03 Aug Here’s why you MUST make a happiness list right now!
via Inc.com by Minda Zetlin
What do you do when your career is moving along nicely, your relationships are going smoothly and your health is good–but you just aren’t as happy as you’d like to be? That was the question facing me about two months ago.
A while back, I wrote a column from an interview with executive coach and best-selling author Wendy Capland, and as a follow-up we decided she would coach me and that I would write about it. We talk about once a month by phone and most of those conversations revolve around my desires for career advancement, or sometimes work-life balance. But in one of our recent sessions, I posed the problem of happiness instead. I’d been making steady progress on several of my career goals (for instance, I topped 1 million readers a month for this column for the first time). Things were going great but, I said, “I’m just not feeling the joy.”
Her response was to give me an assignment: Create a list of things that make me happy so that I can make sure to make those things part of my life. It was a great idea, and something everyone should do a few times a year. Here’s why:
1. It’s your job to make yourself happy.
The people who love you are (or should be) committed to your happiness. But no one knows as well as you do what will and won’t make you truly happy. Ultimately, it’s your job and no one else’s to make sure your life as joyous as it can be.
2. It’s too easy to get hyper-focused on work.
Maybe your work makes you happy. That’s certainly true for me. But even the most satisfying job is full of stresses and pressures. Meanwhile working long hours and taking too little time off has become a norm in our society. Thinking about what really makes you happy, whether it’s certain aspects of your job, or being with your family, or something else altogether can help you focus your attention on what really matters to you. And if your work doesn’t make you happy, it can help you motivate you to make a change…
…keep reading the full & original article HERE