3173: Make Your Everyday Place Your Happy Place by Jay & Heather Harrington of Life And Whim on Self-Improvement

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[00:01:40] This is Optimal Living Daily episode 3173, Make Your Everyday Place Your Happy Place,

[00:01:46] by Jay and Heather Harrington of LifeAndWhim.com. And I'm Justin Mollick. I have a flashback episode

[00:01:53] today since I'm not feeling my best. It's from four years ago, so one we probably both aren't

[00:01:59] familiar with. So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life. Make Your Everyday Place

[00:02:10] Your Happy Place by Jay and Heather Harrington of LifeAndWhim.com. For years while living in urban

[00:02:17] and suburban environments, Heather and I would look for opportunities to escape to our happy

[00:02:22] place. When the stress became too much, the busyness crept in and we just needed a moment to catch our

[00:02:28] breath, slow down, and spend time in nature, we'd head north. Most often Traverse City, Michigan was

[00:02:33] our destination. We would spend a long weekend recharging, hiking the trails and exploring

[00:02:38] sleeping bear dunes, eating fresh food, and breathing in the crisp air. After a few days,

[00:02:44] we would begin the trek home and spend much of the four-hour drive fantasizing about how nice it

[00:02:48] would be to spend all of our time in our happy place while lamenting how unrealistic the whole

[00:02:53] idea was. After all, we had a family to raise, businesses to run, and responsibilities to look

[00:02:59] after. Maybe after we retire, we'd conclude while exiting off the highway. But year after year,

[00:03:05] the allure of our happy place would keep pulling us back, and that nagging desire to make our

[00:03:10] intermittent escapes our everyday existence persisted. The obvious and irrefutable logic of

[00:03:16] the truth we were denying was inescapable. We only have one life to live, so why wait until

[00:03:22] retirement, an uncertain future outcome, to live how we want, where we want? The Fisherman and the

[00:03:28] Businessman. There's a story attributed to many different cultures about an American businessman

[00:03:34] on vacation who comes across a fisherman on the beach of a small coastal village who is lazily

[00:03:39] casting his line into the sea. The young, ambitious businessman, puzzled as to why the

[00:03:44] fisherman was quote-unquote wasting his time rather than grinding away to make a real living,

[00:03:49] chastises the fisherman to scale his operation, hire others to work for him, and buy a fleet of

[00:03:55] boats. The fisherman replied, and then what? Frustrated, the businessman said, you can get rich,

[00:04:02] retire, and spend your days fishing on the beach and enjoying the sunset. The fisherman with a

[00:04:07] smile on his face nodded at the businessman who failed to grasp the irony of it all.

[00:04:12] The fisherman then turned his attention back to the sparkling sea. Like the fisherman who spends

[00:04:17] his days doing what he finds fun and fulfilling, our move was motivated by a desire to not put our

[00:04:22] dreams on layaway, to incorporate more of what we hoped to be doing into what we actually did.

[00:04:28] For us, that meant moving closer to the lakes, beaches, trails, and hills that would allow us to

[00:04:34] swim, paddle, bike, hike, and ski as much as we wanted. Making this transition required a lot of

[00:04:42] work. At times we looked back at our decision with angst and doubt. Did we make a big mistake,

[00:04:47] we'd ask ourselves? Should we have been more responsible about our future? These types of

[00:04:52] questions are natural with any life transformation. We learned that bucking notions of conventional

[00:04:58] wisdom is hard because every step of the way involved grappling with societal norms that

[00:05:03] suggested that we were doing it wrong. Now on the other side, I can unequivocally say that we did

[00:05:09] the right thing for us. Sounds pretty stark, right? So what to do? Your happy place can be any place.

[00:05:17] Is there an unlived life inside of you? Is the voice in your head calling you to something more?

[00:05:23] Are you postponing happiness for an uncertain future? I shared our journey toward happiness

[00:05:28] not because it's the right journey for everyone, far from it. We found our happy place which

[00:05:33] required a physical move but a happy place can be any place. In almost every circumstance,

[00:05:39] it's possible to incorporate more joy into life through everyday intentional living. Indeed,

[00:05:45] fulfillment is much more about how one lives than where one lives. Finding your happy place begins

[00:05:51] with answering some tough questions. What do I want? What brings me joy? What am I putting off

[00:05:57] that I should be doing now? Then, what hard choices must I make to make it happen? Everyone is

[00:06:04] different. Everyone's circumstances are different. But we are all alike in the sense that our lives

[00:06:09] consist of a never-ending series of choices and our happiness and fulfillment derive from the

[00:06:14] consequences of those choices. Not making a choice is a choice itself. It's easy to go through life

[00:06:21] on autopilot. Too often, people's lives consist of two contradictory stories, one playing out in

[00:06:27] their heads and another through their existence. The untold story is one of passion and adventure,

[00:06:33] the other a melancholy tale of suppressed desire. The point is, if you don't write your own story,

[00:06:39] someone else surely will. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, quote,

[00:06:44] the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be, end quote.

[00:06:49] Yes, of course it's important to plan for the future. It'd be irresponsible to throw caution

[00:06:54] to the wind and live only for the moment. But isn't it just as foolish to forego what you

[00:06:59] truly want now on the chance that it'll be waiting for you later? The average person lives 27,325

[00:07:07] days. How many days do you have left? As the old saying goes, this is not a dress rehearsal.

[00:07:13] This is all there is. Find your happy place wherever that may be. Make choices that bring

[00:07:19] you closer to tapping your life's unfulfilled potential. Make it count. You just listened to

[00:07:29] the post titled, Make Your Everyday Place Your Happy Place by Jay and Heather Harrington of

[00:07:34] lifeandwhim.com. And thank you to both Jay and Heather. If you're a long-time listener of this

[00:07:40] show, you definitely heard that story about the fishermen. It's one of my favorites because we

[00:07:44] often get stuck in that way of thinking from an early age too. We're taught to accomplish,

[00:07:49] accomplish, accomplish, but sometimes there's no end goal or vision in sight at all. We're

[00:07:55] accomplishing just for the sake of it and often not even enjoying the process. From the fisherman's

[00:08:00] eyes, it's the business person who's wasting their time because they're stressing out about scaling,

[00:08:05] operations, hiring, all that stuff, only to get back to square one of being able to relax.

[00:08:12] Personally, I enjoy the business building process. It's stressful often and being an entrepreneur

[00:08:17] means a lot of uncertainty, but I like that risk and uncertainty more than most people I know. And

[00:08:23] I don't really have an end game of relaxation. To me, the building of the business is the fun part,

[00:08:29] but not for the fishermen and maybe not for you. So what is your end game? What do you want in

[00:08:34] retirement? And can you be doing that right now? Just some things to think about today and this

[00:08:39] weekend. Hope you're having a great one and I'll be back tomorrow as usual where your optimal life

[00:08:44] awaits.