The best way to create a better, happy life starts with learning how to do nothing. When people discover the power of doing nothing, life really starts taking off. In a short time, it not only gets better, life feels happier.
Most people instead get caught up in the “doing disease”. They think happy, better lives come from doing things that will, supposedly, make them happy. But what they find is, all that doing leads to a whole lot more doing. And rarely does the doing make the person happy.
Before they know it, the person’s at the end of their life, regretting they spent so much time doing as well as not doing what they could have done. Doing is the dis-ease that can rob one of life.
So many think all we need “to do” is do more of what others are doing and we’ll find happiness. So that’s what we do. We work hard, sacrifice, put off joy now for joy later…
I know that path personally. I worked almost 30 years before I realized the secret to happiness was doing less.
Doing is drudgery
Before that realization, doing had me doing what everyone else did. It worked. Sometimes. Looking back, though, all that hard-earned money, lofty positions that looked good on paper but took their toll on my personal life satisfaction, wasn’t worth the happiness I enjoy now, doing a lot of nothing besides attending to my spiritual happiness.
It’s really crazy how so many people, especially Americans, tie their happiness to work. While it’s true work can be fulfilling, that fulfillment depends on landing work that feels fulfilling. Maybe that’s why 50-80 percent of people hate their work. So what’s the answer? Where does happiness happen?
I suggest it lies in the heart and mind, not in an external situation. Which means, of course, the difference between those fulfilled at work, doing, and those hating what they’re doing lies in what they’re thinking about what they’re doing.
The best way to change how one thinks first comes with understanding how one currently thinks. That’s where becoming Positively Focused starts.
Until a person figures out their thinking patterns and habits, it’s too easy to stay trapped in the doing the disease, trying to create a different result by doing the same things.
I’m glad I found the way out of all that. The way out being doing nothing. It seems crazy, but it’s true. Here’s why.
You match what you’re getting
First, the reason so many seek happiness through doing, yet fail to find it, is because they’re trying to get something they don’t believe they can have. Or they’re looking for it in the wrong place. I talk about this with every client. A person can’t find something they think they can’t find. That’s the case for keys, lost gloves and, frankly, a happy life.
If someone thinks life isn’t fun and easy, they can’t experience the fun and ease of life. No matter how hard they try creating that, it will evade them. A person just can’t create outside of their existing beliefs. And what a person believes often lies hidden in thoughts they’re thinking so often, they can’t consciously perceive the thoughts when they think them.
Insecurities proceed us all
The fact is, if a person thinks life is a struggle, people are out to get them (or don’t care about them), or that their life has no meaning or other similar thoughts, the insecurity or anxiety such thoughts trigger tells the thinker what they’re thinking about life, people or the meaning of life is inconsistent with how life actually is.
What’s more, those thoughts will create life experiences consistent with them. Life will occur as a constant struggle, people will be predatory and life will feel meaningless. And once such thoughts create life experience consistent with them, momentum behind those thoughts is so great, those thoughts continue creating life experience on their own. Until the thinker generates momentum in a different direction.
This is why life seems “the way it is”, like some objective reality. Instead of the subjective reality life really is. Life is a subjective reality under direct control of the person experiencing the reality.
Instead of taking control though, people become victims of that auto-created life. Which means becoming victims of their uncontrolled thinking processes. They try harder. They do more, push, struggle more, thinking if they do all that, they’ll finally get what they want.
It doesn’t work that way. Life gives what you think about. Not what you want.
Doing it different?
Doing nothing begins an important process. That process reverses momentum created when a person keeps doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results. When someone calms themselves, relaxes and focuses inward, powerful processes get underway even though it seems like nothing happens.
And the more that person relaxes into doing nothing, the more effective they get. That’s because every person receives guidance through their intuition, their Inner Being or Broader Perspective. Doing nothing tunes one into all that timeless wisdom.
What really happens is, by doing nothing, the person calms down noise in their head. That way they start hearing clear signals their intuition sends all day, every day.
In time, the person realizes some profound insights. Like this client:
Uncovering such insights takes a while. And this is the challenge. So many people in our lives tell us doing nothing is lazy and time wasting. But it’s not that. It’s a profound state of being which tunes one back into their deeper knowing.
But if you listen to society, parents, educators and all those loud mouths in the peanut gallery, you’ll hear “stop being lazy”, “work harder”, “success is in the struggle”.
It works but it’s tough
Such approaches work. But do you really want to struggle through life? I don’t. I’d rather enjoy life while seeing my life bringing me everything I want with little effort.
People who struggle claim it’s worth the struggle. They look at and display scars they “earned” on the way to their success. I say give that approach up, especially when it comes to finding happiness.
Instead, figure out how to instantly become a match to the happiness so often sought but not found. When it shows up, you will be a match to it because the instant you create it, you ARE a match to it. You’re happy. Stay in that and a happy life becomes yours.
A better way exists. It starts with doing nothing, which really is doing a lot. Learning to do nothing transforms life. My clients know this. It’s time for you to know it too.