‘Survival’ shouldn’t be your first option.
Best wishes,
Peter.
If, like Anon, ‘work’ has become something you feel you need to ‘survive’, there are three obvious ways to improve your work-life balance:
1 Work less
2 Improve the non-work portion of your life
3 Make work fun (which might involve changing the very nature of what ‘work’ is)
I’ve tried – and am still trying – all three approaches. Maybe you instinctively know that one or all of these might work for you, but try not to get fixated on that right now. Keep that thought in the back of your mind, or better still, jot it on a piece of paper. We’ll come back to it later.
In the meantime let’s move on to the second reason for General Unhappiness.
Cause Number 2: Lack of Control
Run down the following list and keep a count in your head of the number of times you say, ‘Yes, that applies to me.’
1 Other people have a say in how your life works.
2 Everyone else gets a say in how your life works.
3 You feel powerless a lot of the time.
4 Everyone, and everything else, comes first.
5 You say things like ‘I can’t do {what I want}, because I’ve got to do …’
6 What you want (to do) is right at the bottom of your to-do list.
7 Your to-do list is mainly a list of items given to you by someone else.
8 You say things like ‘Things will be so much better when …’
9 This isn’t the life you would have chosen for yourself.
10 You find yourself jealously protecting the half-an-hour you have to yourself each day …
11 … or the one night a week when you go to your evening class, club, pub etc.
12 You have secret friends, hobbies, lovers, possessions … anything, just something that you can call yours.
How did you score? I scored one, perhaps one and a half. A few years back I would have scored a nine, maybe even a ten.
Things were pretty miserable back then: I would get up really early in the morning just so I could be on my own. I would go to work an hour earlier than was strictly necessary, and I’d take the scenic route there. Once at work I’d count the hours till lunchtime, and then again till I could leave. Then I’d drive the long way home, a different route this time, with a certain amount of dread about what awaited me when I got in.
Once home I’d get cross if there was anything that needed my attention – something to fix, a phone call to make, or even post to open. I’d get cross if there was nothing for dinner. I’d get cross if I couldn’t watch television (though I didn’t care what was on). And I’d definitely get cross if I couldn’t have a glass of wine. Particularly as I wanted two. And after all this crossness I’d go to bed. Ridiculously early.
My days would be spent impatiently waiting for the next ‘bit’, just so whatever I was currently doing would end.
I’d spend weekdays longing for the weekend, and the weekend longing for Monday morning.
And I spent hours and hours wishing. I made long secret lists of wishes: ‘Things I would do someday …’ Except someday never came. My only purpose in life was to make sure my body was where it was supposed to be at an allotted time. I was a prisoner inside my own existence.
And the really sad thing is, I wasn’t the only one. My wife felt like that too. We were both slaves to a growing number of responsibilities that controlled our every waking hour.
So who was holding us to ransom? Who was pulling the strings? Who was the evil mastermind behind the wicked forces in our lives?
We were.
We let it happen. And it wasn’t hard to do.
What’s more, we thought it was a phase. A blip. Something to get through. Good times were just around the corner, and if they weren’t, we still had the rest of our lives for things to get better.
And whilst that might be true for me, it wasn’t for my wife.
If I could jump back in time and tell my younger self that I’d only be with Kate for three years and three months, and that those would be the very last moments she would have on this planet, I’d change everything. Right away.
In short: I’d have made every damn day count.
Let’s get one thing straight here. You can’t ‘live every day as though it’s your last’. That’s impractical. Stupid, even. But you can grab back the reins of your life, get back in the driving seat, and take back control. It’s not easy. There’ll be resistance. Lots of it. The majority of it from yourself. But my God, you’ll feel better.
‘Terrific!’ you might be thinking. ‘Another self-help book that wants to tell me how the unhappiness I feel is my fault! What a load of baloney! Can I get a refund?’
Relax.
This book’s being written by an Englishman, and as such it’s finally time to start pointing the finger at others.
Cause Number 3: External Forces
Sometimes the thing that’s making you unhappy is staring you right in the face. People might tell you that you need to relax, calm down, try not to take things personally, roll with the punches, ‘make lemonade when life gives you lemons’, but sometimes that’s not going to cut it.
Sometimes, it isn’t you.
Sometimes it really is them.
Let’s take a look at who they are.
For me, ‘Other People’ have more power than anything else to drain my enthusiasm and suck the pleasure out of life.
It isn’t always the people you think it would be either. Sure, the angry idiot who gestured at me from his car as he drove past took the edge off what might have been a pleasant drive home, but he’s soon forgotten, and I can take solace in the fact that by the way he’s driving he’ll probably wrap his car around a tree in the not too distant future.
No, the people who really have the power to make me unhappy are either people who I care about, or people who are, in some way, important in my life.
We all have them: The manager you don’t get on with – one who seems intent on making your life a misery. The ex-partner you still have to see at family gatherings. The moody work colleague you have to tiptoe around. Or the aged relative who you love dearly, but has started to take you for granted.
Occasionally it isn’t the interaction with these people
