Happiness is in your hands.

"You are responsible for your own happiness" my sister read to me from a book the other day. That started a long train of thoughts that would like to put down here.
It has been said before and will probably be repeated thousands of times more: No one but YOU can make your self happy.
You can't rely on family, friends, partner(s), pets or anyone else for your happiness. You create your happiness, every day.

The human brain is magnificent with all that it can come up with and create! Genius inventions, being able to plan and predict the future, understanding cause and effect, relate to people and understand their feelings, being aware of our selves. We create our own reality, which is our blessing and curse at the same time.
We can have everything we need and want and still be unhappy. And we can be put in the worst environment, lacking food and shelter and still feel happiness. So our environment is obviously not what makes the difference. Being rich doesn't automatically mean happiness, even though having enough money to get food and shelter makes life easier. It seems we get more anxious and unhappy the wealthier we get. Maybe we start seeing what we can't get instead of being grateful for what we have, when we get more money?

It's not what you've been given, it's how you recieve it.

Personally:
I'm fighting my destructive thoughts every day. I have everything I need in my life, a good job that gives me more than enough money, a nice apartment, good friends, hobbies I enjoy and the best possible boyfriend I could wish for.
Still I need to work on my gratefulness every day, to remind my self of what I have and remind my self to be in the moment and enjoy each and every day as much as possible.
I know I'm not in the position were I want to be, not exactly. I've been feeling uneasy, anxious and sad, almost a bit depressed for a couple of years. Not really knowing why. Feeling a bit lost and alone.
This last year has been a major change! I've found out so many things about my self, and that I wasn't doing what felt right for me, I was doing what I thought I needed to do. I cared to much about what other people would think and forgot my self on the way. 
Now I found my direction, I know I want to change things in my life, a couple of factors that will make it possible for me to grow in the direction I want. It's a slow and painful progress and involves quite a bit of insecurity, old and new demons of my mind and fighting with a constant fear. The fear lies in the change, of going from what I know to a new way of living, changing my thoughts around many of the things I've taken as granted.
But I'm sure I'm working my way towards more happiness and harmony in my life, it's just not easy all the time. And with every day I push on I learn I wake up in the morning feeling a little better with my self than the day before. I can't see any other way of living now.

I've also realized that by putting my trust into the universe and deciding that all my wishes will come true by keeping to my dreams and working towards them all the time, it magically happens. Step by step I come closer to the life I want to live.
Some days I just feel exhausted, small and scared, ready to give up and keep to what I know is working.
Then I have to be kind to my self, pat my self on the shoulder and remember that I'm not happy the way it is now, things have to change in one way or the other.

I consider my self lucky for going through this process. For having found out what was nagging me and started the change. There has been peoplewho have gone through the same things and made it before me, then I can do it as well!
It's a part of growing up and taking responsibility for your self and your feelings. I want to decide if I'm happy or not! 




 

15 minutes!

My dear friend, Adon, living in Santa Cruz, California, inspired me to try this out.
You devote 15 min for a couple of things you want to do or learn every day. In my case it's doing yoga/meditation and practice on my shamisen at the moment.
When I've managed to keep doing those two things every day for a week, I'll expand it with one or two more tasks, maybe playing the flute and study for my USMLE tests. We'll see.
In this way you can focus completely on what you're doing and you'll be able to get many of the things you think about but never do, done!
With a focus like this you won't get bored and loose interest in what you're doing and you'll start long for when you can do it again.
Try it, it's fun and gives quick results! Start with one interest for 15 min a day for a week and then add things to the amount of time you feel you can spend.
Adon had taken it all to a new level and is organizing most of his life in this way. He'll soon start a Blog about it, so look out for the link here!

In Uppsala

A day of Bujinkan training in Uppsala dojo is going to it's end. I'm so happy to meet up with and learn from Pete again. And to train with and talk to my old and new Bujinkan friends. As always it's stupidly hard to try to put down in words what I've learned during the day, since it's not techniques but rather concepts, different ways of looking at how we train, where we want to go and how we get there.

Studying how we move has been one of the things that has been most important for me during the last year, and I've found a couple of principles that I can apply on everything I do. Stepping without telegraphing your movement, shi ho dori-lines, how to keep control of your uke without force and not give any information to him/her is a couple of them that were brought up during today's training.
It was great to get different aspects on these principles during today's training. Little adjustments on kamae, distancing, timing. And some new thoughts that will be developed in the upcoming months.

It was good being reminded of how important it is not to fight, but to move without intention. Letting uke make his/her own trap and consider how you most effectively can get out of the situation.
Can you choose to act in a different way? Do you need to hit them down? Can you get the will of fighting out of them without doing harm?
I think it's important to remember that these principles aren't restricted to training in the dojo, they apply to life. They are actually the principles of life, that we train in the dojo, where we have a safe environment to "test" them out and fail and try again.
The only thing we now is constant, is change, and being successful is all about being able to adapt to that change. That's what training teaches us, how to adapt to the changes in our life, without resisting. Knowing how to benefit from them.

Since I came home from Japan  in May 2012 this have been one of the big lessons to learn for me. And I'm slowly getting there, to the place where I can look at all the changes in my life without putting a label on them. In the end I hope not to look at changes as good or bad, but just as changes. And adapt in the best way possible.
Being with friends and doing training like today really boosts this process, thanks to all of you who have shared your day with me!