Be Happy in Your Self(ie)
The Pressure to BE.
This is not a quick fix piece. It’s not a Deepak Chopra 5 step guide to a new, slimmer, taller, sexier you. This won’t make your colleagues or peers like you more-in fact they probably don’t like you all that much anyway. I just find that we all seem to have similar struggles in ourselves; who we are and what we’re not. So here’s a reminder that no matter what age we are or what stage of life we find ourselves in, we’re not alone. Remember to keep a little perspective in where you ‘want to see yourself in five years.’
I’m exhausted from trying to have it all together and to do it all at once. I’d also wager that most people feel that way too, the pressure to be better, to be smarter, to be happier, to be richer, to be there sooner, where ever ‘there’ is.
The pressure to BE.
Success as we know it needs pressure. Happiness needs Success. But pressure does NOT make you happy.
We so often strive to be happier while simultaneaosuly avoiding activities that actually make us happy in lieu of something else we think we should be doing.
And life is full of these paradoxical situations in which we engineer for ourselves: We cling to social media yet struggle to keep eye contact over lunch. We’ll stand by the window alone to have faster Wi-Fi connections but won’t stand closer together to have more actual connections. We take what is immidiate over what’s worth waiting for. And somewhere in all this confusion our brains have been re-wired to confuse what’s important for what’s vital.
It is OK to want to be better. But do not confuse your success with your happiness. Once you treat them as separate entities you’ll find more enjoyment in both, even when you fail. And you will, fail. But that’s OK too.
There is a stark difference between listening to other people and over-hearing.
Yes, you should always listen to people; advice is the benefit of failure without the work. But don’t confuse listening with over-hearing chatter. We constantly hear what other people are doing and so often feel inadequate in comparison. Why aren’t I doing that? What am I doing? Am I even doing it right? Do I even lift?
The trick is to drown out that background noise; the sharper you make your own soundtrack the better your own life will sound.
Your friends aren’t your friends because you’re successful and if they are then you need some new friends. They’re certainly not there because you can do an impressive number of squats (for me that number is zero, honest to fictional God I couldn’t care less how many you can do so, please, stop). When it comes to the person who loves you-whether they share your pillow or if they’re still a stranger-the things that you think are important are not why they fell for you. You’re already there as far as they’re concerned-I mean they deal with your rotten morning breath. So in your precious free time surround yourself with beautiful people, you’ll start to like your own reflection a whole lot more.
Sometimes success and happiness most certainly intersect, but they are by no means the parrallel lines that must run side by side for an enjoyable life.
So get up, get dressed, make some money, be as kind as you can and try to remember that you can always be kind-it’s a choice. But stop striving to be the things that you’re not and start enjoying the person that you are.
I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s not always practical and sometimes it’s not even possible. Bills, depression, anxiety, assholes, life-they all get in the way. But these are all transient, the latter being no exception. In the end the only thing we were truly born for was to be ourselves, faults and all…faults especially. As Wilde so elequently put it;
“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”
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