“A good man will not waste himself upon mean and discreditable work or be busy merely for the sake of being busy. Neither will he, as you imagine, become so involved in ambitious schemes that he will have continually to endure their ebb and flow.” – Seneca
How to be happy?
Here’s the thing: It’s a question that’s not easy to answer, because there is no right or wrong way to happiness, wealth, meaning, love and all things you consider important in life.
If you’re working on building a new/improved/better life for yourself, then you might have come across a wide variety of articles, advice, tutorials and strategies on how to finally achieve your greatest dreams, or to realize your vision of the best future.
You might find that with the volume of information available and accessible to people today, the principles of achieving happiness can be so diverse — or more accurately, totally polarizing. Some paths may work for some people, while the same method will produce different results for others.
But you know what? If you’re really serious about getting to where you want to be, then you need to start taking the steps today because unless you become an overnight millionaire, achieving your best life ever is never a linear and quick-scheme process.
To get you going, here is one strategy that you might want to study or consider:
One of the polarizing statements about achieving happiness is: “Doing what you love will make you happy,” versus “Loving what you do is the path to happiness.”
It’s like the chicken and egg question that will trigger debates among people. But for entrepreneur Sean Kim, the latter is the more sound strategy, with him declaring, “You should love what you do. Not do what you love.”
Here are three initial steps you need to take should you decide to follow the “love what you do” path:
Discover your real passion. For some people, their passion has been clear since childhood. But many more will need some serious self-analysis to really pinpoint their core passion.
To find the answer, it can be as simple as handwriting a list. Put into paper the activities, tasks and topics that you volunteer to take part in, even if there’s no pay in return. From this list, you can now extract your passion/s.
Take it to the real world. Now that you know what your passions are, it’s time to see if you’ll get paid for doing it.
To check the trends and demand for your topic, you may use tools such as Google Trends, attend conferences and trade fairs related to it, check job ads if there are many openings for jobs related to it, and take a look at the other people and businesses providing what you may also have the ability to offer, and how they are doing so far.
Master your skill set. If you find out that there’s a demand and that people are willing to pay for what you can do, the next important step is to make sure you are perfectly great at it.
Invest in your education and training for that particular niche or discipline. Find mentors and learn from their wisdom and experience. Be ready to take (calculated) risks so you can bump your ability to the next level and ensure you’ll be offering a little extra something to your potential customers.
And here’s a final thought for you: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
May you have a rewarding journey ahead!
Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR)
