I don't remember this, but when I was fifteen, I decided to move overseas, or so my dad says. I am not sure why I would have thought of going far away at that young age. Maybe it had to do with my parents' quiet divorce and my mom's shaky new marriage that followed. I'm sure it also had to do with growing up in a communist country where everyone dreamed to get away, if for nothing else, to see what was beyond the tightly locked Romanian borders.

I was a nerd on the outside and a rebel on the inside. When I was about twelve, I learned to knit, a typical pastime of older women back then. When I was seventeen, I set a ridiculous goal for myself: to knit a sweater each month. I also loved to read, and I taught myself to knit whilst also reading. My mom, an extremely sociable person, often had people over for dinner. I remember hiding in my bedroom while voices resounded from our little kitchen, and do my knit/read routine. One time my godmother came in to check out my weird new sport, and nicknamed me Napoleon, for doing many things at the same time. By the end of the year, I had knitted 10 sweaters and am not sure what I ended up doing with them. It was an accomplishment I sure was proud of, although I had the sense to not brag much about it.

It might not look like much but I think this might be my best dish I ever made. Coq a vin, or chicken drunk in an entire bottle of organic Pinot. Took me 3 hours straight and in between sautéing separate the chicken, the bacon, the mushrooms, the onion, I thought about Luis XIV, how people at his newly remodeled and expanded Versailles country palace might have developed this most intricate and truly exquisite dish. Maybe it was created by his cook to use up red wine about to go bad in the cellar? Why else would they have used such enormous quantity of red wine for a little chicken?

Week 3 mantra:
... I fully open myself to the goodness in me. I put all my energy into welcoming the good in me and in others. I do not need to solve all my problems through overthinking or chasing dreams. I acknowledge what I do not yet know. In my heart I do know how to be a good person. I will express the best that I have within me with everything that I do and say...

Reflect on your personal beliefs about your abilities, qualities, your personality and character. Reflect on your ability to be happy in particular. As in last week's exercise, I recommend that you write answers to the questions below by hand, in your personal journal.

- Take a look at your own conditional beliefs. Are there some ways in which you have been taught to accept a life that is less than your best? Or do you believe that you have the power to change your situation? Do you believe you have the power to change your habits, your circumstances, your beliefs? Stay for a moment in a place of suspension, where you put your preconditioned attitudes aside for awhile. Dwell in uncertainty, and, when you're ready, start asking what beliefs and habits might better serve you. 
- How can you reframe and think differently about a challenging situation you're in right now? Something you might even consider giving up on, because it's so hard. What can you learn from it, and how can you grow as person as a result?
- What else can you reframe about your way of thinking? What are self-limiting beliefs you have about what you can and cannot do? Is there something you believe you can't do right now but keep thinking about it for months or even years?
- Think about someone you know who is skilled in the happiness mindset - someone who understands that important qualities can be learned. Think about ways that person (maybe one of your role models?) confront obstacles, failures, or even tragedies that happened to them. What are some ways you might like to change or stretch yourself?

WEEK 1 - EXERCISE
Reflect on the arc of your life, on your own personal story up to now. Reflect on the present, and what would you like to change, or evolve. I recommend that you write by hand, in your personal journal.

- What are the major events that dotted your life so far?
- What are the big decisions you've made so far? Which of those decisions came from your own heart vs. from society's expectations?
- What does your heart tell you to do next? If money wasn’t an issue, what would you do? Given your current situation, what would you love to change, to focus more on?

This year, I'm continuing to dig deeper into the Path of Happiness framework - I'm working to add a 'how-to' level of detail, to bring some of the abstract concepts to life. To do this, I'll tap into Positive Psychology concepts, which I'll share with you in a new series I'm working on, called "PRACTICE HAPPINESS". Happiness is a skill that can be learned and a muscle that can be strengthened with daily practice.

At any point in our life, we're somewhere on the continuum of building awareness and understanding to taking action.

Like in nature, there are different seasons in our life, which come and go regularly. We spend a lot of time in the first season: that of getting more clarification on who we are, what we're excited about, what we're not longer excited about, what matters to us, what we want more in our life, and what we want less. This process of sifting and discerning happens at all times, whether or not we're paying attention. It is often blurred by fears, worries, or shallow desires. And yet, in this process of understanding what's important to us at any point in our life, our true heart's desire brews, until it's ripe, and we become fully aware of our needs and dreams.

At every point in our life, we're on our path.

If you feel lost today, you might find yourself on that portion of the road that's foggy and shady. As you go through it, you might remember that you experienced this sort of thing before, and it passed. This is the hardest thing to do - to imagine light in the middle of darkness. And as this rough portion of the road actually clears away for light, you might say to yourself - I'll remember this for next time I feel lost. You start working out the optimism muscle.