“A
happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but
rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.”
- Hugh Downs
“Most
people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness
can be felt only if you don’t set any conditions.”
- Arthur Rubenstein
Personal
success sometimes seems so far away that your dreams look unreachable.
It is easy to fall into a trap of constant frustration instead of
always looking at tomorrow as a new day.
Some people always tend to think that happiness will only come
with something that has yet to happen in their lives.
It could be called "contentment procrastination"
because they are always under the impression that they cannot be content
with themselves or at peace with life until that one more thing has come
to pass such as: graduating
from high school or college, getting a good job, nailing that promotion,
making a certain amount of money per year, purchasing a new car, buying
that dream home or taking a dream vacation, traveling around the world,
going out with that special person, getting married, having kids, moving
to a new, more exciting place, losing those extra pounds or gaining some
muscle, having a stable work schedule or having a more flexible work
schedule, winning an award of some kind, gaining independence etc.
It
is a cycle most people have realized in their life before - wanting to
rush through everything to get to the next level without enjoying where
you are first. As a wise
philosopher once wrote,
"Happiness
is like a ball chased by a child - when you catch up with it, you give
it a kick."
A
simple yet profound thing about life is that you must be content where
you are to be happy, well-adjusted and have a clear vision for the
future. Being content,
happy and at peace with yourself does not mean you are to be complacent
and allow your development to stagnate. Contentment means that your visions for the future are not
just more well-defined but more easy to visualize and stay in touch
with, as opposed to being perpetually clouded.
Anxiety
about your present situation only makes you blind to what you really
want out of life. A person who is preoccupied with what is wrong with their
life is going to have an extremely difficult time knowing where they
really are now, much less visualizing where they want to be tomorrow. Only by accepting the present can you set realistic goals for
the future, and only by creating balance in your life can you feel
contentment.
This
goes for the mental, spiritual and physical aspects of your being.
One cannot outweigh the other in order to enjoy complete balance
in your lifestyle while achieving your full potential. I call taking
balanced, positive control of your life strong individual leadership.
In order to do this, you must first have respect for yourself
which ultimately leads to the ability to respect others for their unique
talents. In any area of
your life, “Leadership is respect and respect is power.”
By
learning to truly respect yourself you can more readily and
wholeheartedly respect those people with which you come in contact on a
daily basis. This leads to more personal and professional influence in
your life. Others will respect you much more when they feel your own
warmth and openness. This is how strong individual leadership helps to
build your own balance and positive influence over every segment of your
life.
When
you understand this, you can have genuine FUN every single day at the
same time you ambitiously move toward the achievement of your personal
goals. However, when
taking strong individual leadership for your life, it is important to
keep in mind some essential guidelines to personal and professional
fulfillment.
There
is a fine line between constantly "having a good time" while
putting forth no work for the future and being driven with work to the
point where you have no time to appreciate what you have driven yourself
to achieve. Of course you do have to work hard and be dedicated to your
goals. This will require some sacrifice at times but you can still enjoy
yourself along the way. Yet, in our modern work environment, more and
more people are becoming increasingly obsessed with “putting in the
hours”. This tends to cause a blur between knowing who you are and
being solely defined by what you do for a living.
Many
people, in today's fast-paced society, are faced with this
dilemma.
The pace of life just continues to get faster. A grandmother in her
seventies summed up the change in our society that has occurred in the
last 40-50 years. She explained:
“When
I was growing up we did not have personal computers, e-mail, faxes or
teleconferencing for business meetings. There was no world wide web to
instantly access any kind of information from around the globe. When we
banked we actually dealt with a human being instead of an ATM. It was a
much simpler world in which we lived but, ironically, we always had time
to sit and talk to each other at the dinner table. Families spent time
together on weekends enjoying each other’s conversation and actually
communicating face-to-face – not from a beeper or a voicemail message.
The world today has gotten so “advanced” that nobody has time for
the most important part of life – relationships. To live a
well-balanced life it is vitally important to be communicative with and
accountable to others.”
Typically,
we are now working harder than our parents did to maintain the same high
standard of living. This can be a dangerous trend.
Realistically, achieving our dreams does sometimes require us to
make some difficult decisions in terms of how our time should be spent.
This is not wrong if you can keep your priorities in order.
What
is happening in too many cases though is that every iota of time people
have is dedicated to work only. If
you are in that mode yourself, make a change today.
Take time to join a sports league or go to the park with your
family. Take a nice day trip on the weekend and allow your mind to
rest from work. Enjoy life!
The world is too beautiful to waste by being in a state of high
gear, fast - paced, go, go, go, work mentality, all day, every day.
Take
Comedian Red Skelton’s advice and really learn to have daily fun
through laughter. He said,
“I
live by this credo:
Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness
instead of sadness. Laughter
has always brought me out of unhappy situations.
Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to
laugh about if you try hard enough.”
Striving
to achieve your goals should be a fun experience to be shared with those
you love. In order to really stay focused you have to step back
sometimes, take a deep breath and let your hair down. In a deep
conversation on day, a minister friend of mine was explaining to me that
he had been at the bedside of many dying people. In
thirty years of experience, never even one time had a dying person said
they wished they had spent more time working. Every single person over
thirty years said they wished they had spent more time with their
family, friends and loved ones.
The
diary of a very materially successful man had been discovered after his
death. In one of the
entries that had been recorded several years before, he had written the
words, "Went fishing with my son today - a wasted day". His
son also kept a diary on a daily basis that was later found in an old
trunk. The entry for that
same date read, "I went fishing with my Dad today.
It was the greatest day of my life!"
It
is possible to be true to your obligations, to remain dedicated to your
career goals and to enjoy the lighter side of life at the same time.
Work and play go hand in hand to create a well-rounded, content
person who is physically and mentally healthy.
This goes for everyone regardless of what career you have chosen
for yourself.
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