The nominated songs in the Best Original Song category in the Oscars have been hit and miss over the years. But tonight I’ll be watching anxiously to see if Pharrell Williams’ song Happy from the Despicable Me soundtrack wins the Oscar for Best Original Song. Pharrell will also be performing the song live on the show. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week.
I love the lyrics to this song , lines like “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof”, but it’s the tune that’s contagious.
This week’s Happy Act is to watch his Happy video and join me in clapping along when Pharrell wins Oscar gold tonight. Before you know it, you’ll be snapping your fingers, clapping your hands and feeling like a room without a roof.
It might seem crazy what I’m about to say…clap along because happiness is the truth.
It’s the end of the second period of the Olympic gold medal hockey game and the scene unfolding in my living room is the same one that is being played out in every living room in Canada—our entire family in our pajamas, cheering on our Canadian men to Olympic gold.
The success of our Canadian Olympian team in Sochi has been inspiring. As Don Cherry said to the millions of children watching this morning’s game, if you work hard, and have a dream, you can be a future Olympian.
My children were able to hear this message first-hand two weeks ago when they skyped goaltender Mike Smith, just before he went over to Sochi with the Olympic team. Mike graduated from our little country school and is a bit of a local hero. He told the kids as long as you try hard, and work hard, you can do anything.
There’s a term for this that our school has been focusing on to encourage the students to succeed. It’s called Growth Mindset. There’s a great Teds Talk video on growth mindset and the power of belief and its impact on success. Watch it. It reminds me of the line from one of my all-time favourite Canadian bands, Hedley, “I can do anything”.
On this final day of the Olympics with Canadians dominating, this week’s Happy Act is to take a line from Hedley and believe “I can do anything”. If you hear a voice in your head that says, “I can’t do this”, add the word “yet” to the end. Our Canadian athletes have shown us the way. Let’s follow their lead.
I was watching Modern Family the other night, still one of the best sitcoms on TV, and there was a great line. “You fall in love with this extraordinary person, and then after twenty years of marriage, find yourself married to an ordinary person.” I think this is so true.
I have some friends who aren’t particularly happy in their marriages. Actually, the funny thing is I’m not sure they’re unhappy, they’re just not enthralled with their partner any more. Chock it up to boredom, or just 20 years of living with the same person, but somewhere along the way, they’ve stopped seeing the things that attracted them to their partner and have forgotten why they love them.
Part of the problem is we’re sold a bill of goods when we get married. According to movies and magazines, the fairy tale romance is followed by a storybook wedding and the happy ever after ending. It’s no coincidence that romantic comedies end when the couple kiss, instead of on their tenth or twentieth wedding anniversary.
Other cultures don’t subscribe to this fantasy view of marriage. Last year we visited Tanzania and had some interesting discussions about true love and marriage. Our guide told us he didn’t believe in true love and that in Tanzania, marriage is seen as a partnership. Other cultures believe in arranged marriages.
Crosby Stills Nash sang, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” This week’s Happy Act on Valentine’s Day weekend is to love the one you’re with. Look at your partner and make a mental list of what made you fall in love with them. Kiss them like it was the first time you kissed them. Tell them all the reasons you love them. Love the one you’re with.
My Montreal colleagues compete in the pairs chairs spin event
I work for a large financial services company and my office is as Dilbertesque as they come. I swear some days it’s like Scott Adams is in the same meeting as me. But I also work with some of the nicest people you’d ever want to spend 7.5 hours a day, 37.5 hours a week or 1,800 hours of your waking life with each year.
One thing we started in my office a few years ago was an Office Olympics every Friday afternoon in February to beat the winter blahs. It’s a great way to have some fun and destress during a very busy time of the year.
My favourite event was a William Tell archery competition where we used elastics to shoot a stress ball off of one of our manager’s heads. You know stress balls, the “incentive item” and thank you gift every project team member gets to celebrate a product launch and which are completely useless except for hurling at people because you’re so stressed by the end of the project —or for fun stuff like Office Olympics.
So with our eyes glued to Sochi and cheering on our Canadian athletes, this week’s Happy Act is to hold an Office Olympics and have some fun with your co-workers. (If you don’t work in an office, you can also do this with your kids with items around the house, or with friends at a party). I was in our Montreal office this Friday for our first competition of 2014, which was a Pairs Chair Spin competition. Here’s a pic of my Montreal colleagues in action (au revoir, Rene-Pierre!) and to get you really inspired, a 9 second video of a cubicle hurdles competition (hilarious but make sure you get insurance for this one!)
Special note: My blog celebrated two milestones this week: 500+ followers and 1000+ views in just a few months. Thanks for following and keep sharing your comments and posts on your Facebook and Twitter feeds if you like what you read. Thanks for helping make the lives of those we care about hopefully a little bit happier.
Bella in her apron ready to take on the fur balls she created
The other day, my youngest daughter Clare looked down at her fleece pants and said, “It’s like a big fur ball exploded all over me.” We looked down and her pants were half white from the mounds of white fur from our Great Pyrenees Bella.
This week, Clare was studying Chinese New Year in her class. One thing I learned about Chinese New Year is you aren’t supposed to clean your house on the Lunar New Year’s Day itself because it is said it will sweep away your good luck for the year.
I think North Americans have become obsessed with cleanliness. I’ve been in people’s houses where after they’ve cleaned off a few crumbs from their kitchen counter, they spray it with some kind of antiseptic. I’m not sure how we got to this state where we can’t even live with a crumb on the counter. It’s crazy.
What’s wrong with a bit of dirt and dust anyway? Personally, I think it’s healthy. Anyone who knows me knows I have these crazy theories, and one of them is cleaners and the uber-sterilized environments we’ve created in our homes have contributed to a higher incident of allergies amongst children. I know there’s all sorts of studies on this, but think about it, how can you build up any kind of immunity to the normal germs and dirt that surrounds us if you antiseptic it away?
But my biggest issue with housework is it just takes too much time and cuts into the things I really want to do on my weekend, like skate on the lake, toboggan, play the piano, and hang out with my family.
So this week’s Happy Act is to take a break from the dust and dirt. Hang up your broom and don’t worry about housework for one weekend. Enjoy the free time and feel good knowing you’re not sweeping your luck away for 2014.
Note: Not all Happy Acts I blog about will make you feel happy, so feel free to take a pass the odd week. I know some people who absolutely love cleaning. If that’s the case, roll up your sleeves and clean away—tackle a closet you’ve been meaning to clear out. Whatever makes you happy (or call me, seriously, call me—the fur balls are multiplying).
TIP FOR THIS WEEK: If you live in the Ottawa or Kitchener-Waterloo regions. Frank Warren from postsecret.com is speaking at Carleton on Feb 5, U of O on Feb 6, and Wilfrid Laurier on Feb 7th. You can read a bit about Frank’s blog on my About page, which I’ve just updated.
When you become a parent, you expect to experience newfound joys in your life and you do. But there are many things they don’t tell you about parenting. The statement parenting is hard work is probably one of THE biggest understatements of all time. One unexpected but wonderful and surprising benefit of being a parent is it gives you an excuse to do things that make you feel like a kid again.
This week’s Happy Act is a bonus 8-Happy-Acts-in-one. It’s my personal list of top eight acts that will make you feel like a kid again that will transport you back to a time when you lived life in the moment and didn’t have a care in the world.
Eight acts to make you feel like a kid again
Play a game of laser tag
Have a cannonball contest (might want to wait for summer for this one)
Fly a kite
Go toboganning
Make a snow angel
Eat ju jubes
Catch a snowflake on your tongue
Spend the afternoon in a water park
For those of you who don’t have kids, here’s a secret: you don’t need to have kids to do things to make you feel like a kid again. Go toboganning anyway, or better yet, offer to take a niece or nephew or friend’s kids for the day—it will give you an excuse to be a kid again and give the parents some much needed adult time.
Have fun being a kid again! What’s your favourite thing to do that takes you back to your childhood? Leave a comment.
Some tips for this week: if you live in the Kingston area, there’s nothing better to beat the mid-winter blahs than to spend the afternoon at the Ambassador water park. For just $8 a person, you can wash away the winter blues screaming down the water slide, doing laps in the pool or luxuriating in the hot tub as you watch the snow fall outside. Our absolute favourite family winter getaway is Great Wolf Lodge. While it’s a bit pricier, it’s definitely worth it. We find one night’s lodging and two days in the water park leaves us with a water-logged grin on our faces and I never get tired of seeing the 70-year old grandparents giggle like 7-year olds as they squirt their grandkids with the huge water guns. Back in Kingston, an afternoon of action-packed laser tag at Putt ‘n Blast in Frontenac Mall is SO much fun.
There’s an incredible story circulating on the internet about a seven-year old German Shepherd in Italy and its devotion to its owner (watch this one-minute video).
It made me think, what makes us so devoted to our dogs and pets? I think the answer is simple. They are devoted to us, and like children, they give us unconditional love. They also instinctively know when we need comfort or companionship. Whether we’re laid up in bed sick with the flu, in tears after an emotional day, or curled up on the couch enjoying a coffee on a snowy Sunday morning, they are always there by our side. (Even now as I write this, I say Murphy’s name and he starts thumping his tail, raises his head, looks up at me with his big brown eyes and groans in contentment.)
Studies show that pet owners tend to be happier people. Pet owners exhibit greater self-esteeem, are more physically fit, less lonely, more conscientious and socially outgoing, and have healthier relationship styles. I swear that my father lived longer because of our old dog, Bailey.
Most hospitals or long-term care facilities have programs where they bring dogs in to visit with the residents, and there have been some inspirational stories about the positive effects dogs have with children with autism. From a practical standpoint, they are also one of the best home security systems you could ever have (I used to work for a home and property insurer, and I can unofficially tell you we’d rarely get claims of stolen goods from houses where there was a dog.)
Yes, dogs are incredible creatures.
This week’s Happy Act is to hug a dog (or cat if you have one). If you don’t have a dog, offer to take a neighbour’s dog for a walk, or better yet, drop in to your local animal shelter. Most animal shelters are looking for volunteers to help exercise their clients. And when you’re finished, don’t forget to give them a big hug and a pet. Leave a comment, what do you love about your pet?
According to Jetpac City Guides, I live in the happiest city in Canada, Kingston, Ontario.
My youngest daughter Clare is all smiles after a day in downtown Kingston
Jetpac makes travel apps, and they looked at over a million Instagram photos to count and size the smiles on people’s faces. We’re a university town so there’s a high likelihood the reason we ranked high on this very unscientific study is because we have lots of university students who use Instagram, but Kingston regularly places high in the annual studies of the best places to work and live in Canada.
It’s been almost 20 years since we moved to the Kingston area and I can honestly say it was one of the best decisions we ever made. I love going back to Toronto, I love the city, but we would never ever have been able to enjoy the quality of life we enjoy now.
And here’s the rub: this just didn’t fall into our laps. It was a conscious decision; we had a goal and a plan. We targeted five regions in Ontario. We could have wound up in Sault St. Marie, northern Ontario (the snow!), or Muskoka, but we landed in beautiful Eastern Ontario, and we have come to love and consider this community our home
So this week’s Happy Act is to ask yourself, am I happy where I live? Do I feel part of my community? Do I love my home? Hopefully your answer will be yes, but if the answer is no, what changes can you make to be happy where you live? Maybe you could get more involved in your community, or maybe it’s just a simple change to your home (when we first moved to our house, the lack of sunlight drove me crazy, but we have a beautiful sunroom now). True, happiness comes from within, but living in a happy place can only help.
When the cold weather hits (and let’s face it, it’s hit hard this winter), there’s nothing better than to curl up, hibernate and put on a pair of fuzzy socks.
Hands down, fuzzy socks are in my books the best textile invention of the 21st century. They just don’t keep your feet warm. They flood your feet with waves of comfy softness, making you feel warm and cozy all over.
My mother-in-law was a Victorian Order of Nurses foot nurse. She always says take care of your feet. It makes sense. The average person will walk 115,000 miles in a lifetime, four times around the earth. During an average day of walking, the force on your feet can total hundreds of tons, which is roughly the same as a fully loaded cement truck. So it only makes sense to take care of your feet and keep them happy.
If you’re going for sheer warmth, stick with wool, but if you want an itch-free, cushy ride that will make you warm and fuzzy all over, wear fuzzy socks.
So this week’s Happy Act is to take care of your feet, make them happy and wear fuzzy socks. What favourite item of clothing makes you happy?
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. They may spur us into action, but usually after a few weeks or months they fade into oblivion and we are back into our old habits and woefully aware of our failure to keep our promises for yet another year.
So instead of making a New Year’s Resolution, why not make an All Year’s Resolution? A resolution to tell the people you love that you love them every day.
You see, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 12 and died when I was 19. To say it changed my adolescence is a bit of an understatement. I never went through that phase of not wanting to be with my parents and I’m dreading the day when my two girls become teenagers and they don’t want to spend time with me.
Even though my Mom had cancer, I lived a normal teenage existence, but I also spent a lot of time with my Mom, playing board games, driving her to appointments and helping to take care of her. One of the things we talked about and committed to very early on in her disease was to tell each other we loved each other every day because we were painfully aware that some day, she would be gone.
I’ve tried to practice this philosophy throughout my life. And while it was difficult when both my parents died, I can honestly say there was nothing left unsaid. I still miss them dearly still to this day, and am sad to think my children never got to meet or know these wonderful people, but I have no regrets about our time together or how we felt about each other.
Life is short. The people you love might not be there tomorrow, so don’t leave anything left unsaid. This week’s Happy Act is to make an All Year’s Resolution to tell the people in your life you love them every day. Are you making any other New Year’s Resolutions? Share them. Me? Probably the same ones I make every year: eat a bit healthier and exercise more (but this time I have a game plan—wish me luck!)
Happy Act 