Need a lift? A return to happy? Here’s my formula.

Ever felt like you are being jerked around by a slew of less than happy emotions?  Or that you just can’t find and stick with your normal happy self?  Well that’s where I’ve been for the last week or so.  It’s exhausting.  Yesterday my husband and the kids left for the afternoon and I spent the day “raising the vibration.” At least that’s what I call it.

I needed a boost.  A pick-me-up.  A return to my happy self.  A cartwheel-round-off or something, to switch things up, turn them upside down, shake them out, and then return me to my equilibrium.

So here is what I did.

As soon as they left the house, I saged it.  You know, I lit some of that lovely purifying white sage and smoked out the whole house– then my studio.

I put on a chant. (One of my favorites of the Sanskrit words, Om Namah Shivaya, translated as “I honor the God within.”) I kept the chant going for the rest of the afternoon too– even when I was outside.

I took a backyard bath with Epsom salts and lavender oil.

I put on my favorite short silky robe and I gave myself a mini-facial.  (Okay, I just washed my face.  But that counts for me!)

I dabbed a bit of Rose oil behind my ears.

I went to my studio, lit my favorite beeswax candle.  (Beeswax makes negative ions– the good ones, the ones that uplift moods and purify the air.)

Then for the rest of the afternoon I allowed myself to do something I rarely have time (or take the time) to do right now.   I read poetry from one of my favorite books, “Love Poems From God.”  It’s a compilation of “Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West.”

It helped. Big sigh.

I read words like,

I know about love the way the fields know about light, the way the forest shelters, the way an animal’s divine raw desire seeks to unite with whatever might please its soul– without a single strange thought of remorse.  

There is a powerful delegation in us that lobbies every moment for contentment.  How will you ever find peace unless you yield to love the way the gracious earth does to our hand’s impulse.

By the woman poet Rabia of Basra (c.717-801)

Or another favorite, that I made into this image here, by St. Francis of Assisi.

By the time my family got home I felt like I had started on the path to my usual happy self again.  Thank goodness!

I was inspired by my notion of vibration raising days though.  Of pointing myself again and again toward the happy vibrational thoughts that can shift me into a wonderful space, and doing the things that I know help me increase this vibe.  Even today I’m still thinking in those terms.  What can I do to make myself feel really good?  To raise my vibration even more? To stabilize myself again in goodness?  These are the questions that have been flitting through my mind and have been, even still, directing my actions this morning.

What do you do for yourself when you need a little lift?

The words “extreme self care” kept running through my mind.  It was a question that a friend asked me lately, “What do you do when you need extreme self-care?” Well yesterday I did it.

What do you do?