Someone asked me to review an app called “Let it Go.” Basically you write down what’s bothering you like, “I like the smell of skunk. Is there something very wrong with me?” and “I wish my dog would stop sniffing my butt. It really bothers me when she does that. The fact that she continues to do it makes me feel so unheard!”

Then the app releases those thoughts for you.

Exactly how it works is unclear because I don’t actually own the app. I’ve only read an email about it. I thought about trying it out. But then I looked around my living room. There are no curtains. The furniture is all gone, too. The corners of all the walls are covered in blue tape.

The only thing in this room is my desk, my computer, and my chair.

The room is so empty that there’s an echo every time I type anything on the keyboard.

My husband is painting, you see. He’s also still painting the child’s bedroom. And the hallway. And the dining room.

When he told me weeks back that he was going to paint I believe my exact words were, “Please don’t.”

“It won’t take long,” he said.

“That’s what you said about the child’s bedroom. You’ve been not painting it since before Halloween.”

“But we already moved all the furniture so we could have the floors redone. Now is the perfect time to paint,” he said.

I thought about saying, “Now is the perfect time to paint for people who actually paint when they say they are going to.” Instead I said, “How about we hire people to do it!?”

“Nah, I can do it,” he said.

I sighed. I already knew how this was going to go. “Okay, fine,” I said. “But don’t you dare set up the television until you’re done painting.”

Then I went to the store and I ordered this self massaging heated recliner that I’ve always wanted, and I had it delivered. It’s now the only other piece of furniture in this room other than my desk and my desk chair.

Some other wife would probably be livid over this the-house-still-isn’t-painted situation. Every time she needed an envelope and realized that she couldn’t find one because all the envelopes are packed away inside of some box that is under other boxes out on the porch where the rest of the things that used to be inside her house now reside, she would probably spank her husband with a paint brush, assuming she could fine one.

Not me. Over the years, with much meditation, I’ve become a master Let-It-Goer. If I can’t find an envelope, this is what I do: I ask my husband to find it for me. And then I go sit in my massage chair.

All better.

You envy me, don’t you? At the start of this story, you never in a million trillion years thought you would, but envy me you do. Everyone should have a heated, self massaging recliner.

Seriously, if every person in the world owned one, there would be world peace.

At the very least, there would be marital peace. I’m living proof.

Oh, sure, I could yell about the fact that I can never find anything when I need it because everything that I own is in storage. I could complain that I can’t walk around my house naked without all the neighbors saying, “Oh, so that’s what a woman’s middle aged body looks like!” I could gripe how the dog has been breaking into her food container ever since my husband removed the doors to the closet that houses the food.

But why bother? None of those things are going to get this house painted.

So rather than get irritated, I’m amused. It’s funny, you know? It’s especially funny when I have people over. Then I can say things like, “Well, I’d offer you a seat, but as you can see…” and “Okay you get the massage chair for 15 minutes. Then you have to give someone else a turn” and “Well we could eat dinner here standing up or we could go out. Your call.”

I’m also curious. How long can the man survive without the TV? What will be the event that motivates him to paint the whole house in just a couple hours? Will it be the Florida vs. Florida State game in the fall? The Tour de France in the summer? Or something much sooner? The Super Bowl perhaps?

And I’m thankful. My husband might take a whole year — or a decade — to paint a house, but he fills my car with gas so I don’t have to. It’s been an average of 3 degrees here for the past week, and I’m not talking about Celsius. Let’s just say that if I had a choice of furniture where it belongs or a bottomless tank of gas, I’d go with the gas. Wouldn’t you?

He also makes my lunch every day.

And he boils water for my tea and steeps the bag for exactly three minutes — no more, no less — and even brings it to me while I’m concentrating on writing a post about how he’s not painting our house.

If I want something from the grocery store — say chewable Vitamin D3, 1000IU per chew — I just write it down and magically it appears in a kitchen cabinet. When he sees me chewing on it, he asks, “Is that the right kind?” It always is. My husband never buys the wrong kind of anything. He’s detail-oriented like that. Like, next decade, when this house is completely painted and all the furniture is back where it belongs, there will not be one drip of paint where it does not belong. The man is careful and precise.

I could go on but, if I do so, I fear you will envy me for much more than my heated massage chair.

Now, sure, not everyone can afford a heated massage chair, but that doesn’t mean that not everyone can let go. The chair is nice, of course, but what really helps me is this: counting my blessings. Chances are, there’s a lot of beauty in your life that you take for granted. Your spouse might be irritating in some ways, but I’m guessing he or she is plenty awesome in many others.

Imagine a typical day without your spouse in it. What would be different? What would you miss? What wouldn’t happen if your spouse wasn’t around? What things would you have to start doing for yourself?

Maybe, after doing that, you’ll find that you let go a little.

Here’s another thing I do. I ask myself, “If today were my last day to live, would I spend it feeling irritated about this?”

The answer, of course, is no. If I only had a few minutes left to live, I wouldn’t waste them on anger.

I just hug my loved ones, and I’d call dibs on the massage chair.

Wouldn’t you?

When I got the following email, it brought back many fond memories.

Several years ago I took a job in a remote part of Texas.  I was not happy about moving there, but I needed the job. I met someone, we fell in love and got married. I told her before marriage that my plans for living there were short-term, and she said she had no problem moving with me when the time came. It’s now been two years later, and I am blessed with a job that will allow me transfer just about anywhere.

Now she tells me that she doesn’t want to leave until her son graduates in six more years.

I probably could stomach it that long, but I won’t be happy at all. Just to be clear, I absolutely love her and I am very happy with her. We enjoy each other immensely and are always doing things together. I’ve never met anyone like her.  However, I just can’t see myself in this place for 6 more years. I will go crazy.

I feel that I have a decision to make. Do I make the move without her and hope she’ll change her mind? Or do I stick it out here and be miserable? I’m no stranger to being in places I don’t want to be. I was in the military for twenty years, and I learned you have to make the best of it wherever you are. But I feel she’s holding me back from something I’ve wanted most of my life. My happiness is important to me. She is part of that happiness but not the sole source of it. Am I being too selfish if I decide to leave without her? – James

Dear James,

Roughly 17 years ago, I met a young man and I fell in love. We were liberal fitness enthusiasts who loved to eat just as much as we loved to sweat, meditate and do downward facing dogs. But our town was conservative. Italian fare was the extent of the exotic dining, and the yoga classes were few and far between.

We both dreamed of living somewhere else—in a trendy liberal town such as San Francisco, Austin, or, most likely, Boulder. We loved the food in these cities. We loved the culture. We loved the people, and we loved the surroundings.

I felt I needed to be in one of those cities to be happy.

Flash forward a couple years. Now I’m married to that young man. I’ve left my job as an editor at Runner’s World magazine. I’m a freelance writer and editor. I can work anywhere. There’s no reason for us to stay.

Yet when I suggest a move, my husband tells me that we can’t. The house is too new. We’d lose money if we tried to sell. “We can’t go anywhere for 10 years,” he says.

“Ten years?” I cry. “I’ll never last that long.”

I mope. I incessantly bring it up for a while. He stands firm.

I decide to pay down our mortgage as fast as possible. Every month I put extra money toward the principle. I make it my secret mission.

Life goes on. I turn into an amateur gardener. I obsess over plants, bulbs, seeds, and small trees. Neighbors walk by while I am gardening. They tell me they love the sunflowers, my newest addition. They mention that deer won’t eat flowers that smell like garlic and rotten eggs. Some drop off gifts: clippings, plants, bulbs, and flowers that they’ve dug from their gardens so I can plant into mine.

Eventually I adopt a dog. When I walk with him, my neighbors tell me how handsome he is. Soon I know all of my neighbors who have dogs.

The dog comes with me when I run errands. As a result, I get to know the tellers at the bank, and the woman who works the register at the post office.

A farmer’s market opens near me. I go every week. I get to know all the farmers.

We have a baby and I get to know all of my neighbors who love babies.

It’s not long before I can’t go anywhere in town without seeing someone I know. Some of these people are liberal fitness enthusiasts like us. Others are conservatives who tell me that kale is a four-letter word. And many others are different in some other way. I realize that I don’t have to be like people to like being with them.

Eventually my baby turns into a toddler. The house is dangerous for a toddler. We decide it’s time to move.

Now everything is different. The housing market is booming. Thanks to all my extra principle payments, we hardly owe anything on the mortgage, either. We’ll walk away from our house with more than six figures in our pockets.

We could move anywhere.

You want to know where I decided to move? You want to know where I just had to live? The new house that I fell in love with?

The one on a corner lot that seemed too perfect.

Where there were hardwood floors that I just had to have.

And the where our kid could ride a bike without getting hit by a car and even walk to a playground and to her school.

The neighborhood where kids went trick or treating, and where every one seemed to have a dog.

The little town that had a Thai place and a Middle Eastern restaurant and a yoga studio, too.

It was a house just two miles away. We didn’t even need a moving truck. I just put a couple boxes in my car at a time and drove back and forth until the deed was done.

We’re happy here, in the town that I thought I absolutely had to leave.

James: Things change. Places change. People change. Attitudes change. Restaurants change. Stores change. Main streets change.

But most important of all: minds change. Happiness is not found outside of ourselves. It is not something that you will discover in a new house, a new neighborhood, or a new state.

Happiness comes from within.

If you can’t be happy in Texas, I’m guessing you won’t be happy somewhere else, either.

If you can be happy in Texas, you can be happy anywhere.

And once you can be happy anywhere, chances are, you’ll never want to leave.

Readers: I don’t think I answered Jame’s question. Is he being selfish? Should he move? What’s your advice? 

What Will You Do With that Second Chance?

Our power was out. So was everyone else’s due to a storm. It had been out for days and now we were out of food.

We drove 20 minutes and stopped at the first diner that had lights on and cars in the parking lot.

It was a 20-minute wait for breakfast. The waiting area was standing room only and full of people who don’t usually eat at diners.

We finally sat down. We finally ate. We eventually left.

When we got to the car, my kid realized she’d left her favorite ball cap on the table. I ran back in to get it, but I didn’t get far. Getting through the crowded waiting area was like getting through a Wipe Out obstacle course. And coming my way was a little old lady with a cane. She was bent over and shuffling her feet in that unsteady way that makes one think that she might fall and break her hip at any moment. She had just enough of a gap between waiting patrons to shuffle forward.

It would have been kind for me to step to the side and wait for her to pass.

And I considered doing this. Really, I did. But this would have required me to wait for a very, very, very long time. She just wasn’t moving very quickly, you know? My kid and my husband were waiting outside in a running car, and every minute I stood and waited was a minute that the waitress could be giving my kid’s ball cap to someone else.

It was my kid’s favorite ball cap. I believe I told you that.

So I attempted to gently inch past the little old lady.

I couldn’t quite get past her without bumping against her. She looked up. She might have been annoyed. She might have been surprised. She might have been scared. I really don’t know. I don’t know because I inched past her so quickly that I never looked at her face.

I felt instantly guilty, but I consoled myself, “I’m doing a favor for my kid. Sometimes in order to make one person happy, another person ends up unhappy. That’s the way life is.”

This did not help one bit. It didn’t help because I knew it wasn’t true. So I promised myself that, were I ever to have to get through a crowded diner again, I would step aside if a little old lady were coming my way. I promised myself that I would do this no matter what the emergency was. I would even do it if I was about to pee my pants.

I got the ball cap and then turned to leave. Now the old lady was attempting to walk down five cement steps that separated the diner from the parking lot. She couldn’t quite reach the railing and her cane didn’t quite reach the step below.

It didn’t look good.

“Would you like some help?” I asked.

She didn’t respond.

I assumed she remembered me from before and was probably thinking, “That woman is going to push me down the steps just to get me out of her way.”

I slowed my pace. I got in front of her. I held out my hand. She reached out for my hand. She took it. She looked up. She smiled. Soon I could feel her shifting her body weight. Now I was supporting her. She was steady. She tightened her grip, curling her fingers around my palm. She walked down the steps.

She thanked me. I told her it was nothing.

I got in the car and I handed the hat to my kid. My kid said, “Mommy, if you had done that at my school, you would have gotten a bucket filler award.”

I thought about telling her that I didn’t deserve an award because as helpful as I’d been when I’d helped the lady on the steps, I’d been just as unhelpful earlier when she was inside the restaurant.

But then I realized that I’d gotten a second chance—a chance to live up to my potential and be the person I know I can be. I could have just as easily blown my second chance as I’d blown the first one.

At least I had learned from the first mistake. By doing so, I didn’t commit a second one.

It’s my belief that this sort of thing happens all the time in marriage and in life. We mess up somehow. Maybe we are too critical or we lose our temper. Maybe we talk when we should be listening. Maybe we leave dishes in the sink. Maybe we shrink our spouse’s favorite sweater.

Maybe we drink the last beer.

Whatever it is, we do something that we have been trying not to do.

And we feel like a failure.

Then life gives us a second chance. We have another chance to positive, to not lose our temper, to listen, to wash the dishes or to offer that last beer to our spouse.

Sometimes we take that second chance and we shine.

Other times, however, we don’t even notice the second chance has been handed to us.

Still other times we notice, but we decide to screw up almost on purpose, and we do this out of anger.

It’s my belief that the difference lies in forgiveness—forgiveness of ourselves.  If we can learn how to forgive ourselves for screwing up the first time, we’ll be a lot more likely to notice those second chances and to make the most of them. Rather than telling ourselves, “I’m always such a bad listener” or “I’m always so critical of my spouse,” we can instead say, “This is an opportunity for me to listen. Right now I have a second chance to do this right. I’m going to be the person I want to be—right now.”

Or am I reading too much into this?

The transition into motherhood stands out as one of the most potent pro-depressants I’ve ever experienced. The first few years of my daughter’s life were tough on me. I was sad, anxious, grumpy, resentful, angry, and downright physically ill most of the time.

I’m now much more peaceful, blissful and content. Still, the emotional angst was severe enough and went on long enough to encourage me to become a card carrying member of the Once And We’re Done Club.

Then roughly a year ago, I met Meagan Francis in a New York bar. Meagan showed up in a glamorous gown. Her hair was styled, and her skin seemed lit from behind. She dripped happiness from her every orifice.

At first, I figured she must only have one child. Nope. She informed me that she had five! I happened to know that she also had a demanding career. Like me, Meagan is a freelance writer. Freelance writing is currently one of the toughest professions to earn a living. It’s only eclipsed, perhaps, by acting and art. To make ends meet, most of the freelancers I know work late hours, weekends, and holidays. Freelance writing is also very tough emotionally. Freelance writers are often the brunt of more criticism and rejection than any other entrepreneur.

I looked at Meagan and I just couldn’t figure out how she did it. How on Earth was she seemingly able to raise five kids, thrive as a freelancer, have time for the occasional manicure and walk around with a happy skip in her step. It was right around the time I was wondering this that Meagan mentioned that she writes a blog called TheHappiestMom and had a book coming out by the same name. I thought, “Of course!” I mean, if anyone is an expert on happiness, it’s her. It’s one thing to manage to be happy when you are rich, childless, and kept. It’s quite another to do it when you are the mother of five who is working in one of the most thankless professions on the planet.

Meagan’s book The Happiest Mom just released. I got my hands on an early review copy. The book is beautiful. I felt happier just by touching and fondling it. It’s also full of counter intuitive advice that is new, interesting, and effective. I’ll be giving away two copies of the book by the end of the post. For now, here’s how Meagan answered some of my questions.

1. I’ve written about the importance of caring for your own needs and how this can benefit the entire family. This concept, however, can be controversial and some people assume putting yourself first is the same thing as being selfish. What are your views on this?

I think it would be a bad thing to ALWAYS put yourself first. Part of being a human is learning to balance your own desires with the needs of others, and think beyond what you want. But I think most moms take it too far in the other direction–always putting everyone else first, until they wind up exhausted, spent, and resentful. Being a good mom requires enthusiasm and energy and commitment, and it’s hard to to drum up those qualities if you’ve been ignoring your needs for sleep, good food, socializing, exercise, and an inner life of your own. Also: being completely selfless has a way of turning into martyrdom, which isn’t the greatest example to set for your kids.

2. Is there anything moms do in an effort to improve their lives that paradoxically causes more distress and makes them more unhappy?

I think we tend to deny our own personalities sometimes in the name of self-improvement, and it doesn’t always work. We can’t all be loosey-goosey earth mothers or super-ambitious go-getters. That said, I think sometimes adopting a little more structure can make a laissez-faire mom a bit happier (it was easy to get by without a reliable bedtime before you had kids, but after they’re here, it might just make you crazy) and on the flip side, women who were super structured before having children might find that “going with the flow” a little helps them keep their expectations in check.

3. What’s your best tip for moms who want to have a happier relationship with their men?

Realize that your life won’t be like THIS (whatever rough stage “this” is) forever. Having small children is incredibly stressful to a marriage and you won’t even have time to work through some of the growing pains you experience during that time, because they keep changing! (Unless you have a large family, in which case you’ll probably start to get it figured out by, oh, kid number four or so…) But the good news is, infancy and toddlerhood really go by so fast. In a few years you’ll be sleeping again, your child won’t be hanging on your legs all day, you’ll be able to more easily plan time together or keep from snapping at your spouse because it’s been at least a week since you had any time alone. Or maybe you’re in a rough spot because of a layoff or a troubled teen or (fill in the blank.) Either way, the hard time you’re having probably won’t define your entire life together, so work on staying as connected as you can, as loving as you can, as forgiving as you can, and then dig in your heels and ride it out to smoother waters.

4. Any secret tips for getting your spouse to pitch in more without having to nag or hear him groan or roll his eyes?

Oh gosh. I wish. I think depending on the guy, he may respond to requests, he may respond to lists, he may respond to outright sexual bribery…but he may not respond to any of those things. Here’s the thing: I have found a lot more satisfaction in my marriage by working on myself and adjusting my own expectations and standards than I ever did trying to get my husband to change. Once I stopped viewing my husband’s failure to do the dishes as a personal insult, I realized it’s really not that big a deal to just take care of it myself. Especially when I stop to really consider all the things he does around the house–like acting as our family’s unpaid IT consultant–that I don’t always take a moment to notice when I’m mad about the wadded-up towels on the floor.

5. You’ve managed to juggle a demanding career, have 5 kids, and stay sane. What’s your secret?

It might sound Pollyanna-ish, but I really believe that looking at my life in a positive light helps me stay on top of things without unraveling. Instead of thinking, “Oh, I’m way too busy this week, I don’t have enough child care, my house is a mess…” I try to think about things in more positive terms: “I’m looking forward to this exciting time. Wow, I am so efficient, I can handle this schedule without a lot of help! I wonder how clean I can get this house this afternoon…”

Perception is reality. If I think of myself as tired, overwhelmed, and unhappy, that’s how I’ll feel. And vice versa.

To win a copy of The Happiest Mom, just comment on this post. You can either share your best happiness tip, or you can tell us how parenting or marriage destroyed your peace of mind. Or you can just let us know why you need this book. I’ll pick two winners by Sunday night.