Bathtime Revelations.

As I sat in my stupid hot steaming bath I realized a few things. 1) I have the ability to "tune out" my 3 kids, if I need to.  2) Happiness could be classified as a mood and feelings (so it is two separate entities) 3) My mood is pretty darn happy when I'm sitting in the tub alone! ( meaning without kids,  don't get me wrong I wouldn't be in a bad mood if my hubby joined me, of course ;)  4) I am incredibly blessed to have a husband who will put the kids to bed!

I do have to apologize to any person who has ever taken a psych course because I'm sure you would want to run me over with your car by now.  I keep thinking of new angles to this happiness business, and other than briefly reading  ( http://59seconds.wordpress.com/) ; I haven't done much.  It would make complete and total sense to do some research on this topic. So here it is universe:  this coming week I am going to research happiness so that I'm not blindly trying to figure this out on my own.

Now getting back to my bathtub revelations.  It occurred to me that if I could, for example tune out the noise my kids make when I'm driving, why can't I tune out the noise or non stop prattle of the monologue in my head.  In a way I guess I do every time I sing to the radio.  So I need a distraction in order to ignore the noise.  I'll have to think of a few more and learn to practice them in my spare time.  (**cough - cough**)  My second revelation has kind of been in the works for a while but it's the idea that happiness is a mood and a feeling.  The mood would be the intrinsic feeling of happiness (ie.  Happy mood), the feeling would be the more recognizable extrinsic feeling of happiness, dependent on outside means.  For example, while I was sitting in the stupid hot tub, my mood was good (like a 9 out of 10).  Nothing in particular was happening to be to bring on strong feelings of happiness, but I was experiencing happiness because I was also ignoring the monologue and enjoying the sensations of the tub. 


Check out this cute little mood test I found on the 59 seconds website.