She asked me how I was and I said,"Fine". She said,"Well, you seem fine but you seem SO fine that I am suspicious. Maybe so fine covers up feelings that are not really that fine."
I like to think that my attitude and my moods are more or less open to my choice. Sure, with sudden food poisoning or a painful broken foot, I am not going to be fine or act fine or say I am fine. But much of the time, I can get the feeling, the attitude I want.
I am experimenting with breathing exercises, mostly using "Conscious Breathing" by Gay Hendricks, PhD as a guide. Dr. Hendricks and his wife Kathlyn, who is also a PhD and also an author and a dancer, have written several books that have helped me. They have "Conscious Loving" and "Conscious Living", too, as well as many other books, that are written in straightforward, accessible language. Because of my experiments with the breathing exercises in the book and from reading "Joy on Demand" by Chade-Meng Tan, I feel somewhat able to detect a low mood, or unhappiness and modify myself to be different if I want to.
For $11.99, you can download Conscious Breathing from Amazon to a computer, Kindle app or Kindle reader and read it as often as desired. Gay Hendricks reports that he meditated and did breathing exercises regularly for decades and feels strongly that he benefited.
Sometimes, I don't want to move away from unhappiness. Several of my friends have died recently. To honor them, to participate in their funerals, to accept and be part of my own mortality, and to harmonize with the feelings of those grieving loss, I don't try to remove my unhappiness. But I am increasingly able to do so when I want to.
I am intrigued with the fact that I can exhibit such a positive attitude, genuinely honest and rooted, and yet elicit suspicion that I am playing or hiding my real feelings. I am not especially interested in communicating my moods accurately but I like to be able to fit smoothly into a crowd if I want to. So, I may experiment with achieving or displaying less cheer in order to be seen as having a better attitude.
