Hi, I’m Pete and I’m 52 years old. Eight years ago, when I was 44 years old, I went through a big life change. When I was 44 years old. I left my old job as an architect and it was a risky move. I had a guaranteed career in retirement. I was part owner of a large firm, but I wasn’t happy in my life. I’ve ridden the happiness roller coaster, I’ve, been on downs and ups, and I think I finally figured it out.
I left my job after being unhappy for a long time and it took a lot to make me actually make the move to leave my job because I had so much security. But I came to understand that going through life unhappy in your job is probably the worst thing you can do, and I also came to understand that there are a whole lot of unhappy people in this world and I think that’s, one of our big problems.
They seem to be taking it out on each other wherever they can. If they’re unhappy, they want everybody else to be unhappy and we’re in some serious trouble. Oh yeah, that looks like it’s getting started.
Along my journey from architect to farmer I discovered some basic truths about happiness and I think these would benefit a lot of people.
1. You are responsible for your hapiness
The first rule that I learned is that only you are responsible for your happiness.
No one else is, and there’s no one else to blame. If you’re, not happy only you are responsible for your happiness.
2. Tune out
But in practice, it’s a little more difficult than that, and here’s what I did I tuned out and it made a world of difference by tuning out, I mean I quit listening to the radio I quit watching tv, I quit watching the news, I left social media well, except for youtube, I kind of like youtube.
By doing that. I got rid of all the angry voices. They’re, telling me what I should be mad about too, and I got rid of all the advertising that’s telling me who I should be, and I was freer to be myself.
I didn’t watch any tv for about four years. I still don’t, listen to the radio at all, and I watch tv now with my kids for about 45 minutes tonight is kind of a cool-down time before I go to bed that’s it. I tuned out all that noise that was coming at me from all different directions.
3. Quiet down and listen to yourself
A lot of it telling me how to feel and who to be as a person and once that quieted down it was easier for me to turn inward and to start to listen to myself, and it actually manifests itself in happiness.
Is physical pain in a lot of people? It was right here in my chest and I started to examine what I needed to do to fix that during this time I’d taken a temporary leave of absence from my old job and that helped even more because I was here – and it was quiet and I could figure things out?
What I did was Preston in a way, because when I stopped following news and politics well that’s when everything seemed to go south and it’s gone further south.
As time has gone on, you know there’s nothing, you can do about it except get angry, and why bother you can’t control it yelling at other people, isn’t going to help so just tune out.
4. Live below your means
The next huge key to happiness I think is to live below your means. If you can, I realize that there are people out there that can’t do that, they’re just scraping by, but I think there’s also a whole lot of people that could live below their means that choose not to.
I learned at a young age that buying stuff wasn’t where it’s at stuff. Just makes your life complicated and stuff just makes you want more stuff, and this is all going back to kind of the first thing I talked about that.
We see things on advertising tv, hear it on radio, see it on social media and think wow. If normal people are doing that, then I probably need to do that too, and it’s just not true. Once you tune out, you realize you, don’t need a whole lot of stuff.
Once you start living below your means, it gives you true freedom in life to do what you want with your life. You don’t need to worry so much about beating the next guy at your job or the next gal at your job, and it takes you off the treadmill, spending more money on stuff just brings more obligations to your life more stuff to take care of.
5. Live Simply
Sometimes I think, about getting a new truck, and then I think well, you know that’s a lot of money and taking care of a new truck is the devil I don’t know versus taking care of the truck I have is the devil I do know so I choose to live simply.
Money or lack thereof is the number one cause of divorce. It’s the number one stressor in our lives and once you remove that by living below your means, saving, rather than spending, you have a much more peaceful life.
6. Have a true friend
When I went through all the bad stuff changing careers, I couldn’t. have done it without my wife, Hillary. She was my one true friend and for me that was necessary. Having one true friend, I think, is one key to happiness.
Having a thousand Facebook friends is not the key to happiness. Being popular is not the key to happiness. If you’re looking for validation outside of yourself via how many people like you, you’re missing something inside that knowledge of who you are,
This needs to come within you, not be directed from outside of you and having what people expect of you dictating what you do.
7. Do what you love
Here’s, a piece of tough love that I experienced. If you’re, not in the right vocation and you’re unhappy in your vocation – change it.
That was the nut of what I went through. It was really scary. We spend the majority of our lives in our job. Most of our waking life is more than anything else, and you only get one life. So if you’re not happy doing that thing that you make your living from what’s the point.
We all need to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in what we do and I think, if you’re in the right job, you feel flow and flow is a psychological term. I’ll put the guy’s name, who came up with it down below, so you can google it I can’t even pronounce it, but flow is the state in which you’re fully engaged. You’re doing exactly what your brain likes to do and you kind of lose track of time and the task. It’s this amazing state that you get into, I would get into it a little bit in my old job.
When I was writing, I get into it all the time in the job that I do now. I lose track of the day because I’m fully engaged and interested in what I’m doing. In my opinion, we need to be creating something as part of our jobs to feel satisfied, and we should have a thirst for change and new knowledge in what we do if we lose that thirst.
8. Change is the Rule
If we don’t want to learn new things about our vocation anymore. Well, it’s a sign that maybe we should be moving on. After all, change is a rule, not an exception, and those who stick their feet in concrete and won’t change anymore, well, the train’s passing them by and train’s going faster and faster every day.
And this is what I found regarding changing what you do for a living and remaining engaged with it that if you make that leap, everything else follows and I’ve talked to others that have been through what I’ve been through and they’ve confirmed it.
I’m not sure it’s a rule, but it happens that if you do what you’re, you love, you stay on top of it, and all the financial stuff takes care of itself. It did for us. It was kind of like magic, and it amazed me at the time – and I think it’s – a sign that you’re, doing the right thing.
The other thing that happens is it’s not a job anymore, and I know that’s an old cliche, but I work from pretty much the time I roll out of bed till about half an hour 45 minutes before I go back to bed before my cool downtime, I’m working and I don’t, mind work is life and vice versa.
9. Forget about control
That is a really powerful notion in my book and finally, there’s, the issue of exerting control. So I think it’s a natural reflex for us all to say if there’s something that’s causing us unhappiness in our life, we seek to control that thing, and quite often that thing could be a person. Well, forget about it: you can’t control other people, you can’t change, other people so trying to exert control over those things you can’t control just leads to unhappiness. I roll with the punches here on the farm.
I think that’s a prerequisite for farming right it’s been raining non-stop. I can’t control it, it doesn´t worry me. I know that we’ll get through it, you know, and things will be all right.
I think that in this big wide world, the only thing that you really can control is yourself, and I practice that in some different ways, especially regarding interactions with other people, always listen more than you speak, understand the other person start by trying to find common ground With anybody, even if you know they’re a polar opposite of you find a place where you both can meet and be very careful before you say anything negative, and that applies to both in-person and any online conversation.
10. Avoid Negativity
Negativity spreads like cancer. The transition that I went through eight years ago was tough. It almost killed me frankly and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody else. But having gone through that, I went to a much better place and I’m a much much happier person.
I wish that more people would would go through that kind of introspection, because the world seems to be filled with miserable people now and the anger spills over into everything. If you want to learn more about what I went through, I wrote a book about it, this is a blow by blow account of how I came to see life differently. I hope you have a great sunday and I’ll, see you next time.
It took half my life, but I’ve found the secret to happiness. It boils down to some simple things: Realizing that no one else is responsible for your happiness, living below your means, finding one true friend, understanding whether you are in the right vocation, and understanding when to let go of control. (By Peter Larson, Source YT)
Pete’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Just-a-few-acres-farm-187074114794963/
