Happiness not guaranteed: Part 2
Working your way toward happiness takes … well, work. After the critical step of deciding what you want from life and what makes you happy, the next step is:
2) Being “independent of the good opinion of other people.”
Whoa, boy is this one difficult. I know a lot of people that fall victim to trying to please everybody. That’s probably the most ineffective waste of time you can conjure up. And I can’t say I’m not guilty of it occasionally as well – but the older I get the more I realize people’s opinions, demands, perspectives, and comments are very often based on what’s going on in their lives, not necessarily yours. Five people can witness the same situation and still have five different opinions on it. Because of this you’ve really got to get firm about what’s important to you and what you need to do to get where you want. I’ve had a ridiculous amount of resistance even just getting to the level I’m at now. But once you break through a couple “impossible barriers” you get a little better at remembering they’re not “impossible” just because other people can’t or don’t do it. Oh, and remember this, take advice sparingly. Listen to it all and then form your own judgment. It’s really hard to get accurate advice from people that aren’t you, don’t live your life, and don’t have your same goals.
3) Find people that have similar goals or drive. This has really saved me on multiple occasions. Now, when I look for advice I almost solely rely on my marketing and event specialist friend in LA, my self-employed friend in Portland, and my entrepreneurial friends here in Vegas.
4) You have to think about your thoughts.
This is where the majority of the discipline comes in. They say an average person has 60,000 thoughts a day. They also say that what you think about shapes what you do. So regulating that much stuff is almost a full time job. The most difficult thing I’ve had to learn is how to let go of stress. But the more you stress or linger on something the less energy you spend doing something positive. “If you think you can, you can; if you think you can’t, you can’t,” remember? There’s a heavy degree of truth in that. If you spend all day thinking you’ve blown a proposal, or a job interview, then there’s a strong possibility you have. Additionally, being in that train of thought makes you much more likely to do something to support it. I.e. If you stress out and start calling your interviewer every hour to make sure there’s nothing else you can do, you might just come off a little crazy. Borrowing trouble’s never good for anybody, but people do it more often that not. Think about it this way: If there’s a problem, worry about it when it actually becomes a problem.
Being as this is one of the biggest deterrents in being happy let me expand on this some more in my upcoming column.
Precocious entrepreneur, workaholic and a rabid perfectionist Crystal Starlight is a pro right down the line. Email her at [email protected]