| Who are you? And what are you doing? And are those two things in line? When trying to be happy, there are really two things we can do. We can do more of the things that make us happy. And we can do less of the things that make us unhappy. And when I say "do things," this includes thinking, talking and physically doing stuff. And then there are really two types of things we do. Big things and small things. Big things are things like your job. Small things could be things like making coffee. We'll still deal with some of the small things, but one of the biggest big things, is our job, or our career. Not considering my happiness in decisions until now, what did I consider? I considered what I believed God's calling was on my life, and what He was telling me at the time. I considered what I liked and didn't like, but mostly, I just considered that it was important to "have a job," and in this context, I considered what jobs I could probably get. So my life sort of just edged from one job to the next in a kind of upwards motion, providing me with some sense of fulfillment but definitely not any happiness. I have since become much wiser in the decisions that I make when it comes to my career and planning my life. One of the things I have discovered in life is that most people die having never even begun to know the potential they had. I've found that most people have been so conditioned and pressurised that they have just about lost all connection within themselves, to themselves. I was close to this, and since having broken free from this, I seemed to have become better able to notice this in other people. I would like to encourage you to think about this: What do you WANT to do? If you know the answer to this question, then well done to you! You already have done better than most people you see around you. If you don't know the answer to this question, then I have a few tips and tricks that I have learnt over the years to help answer this question. But before we get to those, I must point out to you the importance of this question and its answer. I will be giving you all sorts of tools that I have discovered, to change your life. If you don't know where you want to change it to, you are going to possibly just make it worse. A guy that did some building for me once, looked at some of my DIY work, and he said: "You are improving things worse." Knowing what you don't want, is not enough. Until you know what you DO want, you will just keep replacing things in your life that you don't like, with things that you will most probably not like either. Begin to get to know yourself. Start thinking about what you want. I started asking myself this question about seven years ago. No-one had pointed out to me how easy it was to deceive yourself about what it is that you want in life, and so I made some radical changes in my life, only to become more and more unhappy - until I discovered that enjoying the journey to my goal is as important, if not more important, than achieving the goal itself. There is a lot of literature out there about setting and achieving goals. However, there is not a lot that helps you to know which route is suitable for you. To help us answer this question, we have a few friends within ourselves and around us that help us. The first challenge to this is the challenge of ruthless honesty with ourselves. Remember you are taking the first steps of a journey that will change your life forever. Learning to be honest with yourself will help you a great deal every step of this journey. I have a little philosophy in life which I call the "car and tractor" philosophy. For this philosophy to work you have to believe in the concept that we are created beings with a purpose. To see what I mean, read "The Parable of the Tractor and the Ferrari" This parable shows the way many people live. They are tractors on the freeways, or station wagons ploughing fields. I was one of those. They hate what they are doing, and they're not very good at it, but they compensate for that through sheer willpower. They keep trying all the success formulas that they're learning from the Ferraris around them and cannot understand why they are getting more and more unhappy. Many of these people are achieving their goals. They might be successful at what they do because they try so hard. But they remain unhappy. They drag themselves to work every day, and drag themselves home.
friends we have, are our emotions. Our emotions are incredibly honest. If you are doing what you don't like, you will become unhappy. You can learn all sorts of motivational tricks and methods - but ultimately they will only allow you to override your emotions for a time. Eventually, ignoring your emotions will drive you to burn-out, depression, physical illness or maybe suicide. By learning to take note of what your emotions are telling you, you can learn to know what you naturally enjoy and what you naturally don't enjoy doing in life. well and what we battle with. Often, but not always, the things we are good at happen to also be the things we have a natural interest in. So we can start aligning these two things, to begin to understand what we were made for. I am convinced that in each of us there is a group of talents that co-incide perfectly with a group of our natural interests and passions. The third group of friends are memories and observations. Observe yourself and think through your own history. Ask yourself questions like: "When was I really happy?" "What are the things that I do when I don't feel like working?" I have found this question especially useful. There are things that we naturally seem to lean towards doing. When we feel like doing nothing, we tend to not do nothing - we tend to do something which we believe is a "waste of time". Those are often the things that you actually love doing. I have, at times, started keeping a journal where, at the end of the day, I would record the things that I'd enjoyed during that day. After a few weeks, this became an interesting map of my own interests and enjoyments, and a similarly interesting map of the things I didn't enjoy. These are just some ideas - some pointers. Use these as a first step. Find out who you are. When you align your life with yourself, you will find that the pleasure of living eclipses the need to measure up to the definition of success of those around you. But there is more than just our design. I blogged about it over here Once you have figured out what you want to do, you may as well start doing something about it. Your life will only change, when you change it. And change takes a moment. |
Please email me for any queries ashton@ashtonfourie.com |
Living According to
Your Design
Your Design
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A great resource for learning about your design, are two books by Marcus Buckingham, called: "Now Discover Your Strengths," and "Go Put your Strengths to Work" |
