What are you doing with your life?

How is your life? Is it perfect? Probably not. But is there nothing that you can change? You see, most people if you ask, will say that no, it is not perfect, BUT… and then list their reasons why it has to be the way it is. “No-one’s life is perfect”; “You have to pay the bills” etc. But are these valid reason for changing nothing?

The trouble is, these reasons can become your “alibis” for not taking any serious action.  The better question to first ask is, “Am I willing to make happiness a bigger part of my life?” If not, ok, leave things as they are. You will get what others throw at you.

In my last article I presented a draft happiness checklist; my first attempt to put some of the findings of my own research into a simple format, as a starting point for improving happiness. Following that. I was joined in a discussion on the LinkedIn Group “NLP in the Workplace” (http://goo.gl/6i9VJA ) about success and happiness at work. One contributor advised  "Having as much fun as possible while still keeping your job?” While noting that “Fun” is an individual thing, and wondered if “personally rewarding” might be a better term.

I thought, you know, for most of us that’s got to be the “first base to head for, before contemplating anything drastic. So I proposed three stages, or levels of effort, that we should go through towards improving your happiness:

Stage One: Have as much fun as possible while still keeping your current job. You can expand this to include your current relationship/ family/ circumstances. Get curious and explore. Only you can know what “fun” is for you; you may call it pleasure, or personal reward, or something else.

Stage two: Do more of what you like, and less of what you don't.  This takes more effort, and I suggest it requires that you gather data on what actually makes you feel happy, as opposed to what you think should make you happy. More of that in a later article. It’s also the stuff of my upcoming short on-line training course.

Stage Three: Do what you enjoy and find a way to get paid for it. This is relatively rare, and admittedly more hardcore, but increasingly catching on. Especially in the early and post-retirement folks, but also in youngsters. I’ll talk more about this maybe in a future article. It’s definitely in my upcoming on-line training.

So for now, think about how you can have more fun doing what you already do. Any ideas you have, please share them - we’d all love to get any great ideas (legal, and decent please.)