When people work with me, it’s because they want to be happier. They want healthier, more honest relationships, fulfilling work and days filled with joy and meaning.
Who doesn’t want that, right?
And yet so many of us are stuck. We know we want more from our lives, we know we are willing to work hard to get it, to put ourselves out there to get unstuck, we even are starting to believe it’s possible…but we still don’t make the first move.
Why?
I think it’s because we connect a “happier life” with a “completely different” life. We go all Eat Pray Love and tell ourselves the only way to find REAL happiness is to change everything. We’re going to have to leave our jobs, leave our marriages, cut off all our old friends and move to Thailand to focus on deep breathing.
That’s all or nothing thinking. It creates a false binary between “my current unhappy life” and “my totally different happy life.” This idea that we can only be happy if we change everything paralyzes us. It’s the same kind of thinking that causes so many of us to give up on fitness or nutrition goals. They seem too big and require too much change so we don’t even get started, or we give up right away.
All or nothing thinking discounts things like Journey, Evolution, Shift. It imagines the human spirit like a light switch: HAPPY / UNHAPPY, instead of something like a tree or plant: growing everyday, evolving with the conditions, always reaching for the sun.
The funny thing is that I’ve worked with people who have given up everything to have a “happy” life…and a few years down the road, they were just as stuck. The new relationships they’d formed were starting to look a whole lot like the old ones they’d left behind. That same stuck feeling was creeping up behind them. That’s because change takes work, and it takes time, and the shift has to come from within.
So, if you’re feeling stuck this week. If you’re feeling trapped in a mindset or a relationship or a location or a job…and you’re telling yourself that the only way to be happy is to upend your whole life…I have a simple assignment for you:
Do more of what you love this week. Spend more time doing what you love. Twice as much time, if you can swing it. If you love being in nature, turn that weekly hike into a daily mini-hike. If you’re craving quiet time, cancel your plans…just for this week. Cook more. Cook less! If you’re considering a career change, read a book or schedule a call with me, just to learn more. Dip your toe into the future. You don’t have to jump, sweetie!
Alright, I’m waiting to hear from you about how your week went! And if you want to find how you can shift your perspective from constantly being on the search for that “happy life”, I’m here for you. You don’t need to change your life or leave your current one in order to be happy. It just takes a little perspective and a tiny shift to make everything you want in life look exactly what you dream of.
