I’m my own jailer, custodian, guardian, and happiness maker.
Last year I decided to change something significant in my life—professionally and privately. The change must be willing, profound, positive, and permanent. At the age of 45, that’s something rare as far as I know.
I was not unhappy or anything. I have a successful career and a good family. Yet, something was missing, suffocating me without any visible cause.
I took a large sheet of paper and started writing what I enjoyed most and felt pleased and fulfilled. I put the line between so on the left side, and I have personal and on the right professional lists.
The left side was packed.
The right side was almost empty.
This came as a shock to me. I am successful as a top-tier manager, with 22 years of a professional career in a dozen companies and many completed projects. How is it possible to have this list empty? I could not answer my own question, so I took a few days to think about it.
The conclusion was simple but very hard for me to accept. Despite all my hard work and successes, I was not truly happy doing any of the jobs I had. I didn’t hate them, but I enjoyed none of them. In all the 22 years of my successful career, I had many good moments, but none were joyful that I could put on my list.
This was weird as in my universities for management (I attended three), we are taught that our success and fulfilled life is directly related to the number of projects we successfully complete. I firmly believed in this and never doubted it for a second.
Yet, somehow, I did not feel fulfilled.
Something was very wrong. Instead of relieving me, this revelation bogged me for a few months every day.
I listed all the times I silenced the truth of what I wanted over the years.
I genuinely believe that being an outstanding manager requires giving your best to the organization – all you have. In light of this, I compiled a list of all the times I put myself through soul-crushing work because I was loyal to the companies I worked for. And all the times I lost my health because I was so exhausted from work.
I thought about how many others feel the same. Triumphant, yet unhappy and like imprisoned. Why?
Was it because of the money? It was deeper. It was insecurity and fear. Not superficial fear, as I had no issues jumping into the fire and making tough decisions in my career. Facing challenges and tough situations was part of my daily routine.
Still, I feared letting down my family, who depended on me.
This was exemplified eight years ago when I became a dad.
When you have a newborn, your fears grow exponentially with your happiness.
You fear letting your child and partner down, not providing enough, not being sufficient, unreliable, and not appropriately supporting your family.
My job has become more critical as a way of security.
Maximum safety and professional success don’t mean that you are necessarily happy. I was not. My job has become my prison.
Seeking safety from my fears, I disconnected from who I really am and what I needed to be happy.
I needed to find out what truly worked and what was not working for me. To make my change, I learned from books, talking to other people, and listening to great speeches and podcasts. All that new knowledge was tremendous but started to be helpful only once I started experimenting.
There are three logical steps to move from fear to happiness and success.
Finding these steps was relatively easy. Following them and changing their mindset was quite another story. I needed almost a year to find and embrace my inner self fully.
4 steps from fear to self-love and happiness
1 Introspection
Ask yourself, “Why am I holding myself? Why am I not moving in the direction I would love to at this point? Why have I built this prison for myself? Why do I feel so lost and trapped?”
We are not born with fear. With survival instincts to survive in the physical world, yes, but not to see danger in everything. We are taught to fear.
Think about it.
We teach our kids to look both ways before we cross the street.
We teach our kids not to touch the stove when it’s hot.
We teach our kids not to talk to strangers.
We teach our kids not to run too fast so they don’t fall and hurt themselves.
We teach our kids to be good at school so they can have good jobs and not fear the future.
When the kids go to school, this is more amplified by the teachers and professors.
When we get the job, we must comply with company policies and work within the company rules. If we do not, we fear that we will be fired.
Yet, despite all the efforts, we still get hurt and more fear is installed in us. As we get older, our main priority becomes safety. For our loved ones and for us. To protect them, we install as much fear as possible from all the bad things that can happen. All from the good intention.
With time, we stop taking risks, and we start being always more afraid of this dangerous world. Once our cup of fears is full, it spills over to the persons we cherish the most. Always with good intentions in mind.
I found out that I had abandoned my true self and my happiness when I started calling myself “very reasonable,” “wise,” “responsible,” and “realistic.”
Why these words?
To do things safely. I became “reasonable, realistic, wise, responsible” when I got hurt and had terrible experiences when I was emotionally shaken. I grew fearful of these situations and tried to find ways to avoid them.
My superiors always praised me as an expert in using resources wisely and minimizing risks.
The ugly truth is that there are better ways to invent something new and extraordinary. I used my extensive knowledge to recycle things already at my disposal and I did it effectively and efficiently.
We can only change and adapt by taking risks with something new and going out of our comfort zone. It doesn’t matter if we are discussing a new job, a new love partner, planning a kid, or doing something different to improve our health. If we don’t change, it cannot happen. We are just stuck and, after some time, feel empty as we know we can do better.
Fear paralyzes us.
You know that when:
- You may not take action to get a better job or promotion.
- You will not ask that beautiful girl on a date, although you feel she is the one.
- You are inclined to expand your family from the fear of the crazy dangerous world surrounding you.
- Although you feel something is wrong, you will not go to the doctor for fear of what we might tell you.
- You will not change your diet and start exercising to become healthier as you fear it will take you some of your comforts and habits.
- You will not ask for help out of fear of what others will think, and you will appear weak.
And the vicious cycle goes on.
I learned that overcoming that fear and discomfort and taking some pain would launch me to my next stage of life.
Is success guaranteed? No, it is not. But you will learn something about yourself and be bold to try again when you find what works for you and makes you happy.
2 Follow your new freedom.
Quick facts:
70% of the employees in the US are looking for a new job. The reason is that they don’t like where they are. Divorce rates are soaring too.
People feel unhappy and hope that changing a business environment or partner will improve things.
They change their job, change their partner, and feel unhappy again. The walls and the faces have changed, but the feeling of being trapped persists.
Most need one key thing to do. To look at the mirror and ask themselves, “what’s wrong here and what can I do to improve it, to make it better.”
So, how do we start? How do we follow our new path to freedom?
First
We should be aware that there are no shortcuts or magic pills. No easy, instant ways to become enlightened and change your life overnight? At least, I have never known anyone who managed that.
Every change is a process that takes time and effort.
Second
Decide to change. There is no need to take drastic measures all at once. Give yourself a couple weeks to introduce a few good new habits and eliminate a few bad ones. Stick to that. In a few weeks, repeat the process until you become healthier and more satisfied.
You are doing well if you feel you are happier and in a better mood. Keep changing. Keep going.
Be ready that some of the changes you make will be good. Some will definitively be not. Keep the good ones. Change again what is not fulfilling or stopping you from reaching your goals.
We are all different and have different backstories and goals. For each of us, being happy is something different. Due to that, there is no straight line from being trapped to becoming free.
When you stumble, you get up, analyze what went wrong, and move on with a new option you think will work best for you and your goal.
Be aware that goals change.
As you follow your path of freedom, you will change, know more, and your goals will also change. That’s a good thing. You are learning and adopting.
Practically speaking, your priority should be making your job more bearable and happier place. Once you’ve done so, you should look into other opportunities inside the same company or another. After a few years, your goals will undoubtedly alter as you have advanced and know for the better.
You will become more knowledgeable, and your goals will change with age. Teenagers will have different plans from those in their 20s. In your 30s, you will have other goals than in your 20s. Your knowledge, ambitions, and environment will change every few years, and so will your goals. Enjoy the ride. Be better you.
Experiment with change. One step at a time, adopt, analyze, move on to the next step, and so on. After all, what are we then vehicles of our self-expression? If we try to suppress that, we might be safe, but we will feel trapped, miserable, and unhappy and make our dear ones pay for it this way or another.
3 Finding self again
When you feel lost, and analysis and introspection don’t produce any results, you need to take time off. It can be a couple of weeks or a month.
During that time, take a piece of paper, and make two columns.
In one column, write down each time you do, or remember, something that makes you happy and satisfied. In another column, write down when you feel sad, unhappy, and stuck.
Don’t be lazy. Just a couple of sentences and include what caused such feelings. Or write much more if that’s what you need.
When you feel ready, summarize your notes, and find a path, reasons, or persons that contributed to those feelings. Try eliminating the “bad factors” and committing more time to the positive ones.
This is an easy step to find your “why” – to find your purpose again.
Purpose can be anything. Usually, it is our motivation to achieve something that makes us useful, valuable, and happy and gives our life meaning.
Some of the following questions might be helpful when you have an extra few minutes you would like to commit to solving this:
– Why do I do this?
– Why is this more important than something other?
– Why am I not feeling happy when “that happens”?
– Why is that person making me so happy?
– Why is that person making me sad or angry?
– Why is this thing I am doing/learning making me so happy?
– Why do I feel exhausted instead of happy with what I did?
– Why is this stressing me so much?
– What skills do I use the most when I am stuck and stressed?
– What do I like to do the most when I am inspired?
The answers and conclusions from this step will probably give you answers, or at least an excellent clue, why you feel stuck, why you want to move on, and in which direction.
4 Engage
Writing and contemplating things are excellent but will lead you nowhere to reach your goals, especially if you need to make big decisions and changes. Only your actions will. If you wish to have a change, see if something is feasible, and achieve your goal, the only way to do that is to act.
Of course, you need to make some plans and milestones to motivate and guide yourself to reach your goals. But don’t try to make things perfect. Don’t get stuck in limbo while trying to learn as much as possible until you make your first step.
Move on, correct your plan, and learn from actual experience. You need to engage with something to really learn from it.
While reading articles and listening to speeches on this topic, I soon realized that are two kinds of people preaching.
– Ones who don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Just pure academic knowledge or trying to assemble one article by recycling a few others they found on the internet. I found these articles lifeless and mostly useless as they provided bare facts, figures, various statistics, and universally applied solutions.
By them, you just node you had, take some courses, and you transform within days into the perfect “you.” Many offers paid programs with “success guaranteed.” Good luck with all that.
You can pay them for some time to feel better, but once the effects of these speeches and messages start to fade, you will not feel or see any notable change in your life. You will still be trapped. You will pay for a few days of feeling good, and that’s really it.
They can contain some good hints, but most are useless and inapplicable. You cannot make such significant changes in your habits and values quickly. That is not how our body and brain work. The change must come from the inside.
– The others talk about their personal experience, struggles, and failures and how they overcome them. Their messages are not the story about success and metamorphosis alone but about how to survive the journey of change, how not to quit, how to endure while feeling lost and struggling, and how to understand yourself better and use that knowledge to find your own path. These are the people from which I learned the most.
Conclusion
The journey of change and finding our own path and happiness takes work and time. But it is achievable and constantly evolving if we put in time and effort. Without action and commitment, nothing will happen, or it will be short-lived.
We will know that we are on the right track as we will feel more alive, happier, and healthier. Our life will have meaning, and we will have a purpose. That feels good. I know from my personal experience, and I hope you will too.
