Creating a Rich and Meaningful Life

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Happiness. Isn't brain surgery practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life? Today we're going to be talking about how to create a rich and meaningful life. And when I work with my coaching clients, this is really where we start. And even when I work with my counseling clients, this is the beginning of identifying what is it that we're working toward. I mean, obviously if I'm working with a counseling client and they're coming to see me because they're depressed, they don't want to be depressed anymore. Well, yeah, okay, I got that. But once you're not depressed, what are you going to be? What does it look like? What are we working towards? What kinds of things do you want to do that you're not doing now? What kinds of ways do you want to feel that you're not feeling now? And how can we make that happen? Recovery is not just about eliminating something. You have to put something in its place. So the first thing to figuring out what a rich and meaningful life looks like for you is to get honest about who and what is important in your life. And, you know, we only have so much energy. And I'm going to talk about your energy bank account today, and I really want you to think about it that way. And you know, I'm really frugal when it comes to, like actual money. So, you know, this is an analogy that works really well for me. But every time you get upset about something, every time you don't get enough sleep, every time you choose to do something, you're using energy from that bank account and you're spending it. So you got to figure, what things are you willing to spend it on? And what things do you not want to spend that energy on so you can save it to spend it on things that are truly important in your life. For example, getting upset over a story in the news, that's not going to do any good, you know, and you know, I see my father in law doing it a lot when he reads the news, that little vein in the side of his neck starts to pulse. And that energy that he's using, getting upset, you know, getting upset for a second, okay, maybe, but he stays upset and it sticks with him for a while. That energy he could be using to do something else that is going to bring him happiness and joy instead of being upset over something that he has absolutely no control over. So we'll talk about that more in the coming weeks. But the first thing you want to do is ask yourself, if I woke up tomorrow, And I was living a rich and meaningful life. As I define it, what would it be like? So the first thing we're going to start out with, I just kind of go through it step by step, is emotionally, what does it look like when you're happy? So if you're depressed right now or if you want to be happier, what is it going to look like? Because we need to be able to say, yes, you're happy. Now, does it mean you enjoy getting out of bed? Does it mean you wake up in the morning and you're energetic? Does it mean what does being happy look like to you? And we know what kind of. What it feels like as far as when we're feeling apathetic or depressed, we don't want to do anything. So. Okay. Being happy means that you really want to do things. I know when I go through periods where I'm a little blue, I'll wake up in the morning and I'll be like, I don't feel like getting out of bed today. Nothing is motivating me to really want to do it. But when I'm happy, when I'm energetic, when I'm excited about something, I wake up and I'm like, all right, let's get the day started. So I know that that's different. So I want to look over the course of a week and I want to say, you know, six out of seven days, I want to wake up and be happy to be awake and eager to get out of bed and get started with my day. And that's for me. You know, we want to look at what it looks like for you, once you define what it looks like when you're happy. And sometimes you need to go back and look over times when you were happy in the past. What was different? What was. Was the same. Think about what makes you happy now. You know, for me, I'll go online and I'll look at videos of bunny rabbits or cats or something. I'm still toying with the idea of starting to raise angora rabbits again, because I love them. They're a wonderful breed, especially the big ones that aren't quite as fragile and, you know, their fur. I love making the. Making yarn from their. From their fur, which comes out just like a dog sheds, it sheds off angoras. It doesn't hurt them at all to get the fur off of them. It actually is good for their health. So those are things that make me happy. I look at pictures of baby rabbits and I think, oh, that could be fun to do again. It Takes a lot of time, but it could be fun. So think about what makes you happy now and how you can increase these things. Spending time with my kids makes me happy, so how can I increase these things? Going to the gym and working out makes me happy. So how can I increase these things? How can I do more of them? And work on trying to schedule in at least one thing that makes you happy every day. Most of us, if we really get honest with ourselves and look, we can find an hour a day that we can do something that makes us happy. And if you look at the time you spend drinking your coffee in the morning and getting ready and the time that you spend watching TV in the evening and winding down, usually there's an hour in there that you can find to do something that makes you happy. But if you can't find an hour, do with whatever you can find. Everybody can find 15 minutes. I don't believe that you can't find 15 minutes for happiness. Heck, you can find 15 minutes to do just about anything. So increase those things. Schedule in a happy thing every day. And it can be. Sometimes I'll. I have an app on my phone that has knock knock jokes and they're G rated knock knock jokes. I mean, it's things I would share with my kids, but those make me happy. They make me laugh because they're just. They're usually puns and ironic and I like them. It doesn't have to be something huge that you're going to go do. What reminders can you put in your environment to help you feel happier? So we'll start with that one when you look around. I'm in my podcasting office right now and I don't have much on the walls except for some blankets and stuff to keep it from echoing. It's not the most attractive place in the world, but on the screen that I'm looking at right now, I have a picture of one of my dogs and he's just sitting there. It was the first day we got him as a foster dog and he just has the most precious little look on his face. That makes me happy. That reminds me of some of the good things in my life. Keep pictures available on your mobile device so you can scroll through those periodically. I recently was doing a presentation on premature infants and I went back and I found all the pictures of my son that we took when he was in the neonatal intensive care unit. And you know, it just makes me smile. So. So those things make me happy. My kids make me happy. So putting reminders in your environment, in your office, in your car, around your house of the things that are meaningful and bring a smile to your life. You can look at this picture and go, oh, my gosh, that is one of my favorite pictures. Or I remember when that can help you be happier. The other thing you want to do is put reminders in your environment to remind you to do those things that make you happy. You know, the things we just talked about, it's easy to forget. I love going to the gym. It makes me happy. But, you know, I can get caught up with stuff and just forget to go to the gym. So what do I need to put as a reminder? What I do is on Sunday, after I do laundry, I put together seven days worth of workout outfits and seven days worth of work outfits because I shower at the gym and I have it all packed together in neat little piles. So then on Monday, I just grab a pile and I go, and it's just sitting there ready for me and I can't miss it when I walk into the bathroom in the morning. If you like to go to the gym in the evening, you know, or right after work, keeping your bag in your car because you know that'll remind you to go to the gym. And it also keeps you from getting home and sitting down on the couch and going, yeah, you know what, I'm gonna. I'll just go to the gym tomorrow. So put reminders in your environment that say, hey, do this. If you have. If you're going to do something like look at jokes or listen to a comedy skit or something, put a reminder in your Google calendar or schedule an SMS message to text you to remind you to do it. Eventually it'll probably be second nature. It's just something that you do automatically. But initially put things in, schedule it in just like a meeting. Because relaxation, it's important, just as important as other things to schedule in relaxation and happiness so you can get some of those happy chemicals surging through your body and reduce some of the cortisol. Okay, so we know what makes us happy. We've identified ways that we can increase those things that make us happy. We've identified reminders or you've thought about reminders that you can put in your environment that will help you be happy. And I'm a visual person, so I was talking more about pictures and stuff, but smell is one of our greatest memory triggers that we have. So if there are particular smells that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, put that around. I found one fabric softener and I Don't usually use fabric softeners because they're chemicals, but this one I make an exception for. I don't know why, but there is something about the smell of it that I just find intoxicating. So I put a quarter cup of it in a 32 ounce spray bottle and added water for the rest of it. And I just mist my sheets with it a couple times a week. And it keeps that aroma in my room. So when I walk into my room, I'm just like, okay, time to relax. So there are things that you can do with smells, sights. In the morning when I work out, I listen to music and I find a song that I think is going to, you know, might make my best friend smile. And I will always send that to him on, you know, text message in the morning. So when he wakes up because he works a later shift, so when he wakes up that he opens his text messages and he has something that can make him smile in the morning. So those are things that you can do and you can also obviously do for others. You can put prompts in their environment. What is holding you back from being as happy as you want to be? So we've talked about what happiness looks like. Then you need to look at and say, what's holding me back from being happy? Why am I not this way right now? Am I overworked? Am I under rested? Am I doing at a job that I really hate? Are there problems in my relationships? What is it that's holding you back? And then you can start making a plan to address those things. Too often we go on autopilot and stuff adds up and stress adds up. We don't do things to make us happy. In Eastern medicine, they talk about yin and yang. Yin and yang is about a balance. You can be depressed if you have too much stress and anxiety and stuff going on. But you can also be depressed if you don't have enough happiness in your life. You actually have to add that happiness in there. Because happiness is not just the absence of upset. Okay? So think about the things that are holding you back from being happy. Think about the things that are keeping you from doing the things that make you happy. And sometimes it may not be, like I just said, you may not have things that are holding you back. You're just not thinking about it because you're on autopilot. Turn off the autopilot. We're going to talk not next week, but the week after about mindfulness and why it's so important in living a rich and meaningful life. Because when you're on autopilot, it's kind of like having a credit card and you're just spending from that energy bank account like crazy and not really keeping track of it. Probably when you turn off that autopilot, then you're actually paying cash, if you will, out of that energy bank account. So you're paying more attention to who you're giving that money to because you can see how much you got. The last thing that we look at in terms of emotionally for a rich and meaningful life is how do you want to handle anger and anxiety and all those what we call dysphoric or unpleasant emotions? They happen. Life happened sometimes stuff is going to be crappy. So how can you handle it? How do you want to handle it in a way that'll help your life be rich and meaningful? If you handle anger by getting angry and stewing on it and nurturing on it and vowing revenge, okay, all that takes energy. So you're just paying out of that energy bank account like crazy. A lot of times when we get angry, we're getting angry over things that aren't on our list of what's important for a rich and meaningful life for us. So we need to back up and go, is this worth me spending my energy money on? Is this worth it? And if not, how can I handle it better? How can I let it go? What can I tell myself that's probably four or five weeks from now when we start talking about ways to deal with emotional upset and tolerate distress mentally. Okay, so we've talked about emotions, and that's great. Not everybody loves to talk about emotions, but okay, so we're going to move on to mental health. What you think and your attitude and your perception directly impacts how you feel. The example that I've given before is of a roller coaster. Some people, their perception, their mental attitude about going on a roller coaster is one of exhilaration. They think it's the greatest thing in the world. I look at a roller coaster and I'm scared to death. So our attitude, my perception of a roller coaster as being dangerous, as opposed to their perception of it as being fun, impacts our mood. They're excited about getting on the roller coaster. I'm terrified. When you look at different things, and this is why people react differently to different things, because it's how they perceive it and what their attitude is like. So when you're living a rich and meaningful life and you notice I keep saying when, not if, because you can do it, it's just a matter of Figuring out the steps to do it. So when you are living a rich and meaningful life, how can you improve your attitude? If needed, you may already have a good attitude. You may be kind of a negative Nelly right now. So we're going to look at how you can start. But if you're not, life will hand you lemons occasionally. So some days you're just going to get up on the wrong side of the bed. There are all kinds of sayings about it. You're not going to have a positive, blindly optimistic attitude every single day. So when you have one of those days that you just are in an awful mood, how can you improve your attitude? What do you need to do? For some people, they pray. Other people exercise. When I'm in a bad mood, it does me a world of good to go out on a run and just run and run and run and listen to my music really, really loud. It clears my head. I come back, I'm like, alright, whatever it was I was upset about, you know, we're moving on and I'm making the decision to have a more optimistic attitude. There are skills and tools you can use in order to help change your outlook. But you have to be willing to make that decision to stop thinking negatively, catch yourself and go, no. Not going to go down the negative road. I'm going to go to the positive road. Which takes us to. What can you do to remind yourself to embrace dialectics? And dialectics means that there are opposites to everything. There's good and bad in everything. I was watching a young Sheldon last night and he was talking about how in this dream, the universe was binary. For every one, there's a zero. For every good, there's a bad. For every hot, there's a cold. And it's true. You know, there are good and bad things in everything and we want to just embrace those. Instead of just focusing on the bad, we want to focus on how it can be both bad and good. When it's sunny outside, you know, some people see that and go, oh my gosh, it has been sunny for three weeks. It's been so amazing. And people's moods gets better. It increases vitamin D, the plants are growing, yada, yada. The downside, when it's sunny for three solid weeks, there's no rain, which means the crops need to be watered. Instead of having nature kind of take care of your gardening duties for you. And I mentioned earlier, I'm frugal. I don't like to pay for water to water my garden. And we don't have a well anymore. So. So, you know, that is the kind of the negative side to the sunniness on the other side. You know, I don't like it when it's rainy all the time either. But instead of focusing on the good or the bad, I just focus on it is, you know, it's sunny. Okay, There are positives to that. I'm going to focus. I'm going to choose to focus on the positives. So you need to do things to remind yourself to embrace the dialectics. You need to do things to stop yourself. Be mindful of when you're being negative and go, all right, what could possibly be positive about this? Part of this also means focusing on what you have instead of what you want, what is right now. You know, we'll stay with the weather for a minute. If it's sunny outside and I really don't want to water my garden, you know, I could focus on the fact that I'm going to have to pay to water my garden. Or, or I can embrace the fact and focus on the fact that it's sunny and, you know, it's a good time to go out and get some sun, get a little vitamin D. It is good for people's moods. So focusing on what is instead of what you want it to be can help you improve your attitude and embrace it. And go, all right, let's look at why this is good. Describe your ability to concentrate and pay attention when you're living a rich and meaningful life. If you are, you're probably happier. However, that looks, whatever that looks like for you. When we have enough serotonin going through our body, when we are not stressed all the time, our ability to concentrate and pay attention goes way up. So one of the key features, if you will, of being happy for a lot of people is being able to concentrate and pay attention. So think about what things make it difficult for you to pay attention or to concentrate. And there can be a lot of things. It's not just your mood. It can be, I have difficulty focusing when it's really gray outside, when it's raining. I have difficulty focusing when there's a lot of activity around me. So those things can make it difficult for me to focus and pay attention. But also if I'm in a bad mood, if I'm sick, there are various variety of things that disrupt my focus. You're not going to prevent these. They're going to happen. So how can you address them? So, for example, if I have a big project that is going on that I need to get finished. I will shut my door. So I'm not bothered by the comings and goings in the office. Whereas, you know, normally I have my door open and I usually have Netflix going and something else. So it's important if you notice that your ability to concentrate and pay attention is not there for some reason, you have ways to address it because that will help you feel more empowered and continue to move towards your goals. The third thing you ask yourself as far as having a rich and meaningful life is would you have any other knowledge? If so, what is it and how can you get it? You know, maybe you want to go back to school to learn to be. To get your MBA or to learn to be a vet technician or whatever it is. Or maybe it's something smaller, like you want to learn how to cook better than you already do. So how do you get that knowledge? A lot of it you might, especially cooking, you can get on YouTube. There are online schools that for educational things. There are books that you can read. There are people that you can interact with. There are meetups where you can go and hang around like people and learn from them. I'm in a crocheting meetup. Yeah, I feel like an old lady when I say that. But, you know, I love it. I love crocheting. I like knitting too, but my hands don't so much. So crocheting is a little bit easier on the carpal tunnel. And I go and I can hang out with women who've been doing it for far longer than I have, who have skills and techniques that they can teach me spiritually. Now, you know, before you go. Well, I don't want to talk about that. We're talking about values here. And you know, in Christianity, we have certain values. Love, hope, faith. You know, I think most religions have that, but spirituality is bigger than religion. Spirituality encompasses your values and what you think is important in living. Guess what? A rich and meaningful life. So, for example, for me, my top five values are honesty, compassion, trustworthiness, loyalty, and generosity. So you can go online, you can Google values lists and you can find lists of 50 or 100 different value words. And you can choose from that list which ones are important to you. And the first time you go through, you're going to mark a bunch. You'll probably mark 30 or 40. So then you want to pare it down. And a lot of times those values, a lot of time the value lists have words that are very similar. They're synonyms. So you may have compassion and kindness both marked. So you can Just condense it and decide which one you want. But you want to condense it to five. Why five? Because five you can keep track of if you have more than five. Sometimes it's more than three, but more than five, it's hard to remember, am I doing all of these things? So once you identify what your values are, then you want to say, why are these things important to me? Why is it important for me? Why do I think it's important to be honest and for people to be honest with me? Why do I think compassion is important? And so on and so forth. Because that helps you see why it's important to invest your energy in activities that embody your values. For example, I do a lot of animal rescue. And so when I'm thinking about my energy bank account, it requires a lot of compassion to bottle feed or tube feed an orphan kitten every three hours around the clock. It requires me to be trustworthy. You know, I have to get up and do it. I need to be loyal to the rescues that I work for and to the animals that I serve. And it takes a certain amount of generosity, both in time and money to and energy to raise orphan kittens or even to foster adult cats. So these are things and dogs, but we usually focus on cats. These are things that I consider when I choose activities that I'm going to do are these things that are going to bring out in me the values that I think are most important? What things? Activities, relationships in your life support your values. So look around at everything that you're doing, what you're spending your emotional bank account on, your energy bank account on, and ask yourself, you know, what things in my life am I happy to be doling out that energy to? And what things in my life would I rather not? You know, so I can quit spending energy on that. That way I have more energy to put towards the things that are more important in my life. Look around and figure out which activities you want to get rid of or things. And it can be things like the way you think or what you do, you know, being negative or is one of those things that takes a lot of your energy. Or if social media takes a lot of your energy or whatever it is, and you look at it. Maybe you're one of those people who right now is almost obsessive about cleaning and you sit back and you look and you go, you know what? Having a spotless house really is not that important in the big scheme of things. I would rather have time and energy to spend with my children or going out rock climbing or spending time with my dogs or whatever it is. And that's a decision you've got to make. But a lot of times you can look at your life and you can see places that you are draining your energy bank account. I don't want to say wasting, but you're draining your energy bank account when you could be saving that money and, or saving that energy and spending it on the things that are more important. How can you make sure you're embodying those five values in each decision you make so you're spending your energy wisely? So before you make a big purchase, before you purchase a car or purchase a house or whatever, and even maybe smaller purchases, you think to yourself, like when I was looking at a new phone, I was thinking to myself, well, what features would I like in a phone? And I went through and the phones that I wanted were really expensive. And I thought, okay, now in terms of my financial bank account, is it more important to me to have this super spiffy phone that I'm going to be terrified if I'm going to drop it and break it, or are some of these things not as important to me? And I would rather save the money to put towards a laptop or music or my kids or something else. And my choice ended up being saving the money and putting it towards my hobbies instead of getting a super duper souped up iPhone. And that decision, I'm good with it and it makes me happy. And now I've got extra financial money to spend on the things that are important to me. Same thing with energy. You know, before you make an energy purchase, ask yourself, am I willing to spend this much energy, this thing when I've got all these other things in here that are important to me, or would I rather just let that go so I can spend the energy money over here physically? Now, this is a long one, but it's really pretty simple. What would your health be like when you're living a rich and meaningful life? So you want to look at what's going to change when you're stressed. You hold tension in your back, it prevents you from getting quality sleep. It can contribute to depression and weight gain and high blood pressure. And stress is just kind of an evil little thing. So when you're not stressed, when you're happy and living that rich and meaningful life, how is your health going to improve? Is there anything that needs attention right now? I mean, if you look at and you say, you know, overall my health is pretty good, but you know, I have this one thing over here, okay, that might be something that needs attention. Now you got to think to yourself, do I care? Is this something that I'm willing to give attention to? And some people say yes, some people will say no. And how can you maximize your health and wellness to get you to the place that is comfortable for you? You know, not everybody's going to want to be a triathlete. That's fine. What does being healthy in your definition look like to you? And how can you get there? How can you make sure you're staying healthy? If you have any pain, would that be resolved? And if so, how you might have chronic pain from fibromyalgia or other things. And when you think about pain, when serotonin goes down, when stress goes up, serotonin goes down. When serotonin goes down, pain tolerance goes down. So when stress goes down, cortisol goes down, serotonin goes up, as do other things and pain tolerance goes up. So you'll feel less pain even if it's still there. But you can also do things to resolve pain, like having an ergonomic work and sleeping environment. You know, there are three places. Think about the three places you spend the most time. And for me it's at work, sleeping and on the couch. You know, and my ergonomics when I'm sitting on the couch are usually deplorable. But at work I've got a good chair and I have a good pillow and a good mattress topper and, and a good sleeping environment. So I minimize how many mornings I wake up and I have a kink in my neck and I minimize how much neck and arm tension I have from being on the computer all day long. So look at ways you can prevent pain. Exercise is one way that some people do stretching, yoga, all of those things can help with musculoskeletal pain. What would sleep quality and schedule look like for you if you have a rich and meaningful life? Many people, you know, when they're not living their rich and meaningful life, are overworked and they're overstressed, so they're not getting good quality sleep and they're often not sleeping enough. I know my husband's supervisor right now will regularly be sending him emails at, you know, oh, dark 30 in the morning. I'm like, what is he still doing up? And on top of that, what is he still doing working at this hour? Because he literally has two full time jobs at this. But it's just one job, but it's other duties as assigned. So we want to look at if you're living a rich and meaningful life. You know, theoretically that means developing work life balance but also getting good quality sleep so your body can rest and rebalance and you can feel feel better and happier. What would that schedule look like? I would like to change my sleep schedule a little bit because right now I go to bed around 8 and get up around 4. I probably like to switch that. So I was staying up till like 10 and getting up at like 6, but that's not how my rhythms are going right now. So I might switch that if I were working on developing a rich and meaningful life so I could stay up a little bit later. You know, my family goes to bed, we live on a farm, so my family goes to bed early too, so I don't miss out on time with my kids. But it would make it easier to interface with other grown ups that don't live on a farm. If I were able to stay stay awake past 8 o'. Clock. If you're living a rich and meaningful life, what would your eating habits be like? A lot of us when we're stressed, we stress, eat and we gravitate towards carbohydrates and things that produce dopamine and serotonin surges that help us feel less stressed and help us feel a little bit better. So what would your eating habits look like? And again, maybe this isn't something that you even really care about addressing, but it's one of those things to look at. Would they be the same? Would your eating habits stay the same or would you try to improve them in some way? If fitness is important, if so, what would it be like? If you decide that getting in shape is important, what do you like to do that's active? Not everybody is going to be wanting to go to the gym. Sometimes I don't want to go to the gym either. Most of the time that's not true. But some people just don't like the gym. So what do you like to do? And exercise is anything that moves your body. You don't have to even go to the park and walk on a track or something, which some people find dreadfully boring. You can get exercise cleaning your house, you can get exercise gardening. You can get exercise walking around at the mall. What is it that you like to do that's going to move your body? And would your energy level change at all? If you've got good energy, then you're probably going to say, nope, that one's good. But if your energy is low, then you want to look at ways you can improve your energy. And that's probably going to start with getting good quality sleep and eating a good diet. But I digress. So thinking about when your energy is higher, what are you doing differently? Are you eating fewer carbohydrates, especially fewer simple sugars? Are you drinking less caffeine? Because caffeine over time kind of loses its effectiveness. It's just like any other drug. We habituate to it, develop a tolerance. So if you kind of detox off of that caffeine, you'll find that you have more normal for you circadian rhythms socially, what does a healthy, fulfilling relationship look like to you? And maybe you've got them right now. And if you do, awesome. Obviously this area wouldn't be something you need to work on. It's just one you want to maintain. You want to ask yourself which relationships are most important to you? Because I know a lot of people and some relationships are more important. My relationship with my kids, for example, is far more important to me than my relationship with the neighbor two doors down. They're nice people. But if I have to choose, if it's my daughter's black belt testing versus going over to their house for, you know, a luncheon, I'm going to choose my daughter's black belt testing. But which relationships are important will determine which relationships you spend your energy on more. So which ones are you going to work on? Making sure to nurture and spend time with people and think about them at Christmas or holidays, try to remember their birthdays. What can you do to to improve your relationships that are meaningful and important to you? And I think most of us can look at the relationships that are important to us and go, yeah, there are things that I really could be doing to make this stronger because we take our good relationships for granted. So reaching out to people and saying hi, congratulating them on things, taking a genuine interest in how they're doing regularly, not once every six months. Sometimes you need to put a reminder in your phone or on your calendar to call people because it's just not second nature. I'm trying to be better about emailing my mother at least once a week. So those are things that you can do in order to try to improve the quality of the relationships that are important. If you want to make new friends, you know, maybe you have new hobbies or maybe you don't think you have enough friends or whatever. How are you going to do that occupationally? We spend a whole lot of time at work. I mean, think about it. You get up in the morning, you're making breakfast, you're getting ready for work, you drive to work, you go to work, you drive home from work, and then you've got a couple hours in the evening. So the majority of the day, five days a week, is spent engaged in preparing for or engaging in work activities. So if you're not happy at work, it's going to be really hard to have a rich and meaningful life. So think about what gives you fulfillment at your job. You may be in a job that you just love. You know, I love coming to work, I love doing what I do, so I'm really blessed in that way. But if you don't like your job, you know, think about why is it that you have that job. Maybe your job is not fulfilling in and of itself, but it's helping you. It's a means to an end. It's helping you achieve something that is fulfilling to you, such as, you know, keeping a roof over your head. Or maybe you're staying at that job because you like to buy expensive toys. You know, whatever it is that motivates you to go to that job and stay at that job, you want to focus on those things and think about ways that you can improve your sense of fulfillment at work. There was one job I had that my supervisor was a little bit challenging. And my husband pointed out one day, because I love coffee, even though I can only drink decaf now, I love coffee. And he pointed out, you know, when you go there and you have your meeting, just see her handing you money every five minutes. She talks to you and, you know, so you can see that you're getting, you know, money so you can go out and buy coffee, a whole bunch of it, as soon as your meeting's over. And that helped me. It was a mental game, no joke, but it helped me get through the meetings with her. What are your goals for your occupation? Maybe you like your job and you want to advance to a management position, or you want to open your own company, or maybe you're at a job right now and you want a different career and you see that. So how are you going to make that happen? Where do you want to be occupationally three and five years from now? And how can you start making that happen if it's a promotion at your own job, you know, wherever you work now, you know, what does it take to get those promotions? Do you need more education? Do you need to be mentored by your supervisor? What is it that you need to do in order to achieve those goals? If that is important in your life, then you're going to make a plan for that and you're going to spend your energy working towards those goals and finally, recreationally. And yeah, recreation is important. We need time to rest and rejuvenate. As Covey says, sharpen the saw. At a certain point, if all you're doing is working, you're going to get worn down and like a dull knife or a dull saw, that doesn't work very well. So you want to stay sharp. And the way to stay sharp is by having balance and by having some recreational things. Doing things each day, but at least each week that make you happy. So identifying hobbies and activities that are important to you so you can assure that you're doing them regularly. I like to work in the garden, so I do that. I like to crochet, I do that. I like to go to the gym. Those things are important to me. So I need to make sure that I don't let the busyness of life and the desire to dust the baseboards creep in and push out the hobbies that are important. Because in the big scheme of things, if I look back, I'm not going to say, you know, I didn't have any hobbies, but gosh darn it, I never had a speck of dust on my baseboards. That's just not going to be it. And am. My kids will tell you I am a fanatic about flat surfaces and baseboards, so it is hard for me to let that go. But, you know, that's one of those things I work on because I realize that sometimes spending energy on that isn't worth it when I've got something else that's better on the horizon. And we'll talk some more in the upcoming weeks about time management, too. How can you schedule things in? How can you delegate things to people? How can you. What are some life hacks you can do? One of them for baseboards, for example, is to use a dryer sheet when you're doing your baseboards, and it helps repel dust so it doesn't collect as quickly. We've got four cats and three dogs in the house, plus all of the farm animals that, you know, we go out to the barn and I'm sure we bring in dander. So we've got a lot of dust in our house, and that helps a lot keep the dust off the baseboard. So we only, or I only have to do it once a month. So think about life hacks. Think about ways that you can do that, but over the Next week, figure out what a rich and meaningful life looks like for you emotionally. How will you know when you're happy? What does it look like to you or feel like to you mentally? How's your attitude going to be? What about your ability to concentrate and pay attention? Are you going to work on developing any other knowledge? What are your values? What things underlie everything you do? Because our values motivate us physically, our mind and our body are connected. If your body is unhealthy, your ability to concentrate, think clearly, focus, and your mood are all going to be impacted. And sometimes your attitude is going to be impacted. I know when I'm sick, especially if I've got a sinus infection, I've got a really. I get a really negative attitude. I can be really grumpy. So being aware that your thoughts, your feelings and your body are all connected, when you don't get enough sleep, how does it affect your ability to think and concentrate and how does it affect your mood? So all of those things you want to try to consider, which is why when we're thinking about how to create this life that we want, we're going through every single aspect socially. What are your social relationships going to look like in a rich and meaningful life? You know, maybe they're great right now. Maybe they need a little work. So if they're great, how can you maintain it? If they need work, what do you need to do occupationally? How can you make yourself hopefully enjoy your job, but if not, at least have a good attitude about being at work? And finally, what hobbies and activities are you going to schedule in? So it's not all work and no play?