Your needs, wants and desires are valid.
- A 2016 Harris Poll reveals that fewer than one in three Americans consider themselves very happy.
- “Research shows that at least 1/3 of retirees are depressed in the first two (2) years of retirement, and there is an increase of marital conflicts and satisfaction,” Sara Yogey, psychologist, Guide to Happy Retirement.
- 30-40% of people like their job.
- 90% of doctor visits are stress related according to Center of Disease Control and Prevention
The vast majority of people would experience more mental and emotional wellbeing doing something else, doing something they love.
Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, “You spend far more time on activities that dull you down than the ones that light you up.”
What is happening here? The numbers, the statistics and the illnesses show life would be better if you choose to be aligned with your desires and heart’s longing.
Yet, you stay stuck. You stay in jobs that deplete you. You live unhappy lives.
Why are we as a society not listening? Why are you not listening?
As Neale Donald Walsch says, “There is no security in doing something for a living when you are dying inside while doing it. That is taking care of the body at the expense of the soul. And a withering soul cannot help but produce a withering body.”
What’s crushing your joy?
Life is about setting your heart on fire.
It’s waking up the joy in you by feeding your soul.
How do you know what that is?
Use The 5/25 Rule of Buffett:
List the 25 things you love the most.
Put the top 5 on the left, put the bottom 20 on the right.
Focus only on the top 5. Why? These are what you say are most important to your life. Don’t give energy to the bottom 20. When you place energy everywhere, even to things you think are good, you deplete what is available to you. You sacrifice having the life you love. You stay stressed and overwhelmed.
Don’t dismiss your desires. They can be something you do for a living or as a hobby.
“ The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising and gave it neither power nor time.” Mary Oliver
Once you know what feeds your soul, find mentors or models of people who are the best at what you love. What traits are making them the best?
I just saw on my Facebook where someone asked who else has wanted to be a backup singer. Others wrote, I wanted to be lead singer or be on Broadway.
What keeps you from believing that you can do these things?
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outlier, writes how it takes 10,000 hours of practicing the correct way of doing something to be extraordinary like The Beatles or Bill Gates working on computers.
Maybe you don’t want to be at that level.
The key is to love what you are doing and keep making progress. Each step and decision will lead to a new and better opportunity.
Harvard Business Review shows that people who make progress every day toward something they care about report being satisfied and fulfilled.
Go after what you want. Your life depends upon it.
Use the 1% Rule by James Altucher. Get 1% better every day and by the end of the year it is compounded to 3800%.
Decide today that you will reverse engineer your life. That you will design your life around feeding your soul.
Know your 5/25 Rule of Buffett. Know what really matters to you.
Instead of going to a job that is zapping your energy, that you don’t like but pays the bills, design a 1-3 year plan to move toward what feeds your soul.
1% change every day.
Instead of being one of the statistics in retirement, go after what you want to do.
1% change every day.
Your health, wealth and spirit depend upon it.
Need help making it a reality, contact me at dottie@dottiehager.com. Together, you CAN have the life you want.