You’ve probably heard the saying: Do what you love.
Yes, you should at least like what you’re doing but that’s not entirely up to us many times. We all need to make a living and learn to accept the positions we have to reach that objective. At the end of the day we are exhausted, feeling unfulfilled, and sometimes (though we don’t want anyone to ever feel this way) hopeless.
You’re not alone. It feels like you are, but you aren’t. It’s called the rat race. Others call it the grind. You hustle. We hustle. And none of it gets us any closer to being wealthy as we’d like. Times are hard, yes, but what if we told you there is one surefire way to get to the bottom of how you’re feeling?
How to Figure Out What Makes You Happy
In your career, you have one option that we recommend to overcome overwhelm, stress, and burn out. Our advice is to take time off.
When you take this time off, you are not to plan anything. Naturally, you’ll stick to your responsibilities to your family and what not, but everything else is off the to-do list. How long you take off is up to you, but we recommend at least five days. You’ll need longer if you find yourself getting back into work habits like planning or adding more deadlines to your schedule than you need. Yes, even at home without our bosses we can still create deadlines for ourselves, like to have dishes done by 8:00am. But if you do spend a day going back into work mode, then you’ll need an extra day to make up for it.
Use whatever time you have saved up or can realistically take off, and you are free to go on a vacation, but our experience has led us to believe that a staycation is more effective. Why? Because at home we always find something to do and that is the entire point of this challenge – to NOT do.
What to Do with Your Time Off
You have one objective outside of your responsibilities:
Do what feels intuitive in the moment.
As you become more present, you will start to feel things inside that get you excited. Before you start this, you will be tired and fed up. You may spend the first several hours or day just lounging on the couch. It is in these present moments you will catch how you think and spend your time. We found ourselves:
- Scrolling on social media
- Crying
That’s it. Those two things. We pouted, sulked, and felt sorry for ourselves. We only wanted to rest because we were absolutely tired from working so long and hard. That’s okay. By the afternoon we started to find new interests, like:
- Reading self-help books (not business, but spiritual)
- Reading fantasy books
- Cooking and baking
- Going for a walk
- Creating funny AI videos
- Buying a new bike
We did all of those things in just a few hours not because we felt like we had to, but because we knew that it would make us very happy.
At the end of the day we were completely healed from our burn out and had this new look on life.
Usually by day three you’ll start to figure out what career-work makes you most happy. Then you can begin to apply that into your life and live as if it were already happening. For instance, if you craved to write then you could start writing a blog and then, when you return to work again, you can find ways to incorporate more writing. You may even feel so good you’ll talk to your boss about writing full-time or find a new job that allows it.
If you’re not unhappy with your job, then this does not apply to you. If you are, then try using some of those vacation hours so you can be a human being and just live, breathe, and be still for while. It is in these moments of stillness when we find ourselves and what brings us the most harmony.
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