Spring Forward In Your Career!

How many of us spend many hours worrying about things that never end up happening? We think if we pre-think, if we can prepare for the worst things, we’ll be good? We feel that if we think about that inevitable negative happenstance and we’re all stocked up with whatever emotional, logistical, statistical, information we will need in the event that the sad life-changing event should occur we will have a greater chance of being safe? It’s not unlike being in a war and making sure you’ve dug down deep enough in your trench hole, with as much ammunition and food as you can get a hold of in the event of an attack. The thing about this thought process is that you spend a lot of energy preparing for something that may very well not even happen. You spend a lot of energy thinking about how something bad will happen. You spend a lot of time feeling afraid. The reality is there aren’t that many bad things that happen in life and you could be just as prepared if you handle them when they actually happen then taking all the time thinking about them before they do. Wouldn’t you be better building yourself up, enjoying yourself, seeing things from the positive side? Wouldn’t it be better to train yourself for positive outcomes? Wouldn’t it be better to have all the energy you need so that when those bad times happen you’re good to go? You certainly know you have those skills already. We can only control our lives so much, enjoy as much of it as you can.

Enjoying life may seem simple to some and not so simple to others. I was born into a family that while we enjoyed the moments, happiness was not considered to be a part of your regular life. Why not? It was just the way my parents grew up, and it was sort of passed down. You worked, you loved your family, you wished for good health, and if you had all those things that was happiness enough. Nothing more, nothing less. The idea of thinking of more was almost being gluttonous, but the generations have changed. More recent generations may often have the feeling of “where’s the happiness” or “why aren’t I happier?” It’s those feelings that make us want to control things a lot more to be the way we want them to be. We can’t always control when someone dies, we can’t always control when we lose our jobs, we can’t control the weather. I’m not saying that everyone in my parent’s generation was happy…definitely not. What I’m saying is that in most cases (there are always exceptions of course) they lived their lives and they enjoyed their lives. When something happened in their lives that was not going well, they looked to see what they could do to change it. When I was growing up and I would be worrying about something that I couldn’t change, my Mom would say: Why waste the energy?

Why waste the energy, is exactly what I was saying in the first paragraph. Enjoy life. When bad things happen which really isn’t all that often in our lives compared to how long we live, we’ll deal with it. We’ll deal with it even better if we have made that time to experience and enjoy our lives instead of waiting for that bad moment to arrive. Spring forward!