Experimenting with living daily life:From a place of calm and joy!!!I read in one of my spiritual/ self help books that things like calm nerves, optimistic view of life, relating in relaxed respectful  manner with others starts with reaching a state of relative calm in the am and then remaining aware of what you are thinking and feeling as things play out during the day. Sooo..... I have trying to follow this advice, consciously since about Wednesday.Every morning I try to get up and ready with my goal in mind which for the last couple of days has been getting to work. I noticed lots of fears and feelings going through me. I acknowledged to myself that  parts of me had concerns but I reminded myself that I had certain goals and nothing was going to stop me. On the subway I took out my inspirational reading material and read it until I arrived at work. I also kept returning my body back to a relaxed state once I noticed myself becoming tense.Once there I greeted everyone I ran into in a positive way. I did have thoughts and urges of avoiding people I don't particularly like but I reminded myself that doing that has never helped me before and  has usually undermined my confidence. I followed through in greeting these people and I realized that it did not hurt me to do so and in fact I felt proud of myself afterwards.I work with children and I tried to talk to them in a positive way, but I let myself become firm with them when it was called for but I tried to remain respectful the whole time. When I had to talk to them about their behaviour I did so but then I let the tenseness go from my mind and body and carried on with my day in a positive frame of mind.I noticed that they really like me listening to them and giving them positive feedback. I reminded them to wait and let others finish talking to me before their turn. When it became too much for meI set limits and asked them to find an activity to do because I needed to finish some work at the present moment. I glad I did because I was able to calm down and regain my good humour and when I was ready re enter conversation with them.I also confronted situations that usually freak me out and I avoid. For instance I asked a few questions of counter people when I was ordering food. I usually do not because it makes me uncomfortable and I start to stutter and stammer and become real nervous. This time I persevered and asked my questions even though there was some confusion around it. I noticed that I got the information I needed and they seemed alright with it.Furthermore I had conversations with two people and situations that usually make me very uncomfortable. One is a former worker in our organization who I have been convinced hates me and looks down on me. Needless to say I was less than thrilled to find out that she would be working we me for a couple of weeks. I did not let this on. In fact all week I have been talking to her when appropriate and even asked her a few questions about how her life is going. I even got through a 10 minute conversation with her without completely shutting down. I think I was able to do this because I managed my thoughts well. I told myself that it is okay if she does not like me that much as long asshe respects me. Furthermore I can respect her back by trying to talk to her about general things and things that matter to her if I feel like it.  These strategies worked very well for me.The second situation is that I ran into a neighbor on the street and soon realized that I would have to talk to her almost the whole way to my house almost four city blocks!!!! After the initial panic I decided that I would handle the situation  by asking her many questions about her life and her son.It worked we walked together to the lane that leads to my house, I made a tiny escape by telling her I was going to take the back way into my house. But we were both smiling when we said goodbye!!I forgave myself for enduring in the avoidist behaviour but felt good about myself otherwise.I will keep you informed as to how my experiment goes!Enjoy Life!!