Many people search for the shortest path to happiness, and I was like that in my past, but what I understood is that many things that I thought made me happy actually only gave me pleasure. When they ran out, I found that I was actually bored with them or that the pleasure they gave me just went away, along with the feeling of "happiness" that accompanied it. After many years of struggling with a lack of motivation and hopelessness for a truly good and happy life, I suddenly realized that the secret laid within me and that I had always known what my personal path to happiness was.
I confess that I’ve not yet reached the end of the road, but I can certainly say that today I am happier than I was in the past because of the small and positive changes I made. I want to share the secret to finding your personal path to happiness, so I will share the nine rules I remind myself of every day with you about the difficult things you need to do on the road to true happiness:
None of us are the top priority of others at any given moment, so we must always be our own top priority. To do this, we must remember to respect and care for ourselves, and gradually become our main support. Remember that your needs are as important as others', so you need to be able to meet them on your own.
If I waited until I was 100% ready to complete a difficult task, the likelihood is that nothing would ever get done. Should procrastination be a big problem for you, you probably do it because you're seeking relaxation, but the truth is that you can only relax after you've done everything you need to do. Regardless of whether you need to clean the house or want to write an entire book, all you need to do is start now! It's just like getting into the shower - maybe sometimes you do not have the strength for it before you do, but once you’re inside it’s not so bad, and sometimes you don’t even want to get out.
A large part of our lives are affected by our choices, and for a long time, I chose to accept my situation and complain loudly about it in the hope that it would change itself someday. This just stressed me out and made me more hopeless, but the moment I stopped complaining about my lack of time or lack of motivation, my body began to look for other ways to deal with the unwanted situations, and I just started to change them. Remember that you don’t have to explain to anyone why you spend time on your own and you do not need to publish every detail of your life on social media, especially not your "complaints." Instead, if you are unhappy with what’s happening in your life, act to change it, otherwise, it will never change no matter how much you complain.
Like everyone else, I like to watch television every night, but most of the time I find myself watching shows that don’t interest me much, and they just give me a break from my obsessive thoughts and boredom. When it becomes routine it is not at all useful and actually only wastes precious time I could use for better and more useful things, so my recommendation is to start exploring which routine activities are really helpful to you and which are not. When you find out how much time you waste on them, you can use it to concentrate your efforts on more positive and beneficial activities, or even to spend more quality time with your children and spouse.
In recent years, I have made many changes in my life, and they all brought with them a sense of discomfort that came from leaving my comfort zone. However, like growing pains, it is impossible to avoid this feeling when creating a change in life, and it is simply a side effect of the process. I can assure you that in the end, the feeling of discomfort will disappear, so be patient and remind yourself that life will not always be easier, but you, on the other hand, will definitely become stronger.
Similar to what I have described in the previous section, there is no road to progress without some frustration or struggle, whether within ourselves or between us and others. These frustrations and struggles will leave you exhausted, but remember that this exhaustion is always preferable to a feeling of fatigue that comes from not acting. Your efforts will never be wasted, even if they lead you to disappointing results - you will improve, become stronger and become more experienced, and next time you will know how to avoid your previous failure. It's just like a musician who trains on a musical instrument and can’t play the piece he is trying to learn, until finally, after long days of practice, he is finally able to, and then his fingers just move by themselves without even trying.
There are no shortcuts, there’s no one to blame and no time to push things off. Don’t say things like: "I'll do it tomorrow" - in short, no excuses! The best method I have learned to get myself to do what needs to be done is simply to say "one, two, three", clap and start doing it. Laziness may seem attractive at the moment, but later it will only make you suffer from guilt and hurt your progress. However, keep in mind the phrase "Don’t count your chickens before they hatch" and avoid talking about your results before they exist - it may help you give yourself a sense of success, but at the same time it will make it harder for you to achieve real success.
No one in the world is good at what he/she does without loving what they do, and the reason for this is that the first step on the road to success is to understand what we enjoy doing. The more you like what you do, the more motivated you will be to do it without thinking about the end result. If you do not like what you are doing, your motivation is probably money or something else, and it's almost never enough to keep you going for long. Do what you love until you get to where you want to be.
