The goal: Happiness

My friend and fellow journeyer, Duane, recently pointed out to me that I have thus far forgotten to discuss an important premise on this blog: why do any of this personal development work in the first place? It seemed to Duane that a lot of this stuff is about people being hyper-critical about themselves, or people telling other people that they need to change.

So let me explain how I see the role of this blog, and the work I do.

The end goal is to be happy. How do people become happy? From my perspective, happiness comes from doing what you want, in the body you want, with the people you want. It means actively designing every aspect of your life, of which, at the Handel Group, we believe there are 18. It means setting a dream for each area, and living those dreams. In other words, great happiness comes from authoring the book of your life in whatever way you want to, and writing a darned good plot for yourself.

The thing is, oftentimes we do not design aspects of our lives. We don't have a clearly-defined dream for our body, relationship, or career. Or maybe we do, but we're not living it. And this is where my work begins. I help people decide what they want the book of their lives to say, and then help them put pen to paper and create. It's not an easy process, because we're all in the business of making up cockamamie as to why we can't have what we want, and why we really don't want it to begin with.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you want the book of your life to say. You could choose:

• "Embracing the unpredictable: the life of a global wanderer" or "The virtues of routine: the beauty of the 9-to-5 schedule."
• "A house of children's laughter" or "A house of meows."
• "The high-powered adventures of the world's richest CEO" or "Getting from A to B: the hidden world of a mail sorter."

The important part is that you are writing a book that inspires you, and that keeps you eagerly turning the pages, day after day.