with it, stop tweaking it and start enjoying it!
3. Listen to your intuition.
Intuition often goes against what “makes sense,” yet it’s that internal barometer for life. I cannot think of one single time in my life when I listened to my intuition and was sorry for it. The reverse? Extremely painful. Intuition cannot be explained through well-known scientific channels and it cannot be captured in pie charts and bar graphs. It’s an invisible guideline that only you can feel, which is why it’s sometimes said that your intuition is really the voice of God that you’re hearing. Analysis may be your scarecrow and may serve you well in most situations, but if your intuition is so strong that you realize you’re making a conscious decision to ignore that “gut instinct,” that’s the danger signal to pay attention and go with not necessarily what makes sense but what’s right for YOU.
c Lorna Tedder
