You Don’t Need A Mate To Be Happy

If only I had a man, then I would have someone to travel with. If only I had a wife, then I would be eating better. What are your If Only’s? Waiting on our if only’s is physically draining. If only’s zap your energy, especially when it involves waiting on someone else to make the things we want in life happen.

You’ve been waiting all week to hear my tie in to connections with others as an energy source. Am I veering off course? Stay with me for a second, I will explain.

Positive Relationships

Physical connections are so important for physical energy. Positive relationships boosts our energy but negative relationships drain our energy. I mean physically draining. Sometimes when you just can’t get out of a funk, it has more to do with the negative people around you than you realize at the time.

You are the center of your own happiness

However, let’s go back to the if only’s. Just as an ‘if only’ zaps your energy when you are waiting for the right person, an ‘if only they weren’t so negative‘ can zap your energy if you are waiting on someone else to change. You won’t hear this often but in this case you are the center of your own happiness. You create your own energy but you do need connections to do it.

The Need for Human Touch

Connections with others are important for our personal happiness and physical energy. Research shows over and over that from the time we are infants to the day we die, we need human touch. We need to be hugged and held. We need positive people in our lives that encourage us and care about us.

These connections affect us physically. They create positive physical energy in our lives. If only we had them.

You Can Make Positive Connections

It is important to make these connections in your life and I am going to give you five simple things you can do to get started.

1. Assess your current relationships and rate them on the positive energy they bring to your life 1-5, 1 being the most positive. These are people you interact daily or at least once a week. If you don’t interact with anyone weekly or daily, then look at monthly or quarterly. Spend more time with your #1’s and less time with your #5’s.
2. Find more #1’s. You can join Meetup groups in areas of your interests, get more involved at your church or in your community civic groups, volunteer at a local hospital, or take a class at the gym, extension office, or local community college.
3. Get off your phone and step out of your comfort zone and talk to people as you interact in social groups. As you interact with positive people, extend an invitation to join you outside the group for another public event, a cup of coffee, or host a small gathering in your home like a card game or bbq. If they say no, keep asking others and don’t give up. You are looking for your positive energy people, they will come. And be sure and say, Yes, to invitations when you have the opportunity to.
4. Don’t wait for If Only’s to join in with the things you love to do. If you don’t like to travel alone, go with a travel group like Road Scholar or Odysseys. Don’t like to hike alone? Join a local Meetup Hiking group or start your own.
5. Sign up for events you’re interested in then as you meet people in the community throughout your day talk about it with them. “Hope this new hat I’m buying stays on my head on my float trip. Have you ever went on a float trip?” Yes or no, you can tell them how excited you are to try it. If they are interested or curious, invite them to join the event and tell them what group you are going with.

BONUS TIP: Hug someone every day.

We used to make the kids go around and hug everyone before they went to bed. Now it seems like people don’t want to do that any more. It’s like some kind of child abuse to make a child hug someone. I wouldn’t force them to give hugs but I would encourage it. Teaching a kid how to give a hug and to be comfortable receiving a hug can ease a lot of tension as they interact with others. Hugs are an important source of physical energy and human connection.

• How to extend a heart hug: Hugs can be awkward especially when you are tall and your huggee is short. A heart hug is where you raise your left arm and extend an invitation to hug and keep the right arm low dropping your right shoulder.
• A heart hug is equal. Both of you put your left arms over the other’s shoulder and the right arm around their waist. One person reaches up the other reaches down so you meet each other half way.
• A heart hug shares your heart energy with the recipient and theirs with you.
• A heart hug shares love, compassion, and empathy for another person.
• A hug boosts your physical energy and can help you get out of a funk.

If you are still working on creating some daily connections in your life, don’t stop, but hug your pet or a tree or a pillow. Don’t give up on making human touch connections. It takes effort on your part to make and keep positive connections but it will happen.

Any time you feel lonely or isolated or lack for positive human connections, just repeat this exercise.

 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6

Get Connected

For other ways to boost your energy, subscribe to my blog. This week I’ve been sharing about increasing and maintaining your physical energy. Next month we will focus on energy boosts for your mental, spiritual, and environmental health.

I’d love to hear how you make and maintain positive connections. How do you minimize negative connections?  Scroll down to comment below or click on the link to my facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/brixeyks