it's all about action

It’s all about action. Going out there, doing it, and taking all your negative bullshit along for the ride. It’s never going to get any better, any easier, or any more understandable. This is it, life is now and you’re never going to have a better moment than this.

Don’t know what to do or where to start? Good, that’s your first action. Find out, understand. Trawl the internet, read books, ask questions, take courses, seek advice, do whatever you need to do to unfu*k yourself and get into your life…

“Action may not bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” – Benjamin Disraeli

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.135

you have the life you’re willing to put up with

You have the life you’re willing to put up with. 

Think about it. What are the problems, those heinous, dark shadows currently spoiling the warmth and happiness of your otherwise blissful life? 

Do you hate your job? Are you in a bad relationship? Is there something wrong with your health? Fine, get a new job. End the relationship. Change your diet and exercise or locate the kind of help you need. Seems simple doesn’t it? Even when it comes to the things you seemingly had no say in, like the death of a loved one or losing your business, you have a MASSIVE say in the ways you live your life in the aftermath of those events. 

If you’re not willing to take the actions to change your situation – in other words, if you’re willing to put up with your situation – then whether you like it or not, that is the life you have chosen.

Before you think “but…” or start to get your knickers in a twist… let me say one more thing: By defending your circumstances as they are right now, you are actually making a case for being where you are. Give it up.

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.29,30

Here there is no committee meeting

If there is one rule to remember about work meetings, it might be that they are a necessary evil. They are necessary insofar as organizations need them for proper communication, but they are evil in that they are almost never inherently desirable, and should thus be used as sparingly as possible for the sake of productivity and happiness.

Under ideal circumstances, meetings would be unnecessary. But circumstances are never ideal, at least on this mortal coil—which, come to think of it, might give us something to look forward to in the afterlife. As the poet Edgar Albert Guest wrote in 1920,

When over me the night shall fall,

And my poor soul goes upwards winging

Unto that heavenly realm, where all

Is bright with joy and gay with singing,

I hope to hear St. Peter say,

And I shall thank him for the greeting:

“Come in and rest from day to day;

Here there is no committee meeting!”

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

a huge waste of time

If you, like many people, think work meetings are a huge waste of time, that might be because most meetings keep employees from, well, working: One survey of 76 companies found that productivity was 71 percent higher when meetings were reduced by 40 percent. Unnecessary meetings waste $37 billion in salary hours a year in the U.S. alone, according to an estimate by the software company Atlassian. And in case you’re wondering, COVID made things worse: The number of meetings required of employees has risen by 12.9 percent on average since the coronavirus pandemic began.

But the real problem with meetings is not lack of productivity—it’s unhappiness. When meetings are a waste of time, job satisfaction declines. And when job satisfaction declines, happiness in general falls. Thus, for a huge portion of the population, eliminating meetings—or at least minimizing them—is one of the most straightforward ways to increase well-being.

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

their obvious delight

 

The thing I remember best about successful people I've met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they're doing... and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they're doing, and they love it in front of others. 

Fred Rodgers

The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember. Hachette Books. 2003. P.42

rules for happiness

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

Attributed to Immanuel Kant

Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. By Joe Biden. Flatiron Books. 2017. Preface

The real source of this quote may be George Washington Burnap in his book “The Sphere and Duties of Woman: A Course of Lectures” 1848. See post on Who Said That Really? on Tumbler. Dec 7th, 2013

work-life balance

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.  -  L.P. Jacks

When people use the phrase "work-life balance," most of them imagine a seesaw or a scale. On one end is "work," and on the other end is "life." The two are linked in such a way that everything is a tradeoff. If work is up, life is down. If life is up, work is down.

More of one means less of the other.

This is insane.

"Work-life balance" implies that work is separate from living a life, or that it's something to be balanced against your life. That's strange, given that most people spend more time working every day than they do in any other activity. If all of those hours are not part of life, then something is deeply wrong.

Life and work are not two enemies battling for our limited attention. In fact, the opposite tends to be the case. When we have meaningful, fulfilling, purposeful work, it radiates through out lives. And when we have happy, secure, loving relationships, they, too, radiate through our lives. 

The balance we seek is not that of a seesaw, but of a symphony, Every element of a symphony has a role to play: sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes silent, sometimes solo. The balance we seek is not for every instrument to be played in moderation at every moment - that's just a long, boring honk - but for a complementary relationship where each instrument is played at the right pitch and the right intensity, with the right phrasing and the right tempo. 

At certain times, particular aspects of our lives come to the fore, while others fall into the background. As new harmonies emerge, we can create something beautiful.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.257

retrain yourself to chase happiness

 

“Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy,” wrote Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former Formula 1 race-car driver. “For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success.”

American culture valorizes overwork, which makes it easy to slip into a mindset that can breed success addiction. But if you’ve seen yourself in my description, don’t lose hope. There is plenty you can do to retrain yourself to chase happiness instead of success, no matter where you are in your life’s journey. Let me suggest that you consider three steps, whether you are at the peak of your career, trying to work your way up the ladder, or looking at success in the rearview mirror.

The first step is an admission that as successful as you are, were, or hope to be in your life and work, you are not going to find true happiness on the hedonic treadmill of your professional life. You’ll find it in things that are deeply ordinary: enjoying a walk or a conversation with a loved one, instead of working that extra hour, for example. This is extremely difficult for many people. It feels almost like an admission of defeat for those who have spent their lives worshipping hard work and striving to outperform others. Social comparison is a big part of how people measure worldly success, but the research is clear that it strips us of life satisfaction.

...Find the right metrics of success. In business, people often say, “You are what you measure.” If you measure yourself only by the worldly rewards of money, power, and prestige, you’ll spend your life running on the hedonic treadmill and comparing yourself to others. I suggested better metrics in the inaugural “How to Build a Life” column, among them faith, family, and friendship. I also included work—but not work for the sake of outward achievement. Rather, it should be work that serves others and gives you a sense of personal meaning.

Arthur C. Brooks

"‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy" The Atlantic. July 30, 2020

the husk of many things, but not the kernel

The relationship of money to happiness is at best questionable. Even the Wall Street Journal acknowledged, "Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven, and as a universal provider of everything except happiness." Henrik Ibsen wrote, "Money may buy the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not the appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace or happiness."

James E. Faust

To Reach Even Unto You [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1980], p. 8.

what if

Life is full of decisions. From seemingly small decisions like what to eat for dinner, too much more consequential ones such as choosing a career to pursue, we are all faced with numerous choices on a daily basis. It’s human nature to look back at the roads we didn’t take and wonder, “What if?” Yet a new survey conducted in England has revealed that a staggering amount of people are unhappy with the way they’ve lived their lives.

According to a survey of 2,000 British adults commissioned by UK charity consortium Remember A Charity, four out of ten people regret how they have lived their lives so far. Spending too much time at work and not traveling enough were among respondents’ biggest regrets.

Other common regrets among those surveyed included neglecting their health and not spending enough time with their family. Many wished they had been a better parent to their children. All of that regret seems to be a big motivator as well, with 40% of respondents claiming that they want to make some positive changes in the near future...

Interestingly, close to half of those surveyed said they regret focusing so much on financial success as opposed to more meaningful endeavors.

John Anderer

"Hindsight Is 20/20: 4 Out Of 10 Adults Regret Their Life Choices". StudyFinds. July 22, 2019. 

a willing sacrifice or simply suffering

In 2009, two US professors set out to study zookeepers and aquarium workers in an effort to discover what kept them motivated at work.

The results pointed to an overwhelming similarity: The keepers gained a deep sense of meaning from their jobs. It didn’t matter that caring for animals was extremely badly paid and offered little career advancement, or that many of the actual tasks involved could be classified as “dirty work”—cleaning up feces, chopping vegetables, scrubbing floors. The zookeepers, most of whom were highly educated, felt that they were fulfilling a calling, and in doing so were extremely dedicated, often volunteering for months before even beginning to be paid, and rarely quitting....

The difference between finding a situation bearable—possibly, indeed, happy—and unbearable is about whether we experience ourselves as performing a willing sacrifice, or simply as suffering. When working hard tips over into working too hard, or with too little reward, sacrifice has slipped into suffering.... “Sacrifice might be hurtful and exhausting, but it is a conscious choice,” (Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD) writes. “Suffering is the result of feeling that we cannot slow down or else we will be shamed and lose control. Sacrifice makes us who we are. Suffering keeps us captive.”

The zookeepers in the 2009 research saw themselves as performing a willing sacrifice—of high pay, or status, or a warm office to work in rather than a pen. They experienced those things, but didn’t seem to resent their work, because they believed the tradeoff was worthwhile.

Cassie Werber

"The key to loving your job in the age of burnout." Quartz. April 7, 2019

one great thing

Remember this: there is no one great thing that you can do which will determine your happiness or success in life. Life is a series of little things-how you do your work from day to day, personal honesty in your everyday contacts, a smile and a handshake, courtesy and kindness-these are the "little things" that become the sum of your character. 

Ezra Taft Benson

The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988], 462.

give employment to the laborer

Men and women of wealth, use your riches to give employment to the laborer! Take the idle from the crowded centres of population and place them on the untilled areas that await the hand of industry. Unlock your vaults, unloose your purses, and embark in enterprises that will give work to the unemployed, and relieve the wretchedness that leads to the vice and crime which curse your great cities, and that poison the moral atmosphere around you. Make others happy, and you will be happy yourselves.

Lorenzo Snow

Pure Religion: The Story of Church Welfare Since 1930 by Glen L. Rudd. 1995. P.365. Originally in Messages of the First Presidency, 3:334

what we want eventually

Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.... The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.

Stephen R. Covey

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.  Simon & Schuster, 2013. p.48, 72