Make happy choices

by | 29 Jun, 2018

Make happy choices

Live the life of your dreams. Those are big words. And it may seem a far away dream from the life you are living right now. Unrealistic perhaps. The goods news is that you can start today. Just make happy choices. And start with a little one.

Not everyone is born with an ardant passion for life, clear career goals or obvious special talents that guide them towards the life they were born to live. This makes it a bit more confusing and hard to find your path. The good news is that it gives you room to play as well. Experiment with things that you like to do.

The fun part about making happy choices is that you do not have to think too much about them, you also should not take it too seriously and it doesn’t matter if it are private or business choices. Everything is allowed. And one can lead to the other.

Let’s say you are curious about a theater workshop

Let’s say you are curious about joining a theatre workshop. You are doubting if this is the right way to go, because you want to change your career direction and it feels like a waste of time to do useless, fun things in your private time. But what if you take this workshop, learn how to have fun, lighten up in this open environment and meet new people? Perhaps you gain confidence because you made such a different choice for a change that it helps you to make different choices in your job as well. Maybe you connect with new like-minded people who happen to have connections with a company you would like to work for. Maybe just lightening up and having fun gives you the positive energy to see creative solutions.

Maybe you like to walk

Maybe you have an office job. You sit behind the computer all day and when you come home you don’t have much energy. So you cook, eat, and spend your evening in front of the television, or taking your kids to bed, or read a book. You don’t know what you want to do with your life, but these weekdays are not exactly making you very happy. You like to walk, but just don’t have the time or energy to do that.

What about your lunch break? Can you use your lunch break to get out of the building? Just 30 minutes of movement and fresh air can make all the difference. Just try it one day and notice how you feel afterwards. It is possible that you feel more clear in your head, have more energy, are more productive in the afternoon so you feel more accomplished at the end of the day.

Just try it another day and see how it makes you feel now. Perhaps you have more energy in the evening when you come home and you decide to start looking for a new job instead of watching TV. Maybe one day a colleague at work wants to join for a walk and you end up having an inspiring conversation. If you trust this colleague you can share your doubts about your job and hear his or her thoughts about it. Maybe you get new insights on what you can do yourself to make your job more interesting.

Do you want to learn a new language?

Maybe you want to learn a new language. This happened to me. It was winter 2016 and I got the idea to learn Spanish. I already had the books at home but didn’t have a pressing need to get started. Apart from the fact that my best friend lives in Madrid and I like to visit her, there was no actual rational reason for me to learn Spanish. I have always liked to learn languages and connect with people over the world. But learning Spanish was just something fun I liked to do. No more, no less.

In this period I had an office job in the Netherlands besides my coaching practice, so I had holidays that I could use. I thought about getting back to Tenerife where I had spent a nice holiday in the autumn of 2015. So I started to gather information about the language schools there. I knew about a coworking place there where entrepreneurs gathered and worked together and saw that they also offered Spanish language courses. So I registered for 1 week intensive course of the most basic level there is: A1.1.

One year later I am living under the sun

During this Spanish course I had so much fun and met really nice people. After the Spanish classes we used to do a lot of nice things together like surfing, salsa, going to the beach and meeting up for dinner and mojitos. It was a very international group of 7+ different European nationalities and they all had adventurous plans with their lifes. After this course an Italian guy moved to Brasil, a German girl moved to Gran Canaria, a Italian girl moved to Majorca, another German girl went off studying in Cuba and the Polish girl is currently traveling the world.

And for me? It was right there that I reconnected with my old dusty dream to live under the sun one day. (I always thought that one day I would switch from the cold and rainy Dutch climate to a friendlier one. One day … when I had my ducks in a row.) But after finishing my course and enjoying my stay in Tenerife I realized I didn’t have to be “one day”. It could be sooner.

My basic Spanish allowed me to connect with local people. Being surrounded by people with a positive mindset of “everything is possible” and “do what makes you happy” allowed me to dream bigger than I had done in a while. So February 2017 – when I took this Spanish course for no apparent reason – marked the beginning of a big life change for me. And now – one year later – this dream came true as I am living on Tenerife, creating my new life under the sun.

And what about you?

What does your heart tell you to do? Where do you feel inspired? What little happy choice can you make today? It may just be the breadcrum towards the life of your dreams.

About the author of this blog post

Hi my name is Mirjam Overbeek, a Dutch Authenticity Coach living on Tenerife. 

I love helping women to reconnect with themselves and their dreams, stop living up to expectations of others and have the courage to pave their own unique path. I believe it makes the world a better place when we follow our heart. I offer 1-on-1 coaching via Skype & Zoom and retreats on Tenerife. 

Want to see what I can do for you? Schedule a free Clarity Call with me. It will give you instant clarity in the area of your life where you feel stuck right now.

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