A life cre­at­ed by your own imag­i­na­tion?  Yes, please!

Dear Friends,

It is a plea­sure to be in touch with you again.  I’ve been work­ing on my Hap­pi­ness Plan and thought it’d be a great idea to cre­ate a mutu­al men­tor­ship, that is, work with oth­ers who also want to change their lives.  We can com­pare notes and meet right here on this plat­form to dis­cuss our progress.

Do you have an idea or pas­sion you can act on imme­di­ate­ly?  Does it excite you?  Is it a dream life for you?

Richard Koch, author of Liv­ing the 80/20 Way rec­om­mends that before we embark on our Hap­pi­ness Plan, that we must be very spe­cif­ic about our 80/20 des­ti­na­tion (more on this lat­er).

3 Steps to Your Hap­pi­ness Plan:

• Sim­pli­fy: After review­ing your list of goals, select one where you most want things to improve.  You can accom­plish all your goals just not all at once.

Like many, I have goals for each life domain (career, per­son­al, self, mon­ey, rela­tion­ships, etc.).  And like some of you, I have sev­er­al goals for each area.

Con­ven­tion­al minds will always want to place you in a cat­e­go­ry.  I remem­ber feel­ing frus­trat­ed when I did­n’t know how to stick to one career objec­tive.

I was always baf­fled when my peers did­n’t know what they want­ed to do with their lives and here I was want­i­ng to be both (simul­ta­ne­ous­ly) a vet and a pro­fes­sion­al ball­room dancer.  Actu­al­ly, the vet part is fic­tion­al — I wish I had the stom­ach to be a vet, then I’d be able to help all my ani­mal friends–the ball­room dancer part, that’s a true sto­ry.

I felt that life was too long to do the same thing over and over.  I stuck to my guns and trad­ed becom­ing a renowned expert in one thing for a life filled with dif­fer­ent career paths.

I have sev­er­al pas­sions and have found that my life has been most enjoy­able when I’m dri­ven by the things that excite me.  I’m now enjoy­ing and embrac­ing my unique place in this uni­verse and I encour­age you all to do the same.  Don’t drift aim­less­ly through life with­out real­iz­ing the best of what you can become.

I did, how­ev­er, find the nucle­us of my one true love and that is to live life the 80/20 way and to apply it to every aspect of my life.  I’ve been doing this for the past year and it’s become rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

• Find the 80/20 Route: Find the most excit­ing route that will give you more for less.  Focus on pro­duc­ing extra­or­di­nary results with­out extra­or­di­nary effort.

My hus­band works in med­ical device sales and he’s real­ly good at it.  But the truth is, he only works about 2–3 sol­id hours per day.  He is effi­cient in a very relaxed way.  He goes into the office about once per week for a few hours and spends the rest of his time work­ing from home and reg­u­lar­ly vis­it­ing his top 20 clients: those that pro­duce 80 per­cent of his rev­enue.  He avoids doing busi­ness with the 80 per­cent of peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that com­bined con­tribute a mere 20 per­cent to his income.

In char­ac­ter, in man­ner, in style, in all things, the supreme excel­lence is sim­plic­i­ty.  Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low

• Start Now: Take small but very well-direct­ed actions every day towards your goal.  Don’t try to cram every­thing in one day.

Please believe me when I tell you that liv­ing out your Hap­pi­ness Plan is high­ly pos­si­ble regard­less of your cur­rent finan­cial sta­tus, edu­ca­tion­al back­ground or pro­fes­sion.  But it will require you to focus (strong empha­sis on focus), sim­pli­fy and set lim­its on every­thing you do.  Don’t let the mod­ern world push you towards more is more.  Have the con­fi­dence to leave the crowd.

As always, thank you for allow­ing me to be a small part of your life.  And if you would, please leave me a com­ment, like and share!

Xoxo,

Irís