“What brings you here?” I asked one of my clients.
She said, “I wanted to improve the way I manage my time.” “Why is it important to you?” I asked again. She went on, “I want to be able to complete the tasks in hand on time, so I can have some free time which I want to spend with my children.”
“What would that give you?” I asked her again.
She said straight away, “That would give me joy.”
I continued, “What would joy give you?” She took a moment and said, “Pleasure!, maybe enjoyment.”
Like a recorded voice, I asked her again, “What would enjoyment give you?”
Now she took some time and shrugged with a smile, asked me, “happiness?”
So she came to me, for better time management, which would give her free time, which she wants to spend on her children, which would give her joy, which would give her pleasure or enjoyment and eventually that fun would give her happiness.
Notice, she is spending time and money, improving how she manages her time, which she intends to spend with her children and expecting to be happy.
Isn’t that the case on pretty much everything we do?
All you have to do is, ask yourself this question, “why and what would that give you?” a few times over and over again to find out the reason why you do certain things.
For example, you brush your teeth in the morning because you want to keep your teeth healthy and free of germs, which would help your health. You drive your kids to school because you want them to be educated. But why do you want them to be educated? Because it’s a no-brainer, of course, but that would help them get a job, or they can do a business, so they can support themselves financially and settle down. And what would their success give you?
For most people, the answer would be a positive emotion, peace, satisfaction, joy, fulfilment, achievement, contentment, happiness, etc. Sometimes the word may or may not be happiness at first, many other different names, we use these terms interchangeably all the time
But think about it, whatever you are doing for your loved ones that makes them happy, then you also become happy; if they become unhappy, that makes you unhappy.
Even if we take care of our parents, friends, a team member, an employee, or the homeless guy on the street, we do it for ourselves, because deep down, those acts we do make us happy. On the surface, it looks like we are helping other people, but we are really helping ourselves and nurturing our own happiness.
Whether we agree or not, indirectly, almost everything we do, we do for ourselves.
We are always at the centre of everything we do; it is almost always about us as individuals.
I know it is hard to believe!!
I encourage you to ask yourself this, “Can you identify a task that you willingly do that does not make you feel good in some way?”
It is not a challenge but for our awareness of what we do and why we do them.
Whether you are an entrepreneur, student, mother, teacher, business leader, or any other role you play every day, we deal with ourselves and people in every role we play.
It is straightforward.
If you are an entrepreneur, maybe you believe in a cause, challenge the status quo, making a difference to the world, trying to make things better than they are right now if you have a sense of fulfilment doing what you do every day if you are enjoying the experience of building something unique or being the best version of yourself in becoming who you want to be, your every day is worth living, everything that you are doing is worth doing as they make you and your team happy and fulfilled. If you are not, your journey is not sustainable, and you know it.
If you are a business owner, the revenue you make comes from your ‘happy customers,’ generally, happy customers are the result of your ‘happy and fulfilled employees’, and they are not going to be that way if you as a business owner are not ‘happy and fulfilled’ yourself.
Historically, it is ironic that we rarely talk about happiness when it comes to business or work as if we are machines and have no need to be happy and fulfilled at work. We only need to be happy in the weekends. Technically, we spend one-third of our adult life at work and we need to be happy and fulfilled during that time.
As human beings, we are hard-wired to seek happiness for our own. There is no way we can deny that. Whether you are at home, at work, or in a social gathering, if you are not happy and fulfilled, what’s the point of being there?
Entrepreneurship and business are about people. Happiness is almost always in the centre of everything we do, whether they are your customers, vendors, employees, team members, or yourself as the business leader.
What can you do to make yourself, your team, and your customers happy?
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