Schedule Happiness
One of my favorite things to do on a weekend is to slow down, go to a bookstore, grab a cup of coffee, and read a book with actual pages. Breaking away from the continual scrolling on a screen and flipping through pages is pure bliss. This past weekend, while at Barnes and Noble, I picked up a new book titled “All It Takes Is A Goal” by Jon Acuff. The book is essentially a personal development book that aims to facilitate action in defining your personal definition of a happy future, starting with looking at your past. This goes against most self-help book approaches as they begin by asking you to state your dreams and start working towards them. However, this approach asks the reader to reflect on moments they knew made them happy instead of moments they never experienced that they imagined would make them happy as a starting block to reimagining their dreams.
In the book, there is an exercise where the reader is asked to get a notebook and document the happy moments of their lives. It could be as simple as sipping coffee on the patio (that’s me), as awesome as beating cancer, or as grand as going to Maui. The assignment was to document life’s happy moments. After documenting the moments, the reader was tasked to categorize each moment into one of the four domains: Experience, Accomplishment, Relationship, or Object. And. You guessed it, the next step was to tally up each category and provide insight into what makes you happy.
When beginning to categorize my happy moments, I assumed the category that would stand out among all others was Accomplishments, and the close second was Experience. To my surprise…to this single person’s surprise at that, the category where most of my happy times landed was Relationships. How could it be? Oddly enough, when I look back at it, some of my fondest memories are of being with my family. When I scrolled through old photos on social media, pictures of me at karaoke bars with friends made me smile because they reminded me that I used to be fun. Even the jobs where I noted the most fulfillment were jobs where I worked with clients through training, consulting, or direct patient care. These jobs allowed me to make an impact in real-time.
When I realized it was the people who made my favorite memories beautiful, I realized I’m not the introvert I’ve allowed myself to believe I am. Past experiences have shaped that narrative. From betrayal in relationships, we teach ourselves to keep people at a distance. Corporate America teaches us that relationships are fake and transactional at best. Sam doesn’t care about your weekend, and Alex said you were amazing on this call but will blame you for the project's delay on the next one. The defenses I had created contributed to my lack of job satisfaction. How can I be a relationship person by nature and be stone cold for 50 hours a week? This causes me to be out of alignment with who I am; and you know, the misalignment between who we are and how we pretend to be is the root of most stress.
Stress impacts every area of our lives, including our health, home, relationships, and careers. I don’t want you to live another day without doing something you enjoy. Grab a pen and start listing your best moments. Then, choose something that you incorporate daily to make you come alive. If you want to take this a step further, grab “All It Takes is a Goal” and begin the journey of building YOUR definition of happiness now and moving forward.
Life is worth living - every single moment of it - not just after work.