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Most people never stop to consider if what they are doing is making them happy.
Some people don’t even know what it means to be happy.
Do you fall into either one of these camps?
Happiness, to me, is doing what you want to do when you want to do it.
Some people will read this and think, That sounds like anarchy. That sounds like willful disregard for the realities of life.
But what are these realities exactly?
So much of life is rationalizing our very existence.
I did this because I didn’t want to make that person mad.
I behaved this way because I didn’t want so-and-so to think less of me.
But what about what you want?
Does it seem selfish to even consider that?
Here’s what happens. You take an action because someone thought it would be good for you. Maybe it was your parents. Maybe it was a close friend. Before you know it, you are on a hamster wheel of actions.
You’re spinning in a direction you never wanted to go in the first place, and then ten years of your life has gone by.
That would have happened if, at any point when you were on the wheel, you thought, Is this what I want to be doing? Is this the wheel I want to be on? Could there be something better out there for me?
For me, life is a constant question-asking process.
I ask myself questions when I take walks. I ask myself questions when I’m driving.
I ask myself questions all the time. Asking questions is how I make sense of the world.
But even the simple act of asking questions is something that I judged myself for — that is, I judged myself before I took the time to discover who on Earth I am.
In high school, I asked few questions because I didn’t want to be that guy.
In undergrad, I asked more, but I still was protective of my ego.
In grad school, I no longer cared. It was my education, and I was going to make the most of it.
Asking questions is one of the most reliable tools that I have in my toolbelt.
Whether it’s on a walk, in the workplace, or in a classroom, questions can be weapons that help me hack my way to greater understanding.
And it’s when I started to ask myself questions on a regular basis, completely unencumbered and without embarrassment, that I discovered who I am and what makes me happy.
Happiness is not the same for everyone, but for me, happiness is freedom.
t’s creativity. It’s creating stuff in general. It’s willing something into existence.
So I ask you this question:
Do you ask yourself enough questions?
Think about it for a second. Everything is going to stem from this first question.
Do you know who you are?
Do you truly, honestly, concisely know what you want out of life?
This is the moment where the doubts start to creep in.
m I supposed to know what I want? That’s impossible. I’ll never get there.
No.
you will.
But only if you ask for it.
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This post previously published on Nerve 10 and is republished with the permission of the author.
Photo courtesy iStock Photo.