How to Design Your Life to Achieve Happiness Every Day

Why do you wake up each morning? What is your purpose and what are you trying to achieve? In your wildest dreams what does success look like? What makes you happy and how often do you get to enjoy it?

These are the barometers by which to measure your life, nothing else. They will determine both the quality of your life and the happiness you encounter on a daily basis.

We all want to do something that matters, be that create a family or a business, but we spend so much time thinking about it we fail to act. Instead of recognising the scarcity of time we are afforded we allow it to whittle away as we think about ways we can change our world.

Stand up and be counted, act and see the benefits or don’t and watch the sands of time drift by as you age.

Are you working toward some indeterminate goal in the future where you will retire and live the dream when your body is failing? If so you need to stop and take a moment to think.

What is the point of stockpiling cash for an uncertain future? Why are you sacrificing your health and happiness now in the hope that you one day quit it all and retreat to a condo in the sun overlooking the beach as you watch the sunset on your life, looking back at all the time you wasted.

The 9–5 is humanities biggest lie.

It is the 21st centuries religion, utilised to control us and contribute taxes which ensure economic growth for nations. In short you are sacrificing your own life for the good of the country you happened to be born within. Exploitation by the psychological belief that because everyone is doing it you should be to.

Are you living to work or working to live?

Working should be the means to an end not the end to a means at a future life. We design our career instead of our lives. We focus our attention on the wrong areas and inherit a job which moulds our life instead of moulding a job to fund the lifestyle we desire.

If money wasn’t an issue how would you really live? Where would you set up home and what would you do each day?

Each of us harbours some deep seated desire to accumulate inconceivable wealth in the belief that we would be incredibly happy. The truth, and this is scientifically guaranteed, is that if you’re not happy before you have money acquiring it will not improve your happiness as much as you think it will.

Numerous studies show a diminishing increase in happiness for every penny earned over $70,000. This can be explained by the fact that as soon as we increase our salary we must purchase more expensive materialistic possessions in order to keep up with the Joneses.

We must buy a more expensive car and house in keeping with our new socioeconomic status, we must acquire new clothes befitting our more luxurious lifestyle.

The fact is that as our salary increases our available disposable income does not, relative to wealth is actually decreases and remains around $20,000. This means that our financial security is actually detrimentally affected because if our income is disrupted we have a far more expensive lifestyle to maintain and a further distance to fall back to being poor.

I propose an alternate reality which you may dispute the conceivability of.

Design the life you wish to live, factor in the holidays you would take including the durations for which you would go, programme in the transport you would need, the home you may or may not require, everything else you would like if there were no constraints on your life.

Where would you live?
Where would you go?
What would you do?

The truth is that there really are no constraints. All we have our self-imagined restrictions which prevent us from acting and realising our dreams. We impose limitations which breeds fear and bestows paralysis upon us.

If you take a moment to think rationally, what is genuinely the worst thing that could happen? That should be your new indicator as to which decision to make.

If the worst thing that could happen is you lose 6 months of salary but you’d probably get the same/similar job at a similar salary when you give up, you do not have a reason not to proceed.

You have kids? Some of the most valuable teaching occurs through experiential learning. Families take the biggest risks of their lives and sail away for a year and come back reporting their children have never been so engaged or learned so much.

You have a salary that’s too good to give up? You’re only spending it on materialistic possession which clutter your home. If you’re earning a fortune now but not doing the things you love when will you begin?

Money is never a reason not to make a decision.

We earn whatever we are willing to allow ourselves to make.

You are working for the salary you are currently dobecause you have accepted that as your worth. What if you rejected it? You’d find a way to increase your salary accordingly.

That is how life should work, that should be how you bind yourself to your financial future. Define the financial goals you wish to achieve and pursue them. Don’t let money just happen, pursue it relentlessly but only to the extent you need it to live.

Why do we think we must stockpile cash like some egomaniac billionaire.

Don’t let your pursuit of money shape your life. Shape your life and pursue the cash that will allow you to live it.

Begin with the end in mind and break it down to the cumulative steps that will allow it to occur.

If you’re wandering in the dark you’ll never know where you will end up.

Sure you may fortuitously stumble upon the right destination eventually but you’ll trip and fall over obstacles and experience untold pain along the way.

If you know where you are headed you can forge the path ahead on the expedition of your choosing enjoying the journey.

Only then can you become the master of your own destiny.