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.

    So from this story we learn that the first
    group of 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.  

The second group of friends we have, are our talents.  We can see what we
do 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.
Living According to Your Design

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"