Monday, December 16, 2013

How Kids Teach Us to Be Successful



PLAY.
As children it is our raison d'etre. As adults it is last on the list.
Somewhere in between is the ticket to bliss.
Here's what we can learn from children.

Prepare for mayhem. Don't set yourself up for misery. Stash the China. Hid the permanent markers. In other words when you are playing don't expect for anyone to be responsible. Prepare then let go. Freedom and ease gives you power everywhere in life.

Laugh. Do whatever it takes to cause giggles, hoots and raucous gaffaws. That means let go of looking good and give up looking bad. Only in that place of vulnerability can you really love the magic of life.

Allow rule changes. Kids make up games and change the rules constantly. As adults we tend to think the rules of life are fixed. They are not. As soon as we break them we call it play. It's actually just called life. All of life is play, we just have an oppportunity to see it that way. Creativity and courage are the essence of leadership.

Yes. Say Yes to the mess. Make a mess! Yes to the finger paint in the hair and chocolate syrup everywhere. Spill milk? Play in it before you clean it up. Not afraid to mess up in life? All your interviews, projects and toasts will go much better...your confidence and spontaneity will have you, and others, laughing through the game of life.

Balancing playing with wild abandon and responsibilty is what has life work. Most of us have the responsibility thing down, we work and plan and then rest from all the working and planning.
What if we add play into where we least expect it? What miracles await us in PLAY?

Zen Honeycutt

Friday, December 13, 2013

Sharing the Happy

This morning my son ran to my bed, jumped in and snuggled with me. He bent his head back, looked up into my eyes and beamed. "Mommy, you make me happy every day and all the time."
My eyes welled up and my heart warmed and swelled until I felt like a beach ball in the hot sun.
What was instantly there for me was not all the moments that I made him happy, but the enormity of his generosity and choice to not let times I did not make him happy ruin his perception of being happy.
God knows there where those times! The crying fits and screaming rages, the "just a minute's" and outright "NO!"'s.
But he chose to declare his life was filled with "happy all the time," to remember those moments and to make our current moment, the present, happier with his choice.

He remembered the giggling moments, trike riding moments, and reading together moments; the times we laugh and play and snuggle moments. He chose to love me including every moment and make them all part of happy.

Because being together is being happy and those together times include ups and downs, anger and joy. The choice of togetherness, embracing all those moments, being able to be with them, is what makes up happiness.

Recently I had a falling out with a friend. We misunderstood somethings that happened. She did something that hurt and shocked me and I did something that hurt and shocked her, and not necessarily in that order. The hurt lasted longer than I expected and we hashed it out for quite a while. And in the midst of the worst of it all, just when I thought we could no longer be friends, the opposite of that misery flashed itself in my memory like the glistening of a coin in a fountain. Those moments when we were laughing until I almost peed my pants, the moments when we called eachother first thing in the morning and spoke to eachother just before bed, the moments when we screamed with joy about our day together and I felt like she was my sister and best friend, sent like an angel from heaven.
I remembered those moments and knew that is who we truly were for eachother. I chose to remember those times.
We resolved all our misunderstandings. What we choose is to live happy with our friendship because we value that more.
The most challenging and difficult times can actually show us what we truly value.

So I look at challenging times to ask myself, what is it that really matters to me?
To Bronson, it is to love his Momma. Thank God, because I love him so too. I love all my boys so much I would do watever it takes to be healthy for them. See, I have recently seen that working as much as I do on the cause of health and freedom in America has left me with fatigue and inability to function as I would like. My health is seriously being impacted. I am letting the challenge and difficulty of the times take away the happy.
That is not what I am commited to. I choose the happy. I value health. So that means rest, sleep, love, laughter, fun, writing, art, walking, yoga and eating healthy food I love. Being inspired by life!
My expression of being inspired by life is writing or making art.
So I promise to make art or write everyday for the next two weeks. And share them, share the happy.
Thank you for being people with whom I can share the happy.
Love,
Zen