Our Home State of Happiness

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Boots here, your Badass Coffee Babe, hoping that life is treating you in a kindly manner on this very lively Friday morning.

You know how it is with travel.  There’s something about any kind of travel that makes coffee even better.  It looks better, smells better, tastes better when I am away from home — be that out on the trail and listening to some early-morning loon song echoing out over the lake or sitting at some busy sidewalk cafe in France or simply parking it at my favorite coffee bar in my adopted hometown.  It’s all good.

Location is irrelevant.  What is relevant is how travel makes my senses take a second look at something.  And then another.  Do some comparisons.  Scribble down some notes in my Pay Attention Book.  Take the time to just think about what is happening all around me.  All while sipping my favorite beverage.

I sometimes think I don’t take this Better Sense of Newness into account when occupying my Home State.  You know the place . . . we all have a Home State.  It might be your front porch,  your desk that looks out at the bird bath, your office with the funky view of the brick wall of Nash Hall.  It’s your over-sized yellow kitchen table that is tucked into the too-tiny breakfast nook or your kind of messy desk in the loft or your easel with the broken leg that is balancing on an upside down apple crate.  It’s that deck chair that wobbles funny while you are parking your back side.  It’s the long bus ride to work or school.

The places that we call Home State are the comfort food for our senses.  We go to them each day without a lot of thought.  We sit and we think, write, paint, eat, take in the passing view from the car, train, or bus.

One thing all of these Home States have in common?  Our morning Joe.  That Cup of Reverence that gets us up and moving and feeling inspired.

Travel.  I sometimes think that I don’t travel enough.  I explore and I wander, but I don’t go a lot farther than my two feet can take me on any given day on the trail.   I think I have too strong of a predilection for grabbing a mug of Joe and putting my feet up on the porch rail and taking in the view of the dogs sleeping in the sunshine and the cat prowling the woodshed.  I guess I’m not the most sophisticated person in the world.  But I sure do know how to enjoy a moment for what it is.  I pour my second Cup of Reverence and think that life is pretty good in my happy Home State.

Here is some of my Home State reading while imbibing my Cup of Reverence.  These books are inspiring and motivating.

 My FAVORITE!
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work Hardcover
by Shawn Achor

http://amzn.to/2chV0V6

And another FAVORITE!
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Paperback
by Charles Duhigg

http://amzn.to/2cGPM3I

And another . . .
The Happiness Project (Revised Edition)
by Gretchen Rubin

http://amzn.to/2c2p7PQ