Your Happiness Matters To Others

Perhaps in times of stress or in great unhappiness you’ve sat by yourself and asked, “What am I supposed to do?”  Or maybe in a broader sense you’ve thought about how you spend your time and money and wondered if you’re living the kind of life that you should be.  If your career is in a rut, or your time feels out of your control, or your relationships are not as meaningful, or your finances aren’t in line with how you’d like them have you ever questioned, “Is this it?”

Whether you have struggles with your career, your relationships, or your finances, I think they might all be related to not intentionally doing what you know you can do.  Lack of intentionality is more often than not the root cause for the biggest disappointments.  But this is fixable!  Who are you not to be happy?  Who is your family not to feel that they get the best of you?  Who is the giver of your gifts and talents not to expect that you steward them to good use? 

So plan for greater happiness for yourself and for others by  going after what you know you should.  What are you really good at?  What do you do that brings other people happiness?  What are the ways in which you act that deserve cloning and copying by the rest of us?  Who could use more of you?  What do you do that pleases you most? 

I suspect that there are coworkers, friends, and family members who will benefit from you being happier.  You doing more of what you know you should and what you know you can is eagerly awaited by people who rely on you.  Your financial plan, too, is also waiting for you to build it based on how it can support your life and happiness.  Money works best when it provides the worldly means of supporting your happiness, not the other way around. 

Your new direction toward less worry and greater happiness can start by matching up more forcefully what makes you happy  and what others need from you.

 

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet”
(Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993, page 119)..