Ultimately, we all just want to feel more happiness in our lives. Whether you want to grow a multi-million dollar company, get in better physical shape, have better relationships, buy a new home, or drive a better car, the primary reason is because you believe you will feel happier as a result of achieving or acquiring that goal.
The trick to finding your happiness is understanding that it’s about the journey, not the destination. Do you know how to set up the journey so you can experience what you want along the way.
Here are five steps you can take to navigate your path to achievement and find your happiness. P.E.A.C.E.
P — Persistently Plan: Make the time to take the time to bring forth your best thinking, then devise a plan for your business and your life. Plan your day, week, month and quarter. Have a plan for the next segment (meeting, deep work, research, etc) of your day. A plan doesn’t always have to be written out. It can be an idea or a vision in your mind of the desired end result. Have a way to keep your plan ubiquitous so you can reference it often.
E — Enthusiastically Engage & Execute: Once you have a compelling plan or an idea of how you want something to turn out, jump in with all your energy — mentally, emotionally and physically. Do so as if you believe, in your bones, that it will all work out. Don’t worry about sustainable energy. When you know you are on track with what you need to be doing, you generate energy. You are a generator and progress is your fuel.
A — Attitudinally Anticipate: Even with the best plan, as you engage and execute there will be obstacles and setbacks. It’s planet earth. That’s how it works. What we go through, we grow through to become stronger and smarter for next time. As the business philosopher Jim Rohn said, “Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.”
Adversity makes us better. As skilled as we get envisioning our future and seeing around corners, funky stuff still happens. Develop routines, processes and systems to carry you through the fire to minimize feeling sof overwhelm, anxiety and fear. It takes effort and ongoing conditioning.
To condition yourself for dealing more effectively with adversities, think, Do-Be-Have. Anticipate what you will DO, how you will need to BE, and what will you need to HAVE available when and where things come off the rails, because they will.
C — Celebrate and Calibrate: As you execute your lead indicators and make progress on your lag indicators of success, be sure to celebrate and acknowledge what’s working and a job well done. That’s the happy part you want more of, remember? The one thing you can count on with your plan is things not going according to plan. The moment the ink dries, or the document is saved, the plan is obsolete. We must develop the discipline to calibrate what’s not working or abandon it to make room for what will get us what we want.
E — Envision an Exciting End: There is something known as Stockdale’s paradox which states, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Have a compelling, overarching life vision that creates a vacuum that pulls you through what you need to get through to that vision. Chunk down the payoffs to the segment level.
Revisit P.E.A.C.E. throughout each day to make the progress you desire. Progress equals happiness.
Make it up, make it fun, and get it done!