Hill Holler

If you remember back a few months I blogged about happiness being the loneliest of mysteries. In essence, what makes me happy won’t necessarily do the same for you but that’s easy to forget.

Why are we never happy with what we have? It seems each time the goal’s achieved, we’re incapable of saying “ok, that’s enough.” The bar always gets raised higher or the achievement feels empty because we tell ourselves that if we hit it, it must have been too easy.

Funny how when everything we wish to happen happens, some still can’t quite accept it’s because of all the hard work that went before on focusing our thoughts to create the reality we want. It’s not simply ‘luck’. It’s what you drew to yourself. We find it hard to pat ourselves on the back and sit back, enjoying what we’ve achieved. Yet we know we can blink and have missed a month, a year, five years of our lives. Time you’ll never recover. While your nose was to the grindstone, the whole landscape of your world was changing.

You think life’s hard for you because you’re so busy working? Others have it much harder than you do. I’ll prove it.

Walk into any emergency room or ICU to see real hardship and suffering or visit a shelter. People often say they have to because “I want to give my family/my wife/my husband a better life.” That’s admirable of course. But what you give to your business in time and focus, you take away from those that love you most. There’s only 24 hours in a day and you can’t give your all to both round the clock.

There’s no have to. Everything is a choice and blend of priorities. Where the priorities fall on the list is entirely up to you. Once you’re beyond the levels of being able to provide adequate food, shelter and clothing for your family, everything else is a bonus.

Look around you. You’re online so you have access to a computer, probably your own. You’re most likely inside, which means you’re either at home, at work or in a library or internet cafe. That means you’re in comfortable surroundings. No doubt you have a fridge or vending machine only a few rooms or strides away from you. You’re not huddled in a doorway trying to stay warm or wondering where your next bite of food’s coming from.

You probably have close friends or family you could IM or call at a moment’s notice if you needed them or just to shoot the breeze. Heck, you might have one sitting close by right now that’s waiting for you to lift your eyes from the screen. They’re looking to make some kind of connection with you. Meanwhile you’re so absorbed in what you’re working on, it doesn’t register. How this is affecting our nearest and dearest and in turn, our lives, doesn’t become obvious until some crisis arises.

Hard work is to be applauded and yes, we all have to make money to survive, but there has to be a balance. Your life needs quality as well as your work.  No “when I’ve reached x target, we’ll do such and such” as a family or a couple or “if I can just get past these six months, then I’ll relax.” Career success isn’t the be all and end all if we want a well rounded life.

If your daily life is so frantic, you need to start relaxing now. Just promise yourself even half an hour or an hour a day where you do nothing but relax and forget work completely awhile. That’s all I ask. Schedule it into your day the same way you would anything else. (For all you spluttering ” I can’t give up an hour!!!”, how about sixty seconds?)

Think seriously about what makes you happy and what you can and can’t live without. I’m asking you to gain some perspective in life, then go hug that person waiting to hear you tell them they’re in the latter category. You’d be surprised how many don’t know it for sure.

Count your blessings, people. You have more than you think.