Here it is folks: the key to succeeding at anything. The key to leaving a worthy legacy. Whether you want to be successful as a business owner or as a parent, as a valued employee or as a treasured friend, there's one primary thing you need to focus your attention on:
Your happiness.
Simplistic? Perhaps.
Selfish? Nope.
Significant? Unequivocally.
Obviously, there are a lot more factors that go into creating a successful business, raising wonderful children and nurturing cherished relationships but when it comes right down to it, your happiness may be the single most important factor that contributes to each of these desired outcomes.
And I don't think that the real impact of your happiness is given near enough merit.
There's plenty of talk these days about what it takes to be happy, different ways to find happiness and what happy people do differently. I'm a big fan of these materials in general, not just because I personally want to feel happy (and have struggled with it at various points in my life!), but why is 'being happy' so important? Sure, it's nice, maybe; but a necessity?
Absolutely it is.
Through the work I've been doing the last few years in particular, I'm gaining a much deeper understanding of the crucial importance each person's happiness has on the whole planet.
I'm neither trying to be grandiose nor overly simplistic here.
To create a successful business, for example, it's important not only to be doing something that you love to get out of bed for in the morning, but it's equally important that the work brings in enough money to provide you what you need and want in life; enough to make you happy. If it doesn't, your overall contentment will suffer a notch or two no matter how much you love the work. And that discontent can seep into the products you create or the services you offer; into the way you treat your employees, colleagues, or heaven forbid your clients.
If you love your kids but are unhappy in your marriage, that unhappiness (even when you consciously try to hide it from your children) seeps over time into your demeanour and your posture; into your facial expressions and the words you choose; into the things you do and don't do for your partner (and in life in general). And all of that affects your family dynamic, whether or not you intend for it to.
By the choices we make every single day, not only are we defining our own limits for happiness, but we are also defining them unconsciously for the people around us, including the next generation.
Think about your own parents: what lessons did you learn from them based on how they lived their lives? Did you learn, for example, that you ought to stick with a job even if it was barely tolerable, as long as it meant you could put food on the table? While feeding your family is indeed important, what about the importance of Mom or Dad seeking out work that had them come home with a smile on their face and stories they were excited to tell every day?
Did you experience that in your life? If not, what would that have been like?
Growing up, did you learn that marriage was an arrangement to be tolerated, or one to be celebrated? Do you look back on your childhood with a sense that your parents were deeply in love with one another, or was their relationship something other than that?
How has their relationship affected your expectations for your own life? Was theirs a relationship model you aspire to, or are you consciously striving to create something better than what they had? Are your expectations higher or lower for yourself?
What are you modeling for the people around you?
Truly, one of the greatest gifts you can give to your children - and your colleagues, friends, business associates and neighbours - is the gift of your own happiness. When you strive to create a life that brings a smile to your lips, joy to your heart and song to your spirit, you live your life in a way that spills goodness into others' lives...and gives them permission to do the same in theirs.
Are you waiting for permission to be happy in your own life?
I hereby grant it. Poof!
Now off you go. Seriously: go ahead and frolic into the life of your dreams :)