One of the hardest decisions always seems to be getting clear on what it is we want. Many of us can figure out what we want to have, but who do we want to be and what do we want to do?
Goldie Hawn did it right when she said ” I want to be happy”. I mean, how much clearer can you get! But what does it mean to be happy?
We spend an enormous amount of time looking out into the world and making decisions based on what is going on out there. Seriously, decades upon decades many of us make personal choices based on what others are doing and being. Of course I don’t speak for everyone. Some people are born knowing what they will do and, no matter what happens, never manage to get distracted. We probably all know of someone like this.
The rest of us have to climb mountain after mountain and fall on our faces multiple times before we decide that failure isn’t so bad. It’s really just telling us what didn’t work. But, to be fair, most of us are finding grey hairs by this point.
Back to the “happy” question. Picking a career or vocation is often based on what other people say. This is so true when we are younger and our whole life is ahead of us. Our parents want us to have more than they had, WE want to have more stuff and money because we watched our family struggle. Will these things make us happy? Is it the stuff or is it what we think we will be able to do with the money…and getting stuff is one thing we can do with money. You can read self-help books forever on this.
So we go to school thinking about what we want to do when we get out and some of us change directions at some point. We might start out changing directions because that college degree seemed like a good idea at the time but the degree we enrolled in isn’t a good fit, or we may decide that we have had enough of the job we got because of that degree and want something that might make us happy or feel more fulfilled. We go back to school or go to work in a completely unrelated field that didn’t even require a degree, like retail, but it matches our needs that the previous job didn’t.
And then something happens that sort of makes time seem to have disappeared. We get ready to retire, get downsized or any of a variety of things that can happen, and we are faced with change, yet again. It is much scarier when you get older. We now know too much and have acquired new skills like doubt and pessimism.
I wrote all of that to let you know that if any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Changing directions is a choice though and if you can calm your mind and find the answer to the question “what makes you happy?”, you may have a chance to create something that is only influenced by your higher-flying feelings and not what other people think you should be doing.
It’s your life. Yes, there are a lot of other people in it that matter, but you are the most important person to you. And when you put your head on the pillow for the last time, do you want to regret what you didn’t do or find peace in knowing that you did your best?
Follow your heart, live your values and never stop learning from either of those.
Choose happiness
Vanderslice Coaching 