These days I’m fundamentally happy with myself, and I’ve found that being happy helps way more people than just me.

A Few Reasons You Should Work on Your Happiness

First off, when you’re happy you are more pleasant to be around. Misery may love company, but no one in a so-so mood really wants to be around someone who’s miserable. By being happy you either lift other people’s moods or frustrate them by showing them what they’re missing out on.

It’s only when you’re happy with life that you’re really, truly in a position to be able to help others. Oh, sure, there are plenty of people out there who bury themselves in their good works–doctors who work overly hard to avoid their family, teachers who focus more on their students than their own kids–but these people aren’t really doing as great work as they think they are. They send the message that you can’t have a good home-life and do great service for others.

If you don’t believe me, just think about your own life. When you’ve been depressed and sad, are you really in the best state of mind to help others? Are you really focused on other people’s best interest or are you actually just trying to distract yourself from your own issues?

When you need help, who would you rather receive advice from? Someone who’s fundamentally happy or someone who’s giving you attention to avoid dealing with their issues?

Is it even possible to be happy all the time?

The short answer is, it’s complicated. No one can feel happy 24/7. Feelings are fleeting. If you’ve got a stomach ache you’re not going to feel as good as when you don’t. If you lose someone close to you, you’ll probably feel sad. Etc.

It’s not really about feeling happy 24/7, though. It’s about your default mood in life being happy and content. It’s about feeling good about who you are and where you’re going. When you have positive feelings about these things, you general state will be positive… how can it not be? And speaking from experience, it is absolutely possible to have this be your default state.

How Does Being Happy Affect Your Motivation to Help Others

The happier you are with your own life the more you will want to help others. You’ll want people to experience the good things you are experiencing. You’ll want to do something about the suffering of others.

There’s more to it than that, though. Happiness is a stabilizer. When you feel happy you feel like you can take on the world. But too much stability is a recipe for boredom. If you’re too happy with your life, that happiness will make you unhappy. (Weird, I know… but life is weird that way.) If you’ve ever thought that the promise of eternal bliss in heaven sounded a bit boring, you’ll know what I mean. If I had to bet, I’d say this is a leading cause for why people who seem to have it all sometimes do incredibly stupid, self-defeating things.

If you’re wise you’ll channel the restless energy caused by too much personal happiness (stability) into finding a mission. As I said earlier, you’ll be frustrated by people you know who are suffering. Not to mention that there are plenty of things wrong with the world.

In short, the pursuit of your happiness increases your motivation and ability to help others. It’s not something you should ever feel guilty about.

Are you living up to your potential? Do you want to? Do you feel guilty for not doing so?

Is wealth bad? Is power bad? If you don’t acquire either does that diminish the quality of your life?

What constitutes a good life?

What constitutes a wasted life?

If you retire and spend your time just connecting with people, is that wasting your time? If you’re just spending time with your family and closest friends?

Just some things I’ve been thinking about recently.

I used to take this to mean that the true hero was the antithesis to the characters in those stories. The poor person who has lots of people to share his joy with is better than the businessman. The person who has a small social circle (but incredibly close!) is way better than the woman with lots of acquaintances. The stay at home parent is better than the working parent.

Then I read lots of books and blogs which told me otherwise. Or at least discussed in great deal how to obtain large amounts of wealth, how to make many weak ties, and how to be successful in the workplace. On top of that these same sources mention ideas that are also important to me: service to others, changing the world to be a better place, living life with passion and fervor. The people that write these things don’t sound particularly depressed with their lot in life. What gives?

On top of that I realized that the people I thought were the heroes didn’t have the greatest lives either. Being poor means you’re unable to do things that enrich your life. For instance, a poor person doesn’t have the freedom to choose to eat healthfully. Nor do the poor have the freedom to send their kids to the best schools (or homeschool them), to private piano lessons, or whatever. A poor person can’t live in safe neighborhoods because he can’t afford it. It also probably indicates that he isn’t really doing a lot of service for the world. (Although, of course, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule.)

The person with only a few close friends is not in all that great a position either. She’s dependent on them to help her out, since that’s all she’s got. After a while they could become resentful of her frequent calls, and if one of them changes who they are (for better or worse) she’s stuck either changing with said friend or risking losing said friend. Also she doesn’t have the freedom to become all that she can be because there’s a good chance she’d lose her close friends. And when she needs a new job her close friends can’t really help her out because they all share the same social circle. So yeah, have too small a circle of friends (even close friends!) is not all that awesome.

Being a stay at home parent has its drawbacks too. It’s a funny situation in the home since the stay at home parent is dependent on his/her partner to put food on the table. The stay at home parent may develop an unhealthy attachment to his/her kids since he/she sacrificed 18 years of his/her working life to them. Etc.

The Middle Way
The truth is all of these observations are true. Neither the storybook path nor it’s opposite is optimal. What’s optimal lies in the middle, where the positives of both are combined. The successful business person who also has a rich personal life with lots of close friends is in a better position than the poor person who has lots of close friends. The person with lots of weak ties AND a close circle of friends is better than the one with just the close friends. The person who manages to spend lots of time with their kids and give to the community is in a better position than the one who’s solely focused on their kids.

What the stories tell you is where you should err. That is, you should err on the side of close relationships rather than material gains and weak relationships.

On combining both
The fundamental thing to keep in mind when you’re trying to gain worldly success and live a fulfilling life is to make time for the important. While you’re off amassing your wealth spend at least the minimum amount of time necessary with the people that make your life worth living: your family and close friends. It’ll probably be a bit less time than normal, but it’s really not about quantity, it’s about quality. Watching TV, reading together, and small talk, while nice are not the way to keep your relationship in good shape. Master the art of getting to the heartfelt, vulnerable, and intimate part of conversation as quickly as possible. It’s hard, but it’ll go a long way toward really maintaining your relationship.

When it comes to raising kids the same thing is true (quality over quantity), I’d personally prefer to err on the side of too much time. In this case the ideal is finding a way to spend the time with your kids and still be a part of work that inspires you. Blogging, to take a nice obvious example, is a great way since you aren’t bound to an office. Other “work from home” type work is good too.

To sum up, worldly success should not be dismissed. There’s a reason people strive for it. But, you shouldn’t ignore the important people in your life either. The challenge is to make meaning with the small amount of time that you have.

Part 1: The Questions

What’s Your Favorite Thing to Do in Your Spare Time?
What do you do in your spare time? Watch TV? Read? Play golf? Spend time at your favorite non-profit? Play sports? Play music?

Would you like it if you could do it for several hours a day every day?

What Have You Secretly Always Wanted to Do?
Look back on your life and think about those times when you wished you could actually make a living doing some specific thing. What was that thing? Do you still sort of wish that was the case?

What makes you happy?
Does anything in particular fill you with lots of joy?

If You Could Retire Today What Would You Do?
I think I’ve heard or read this questions about a 1000 times in relation to figuring out what my ideal career is. It’s even mentioned in “Office Space”. Methinks its usefulness is a bit overstated since not all things you would do in retirement translate well to paid work. Just because you’d watch more TV and travel doesn’t mean you want to put in the effort to review a bunch of TV shows or start a travel blog. Still it can point you in the right direction and get you to consider turning your fun into service.

At the End of Your Life What Do You Want to Be Known For?
Do you want to be known as an excellent athlete, teacher, musician? How about as someone who’s helped a lot of people lead better lives? How about someone who has influenced others to live frugally? How about someone who loved life?

Part 2: The Preparation

Brainstorm Ways To Provide Value
How can you do the things you love in such a way that provides value to others?

If you like playing the piano, would you enjoy accompanying an instrumentalist? What about joining a dance band?

If you like teaching kids, could you be a tutor? Would you enjoy volunteering at a local boy scouts or girl scouts chapter?

Don’t feel too bad if you can only think of non-paying ideas. Also don’t worry if you don’t yet have the skills necessary to charge for your services. If you volunteer enough you’ll soon have the skills to start charging.

Reflect on your List
After brainstorming you’ll have a sizable list of things you could possible do with your life. Take a look at them and imagine yourself living a few of them. What would your life be like? Is it appealing? What does your gut tell you?

For a while I considered starting my own music shop. It was a good idea in theory, but when I seriously considered it and envisioned what my life would be like if I followed through, I realized that it just wouldn’t work for me.

Ask for Feedback
Be careful who you ask feedback from. Some people will shoot you down if you suggest anything that’s out of their realm of experience. Preferably ask for feedback from people who’ve done or tried to do what you’d like to do. You’re more likely to get accurate information from them.

Part 3: The Action

With some things there’s no way to tell if they’ll work for you until you try. Find an inexpensive way to get the experience you need so that you’ll know whether or not your current direction is the right one for you.

If you’re thinking about being a blogger, start blogging now. There’s no fee to get started.

If you’re thinking of starting your own retail shop, get a part time job at a similar one.

If you’re thinking about becoming a tutor, offer to tutor some people for free.

If you’re thinking about becoming a doctor or a nurse, volunteer at a hospital. And while you’re there make it a point to get some hands on experience. (Not just paper pushing.) You could also volunteer at a nursing home.

If you’re thinking about becoming a psychologist you could be a part of an listening program.

There’s virtually no career in the world that you can’t try out part time.

Hopefully this has given you a better idea of how to go about finding your current calling.

Step 2: Plan how to do it.

Step 3: Do it.

If the plan isn’t working go back to Step 2.

If the goal doesn’t feel right anymore go back to Step 1.

The problem with this thinking is that college is expensive. If you start your first day of college with the plan of figuring out what you want to do when you get there, you’ll be wasting a lot of precious time and money. High school, on the other hand, is mandatory and free (at least for you). Also most of the stuff you’re supposed to imbibe there is not that important in the long run. Unless you’re going into biology or another related field you don’t really need to remember what mitochondria is or how mitosis works. Which University you get into, how many clubs you were a part of, and how much community service you do doesn’t really matter either unless you aspire to work for a giant corporation. Giant corporations like people who follow the rules.

What is important is that you have an idea of what direction you’d like to go in. College is way more useful if you know why you’re getting your degree. Even if you think you know what you want to do (I sure thought I knew!) I’d suggest doing the following things. They’ll either reinforce your decision or they’ll show you how weak your idea is.

Spend time dreaming about your future
How do you want to make a difference? When you’re changing classes, daydream about your future. Figure out how to make it happen. What steps need to be taken in order to make this dream come to life. Try it on for a while. Pay attention to how it makes you feel. If you feel excited, take note of it. If you feel anxious take note of it.

If you could retire now, what would you do with your time? Seriously. Would you spend it watching TV day in day out? Would you travel everywhere? Would you raise a big family? Would you spend a lot of time on your hobby? Would you write? Would you try to make a difference? What sounds appealing?

Find someone to listen to you
Tell someone about your dreams. Specifically say you’re not sure what you’re going to do or if you’ll take action on any one thing you pick. You just want to make sure you understand what’s involved in pursuing that dream. What are the pros and cons. What you would need to do in order to take action on one of those dreams right now. What you can do right now to get an idea of what it’d be like. You’re looking for someone to tell you when your actions aren’t in line with what you profess you want to do.

Most people I know assume that any dream you confide in them is something you’re going to take action on. When you inevitably change your mind they may get impatient with you, and not believe what you say. That’s why you need to let them know that you’re just dreaming right now. Serious dreaming, but not actual physical commitment dreaming.

Ideally your parents will be the people you can tell this to, but they don’t have to be. If you try telling your parents about it and they freak out, giving you reactionary advice, just let it go and find someone else. You shouldn’t let their issues hold you back.

Some other places you can look for advice include: your peers, your teachers, or your coaches. Keep your eye out for people you can look up to or people who’ve done the kinds of things you’d like to do. Get to know them. If a teacher you admire moderates a club at your school, consider joining. Ask them lots of questions. You’re at a special age because people will be willing to help you without expecting anything in return.

Don’t spend time with people who will shoot you down. It’s not helpful. It keeps you from growing.

Get as much experience as you can
If you want to be a doctor, spend some time after school volunteering at the hospital. If you want to be a programmer, work with some friends on a compelling programming project or help out with an open source project. If you want to own a small business, try to get a job at one that’s similar to what you want to do. The more experience you get, the more you’ll get to know what you really want to do.

If you feel uncomfortable about getting experience in an area you think you’d like to work in, you have a problem.

Visualize what it’d be like to do what you want to do
Almost as important as real experience is visualization. Figure out how your life would work if you were doing what it is you want to do. What would an average day look like? How much freedom would you have? How much travel would you have to do? Is this something you really want?

A few years ago I got it in my head that I wanted to open up an early music shop. For a variety of reasons I won’t get into here, it wasn’t a terrible idea. I read a few books on opening up a retail shop, knew I had the capability of doing it, and got really excited about it.

After a week or two, though, I started to think twice. My life would be tied to the shop. Eventually I could negotiate a couple extra days off a week, but that’s not a lot of freedom. Also my influence would be limited to people in the Midwest region and maybe a few early music people in the country. Was that really what I wanted for myself? Would I really be making the kind of impact I want to make? Would I have the freedom to homeschool my future kids? No, not really.

I didn’t have to even work at a music shop to see that that path wouldn’t work. Did I waste much time and money thinking about it? No. A few weeks is barely anything. I got the books from the library. Which brings me to the next piece of advice.

Read a Lot
When you get an idea, go to the library and check out some books on your topic of choice. Chances are someone’s already done what you want to do. Read blogs about people in your field. Read Read Read Read Read. You’ll learn a lot about the kind of things you could do with your life. The kind of things they don’t teach you in school.

Again, if your family isn’t supportive you don’t have to tell them about what you’re reading. Read your books and secret, and let them know about things only when you have to. You aren’t doing anything wrong, and the conflict you cause the better.

If I’d have done these things I’d be a different person now. College would have been more valuable to me. I’d be further along with what I want to do with my life. If I could do it over in this way I would.

Third year is just about the worst time to have this realization. By this time I was halfway done with my EE major, and most of the credits I had didn’t transfer to anything else I might have wanted to do. Not that I knew what I wanted to do anyway. Ultimately I stuck it out, cared less about my grades and focused on just passing. I also promised myself I wouldn’t actually work in the EE field. GPA doesn’t matter as much when you’re not working your field of study. A degree, no matter what it is, does.

Those were hard years school-wise. I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted out of life, but the cost–monetary and emotional–were awfully high. I don’t know if I’d recommend it to someone else, and I don’t know if there’s much to recommend to someone that far in. At that point I was already tired of school so dropping everything and starting over would have been hard and expensive.

If I were to have a talk with my younger self, I’d have had it with my 18 year-old freshman self. As a freshman I still had energy and wouldn’t have lost much time or money dropping everything and switching to something more me. Here’s what I would have told her:

The Road Less Traveled is not Necessarily the Right Road
I’d had the weird belief that picking a difficult major that few women did, just because I knew I was capable, was a good idea. If I didn’t care at all about the work I did, I suppose that’d be true. I’m a rarity. People would want to hire me.

But that decision to pick a major where I was in a minority severely limited the number of options I had. Psychology, right out. Journalism, yep out. You get the idea. Engineering jobs would be much easier for me to get and would be higher paying from the start. From a strictly practical standpoint it’s not a bad choice.

The problem is that in engineering I’d do alright, but my fire wouldn’t burn that brightly. I would not be living up to my potential.

Doing something Hard is not the same as Doing your Best
I’d really believed that if I picked a major that was easy for me–psychology or journalism or history or musicology–I’d have been wasting my ability. I was capable of doing things much more difficult, therefore I should do them.

The thing is, if you pick something you’re capable of doing but aren’t really interested in you will always be mediocre. My interest had never been truly in engineering or science or math. It was always a forced interest. Whenever I envisioned how I’d spend my spare time it usually wasn’t doing that stuff. I liked those things, I wasn’t afraid of them, but I didn’t love them.

If you can’t imagine spending your spare time doing something, you really shouldn’t be majoring in it. Even if you’re capable, you’ll never be as awesome as if you’d focused on something you loved.

Making Money from Something You Love Won’t Necessarily Cause You to Hate It
The belief that being financially dependent on something you love is a bad idea is a complicated misconception. It’s true if your self-worth is tied into how much money you’re making from your love. If you’re awesome and unappreciated it can be easy to develop a bad feelings toward your loved work. A classical musician who can’t find anyone interested in her music might not be the happiest person ever. An artist who can’t find a buyer has similar problems. She may have to play music or make paintings that don’t meet her standards just to make ends meet. More likely she’ll be stuck working odd jobs to pay rent and do her art on the side. How romantic…

This is really an issue of being dependent on a skill that isn’t valued, not of doing something you love. If you’re doing something you love and it’s valued by others life is pretty good. There’s a certain joy in working on something until you’ve mastered it. There’s also a joy in using your skills to serve others. As long as you focus on how you’ll make it valuable to others, you won’t have to worry too much about hating it.

Which leads me to the next topic: what happens if there’s no obvious career path for your passion? Will you be stuck creating a business that eats your life?

Working for Yourself Does Not Have to Eat Your Life
When I was a freshman I hazily saw my future as working for a big company doing whatever it is Electrical Engineers do. School was the hard part, after that life would be easy street. I’d have time when I got home from my 9-5 day to work on the things that really mattered to me without having to worry about making money from them.

My internships taught me that it wasn’t quite as nice as that. Work’s still challenging, it’s just a different kind of challenge than school. It’ll still takes up a lot of time and energy, the only difference is there’s a paycheck at the end of it. Having the energy when you get home to do anything more than stare at the TV is a challenge.

I’d always lived under the assumption that working for yourself was a time and energy suck, way worse than a 9-5 job. From what I’ve read, though, that’s simply not true. Yes it’s harder to get started, but once your business is working, if you designed it right you’ll have a lot more freedom than with your typical job.

Start Thinking Now About How You’ll Provide Value for Others

It’s one thing to have an interest, it’s another thing for that interest to be of value to anyone else. This goes back to the “Hating What You Love When You Try to Make a Living At It” thing. Be open to ways in which you could use your passion to help others. What kind of change do you want to create in the world? What will people pay you for? What will be worth their money? Thinking in terms of service goes a long way toward making the act of making money more palatable. The earlier you think about how you can turn your passions into value the easier it will be to pick good, useful classes and put yourself in positions to meet the right people too.

If I’d have had these beliefs as a freshman, I’d have had a much more useful and less painful college experience. Hopefully all you youngins out there won’t make the same mistakes I did. We need more people who love what they do.

Another Article You Might be Interested in: 15 Signs You May Have Picked the Wrong Major (or Career)

So really what you need is a compass. You need a way to tell if you’re moving in the right direction. Here’s one way to develop your own.

Step 1: Brainstorm Places You Might Want to Go I’m using places in the broadest sense possible. One place could be the parent of 3 children. Another could be travel the world. Another could be to grow your favorite club into a powerful organization. Another could be to have a very musical family.

Don’t be picky here. It’s brainstorming after all. Everything you can think of is worth writing down.

Step 2: Reread your list or your mind-map and note your reaction to each item When you read “Big family” do you feel good? Disgusted? Scared? What about being at the top of the career ladder? Excited? Anxious? Put an emoticon by each of them.

Step 3: Try to find a pattern Do you notice a lot of smiley faces by the family options? By the work options? Do you notice you have a lot of work and wealth options but they all have unhappy faces. What about your hobbies? Is there a giant smiley by music or dance or writing?

Group the items that can be grouped together. All the family in one. All the work in another. Each hobby in its own.

Step 4: Figure out what subsets to spend your time on If you had to cut one out of your life, or spend only a little time on it, how would you feel about it? If it’s highly important, is it something you’re making progress on right now?

Step 5: Use your compass When presented with something to spend your time on, figure out if it feels intuitively like a good thing to do. Visualize the list you evaluated in Step 4. Will this action get you closer to the things that are important to you? You don’t have to limit yourself to just tasks that get you closer to your goal, but you should be making some steps in those directions.

Step 6: If you think your compass is broken or out of date go back to Step 1 This is an iterative process. As you grow and learn, you may find that things that used to be important to you just aren’t any more. Or maybe you’ve found something that actually is Really important. Update your compass. You’ll be much happier for it!

1. You picked your major (or career) because you “know” you won’t hate it 20 years from now
Believe it or not, this seemed like a good reason when I was a senior in high school. I figured it was better to pick something I didn’t hate than something I enjoyed doing because the pressure of trying to make a living out of thing I loved doing would squeeze the joy out of it.

Of course that was the wrong paradigm. It’s much more effective to find a mission that inspires you and then find a major or career that enables you to do that work.

2. You have the same major (or career) as one of your parents
My dad is an electrical engineer.

Mind you this doens’t mean that following your parents is definitey a bad thing, it just means you ought to check that this is indeed the right decision for you instead of the default or something you were pressured into.

I never felt particularly pressured into being an engineer, but when I did decide that that’s where I was headed my family encouraged me to do EE instead of computer science. I went along with it because of the next sign:

3. You picked your major (or career) because you wouldn’t have the motivation to teach it to yourself
I don’t know how common it is for people to pick a major for this reason, but I’ll list it because it’s what I did. I could easily envision my future self learning about computer science, philosophy, psychology, music, and history among other things on her own, but EE not so much. That’s what college was for. It never crossed my mind that if I didn’t have the motivation to teach myself the material I might not have the motivation to use the material either. Alas.

Honestly if you picked your major with this in mind, it might not actually be a problem. If you have an incredibly motivating reason to learn a subject you’re not interested in, that reason alone may be enough to power you through the learning process. For instance reading incredibly dry, boring, badly written musicology books is possible for me since I’m fairly strongly interested in Early Music. But I didn’t have a truly motivating reason to do EE.

4. You spend a lot of time doing escape activities in order to avoid classwork (or work projects)
I’ve spent way too many hours of the last 6 years playing Solitaire, reading feeds, and talking to people online in order to avoid doing classwork. My justification was that none of these activities take very long to do individually. A game of solitaire lasts only a few minutes. Reading LJ post takes only a few seconds. Refreshing LJ takes less time than that. But of course I don’t read one post or play one game of solitaire.

Later on I decided to make my escape activities things that were actually worthwhile, like reading personal development books and working on this blog. These made me feel better, and I actually had something to show for my not-work time, but ultimately they were still escape activities. They also had the side-effect of making me really feel like I shouldn’t stick with my major.

It goes without saying that if you’re doing something you value you don’t tend to feel the need to do escape activities.

5. Your default emotions when you think about your major (or career) are guilt or disgust
Guilt for not doing enough to secure your success.

Disgust if you do end up spending a lot of your time on it.

6. You don’t have much interest in befriending your classmates
The idea here is that if you really enjoy what you’re doing, you’d presumably want to spend time with people who also enjoy doing those things. If you like yourself then you probably like other people like you.

During the second half of college I became less and less interested in befriending other Michigan engineers. Instead I spent a lot of time with swing dancers and SCA people. For some reason being around people whose life revolved around engineering no longer felt good to me.

Granted I know plenty of people who love what they do but don’t have much interest having  their social circle include their co-workers or classmates. For the people I know, though, it isn’t that they’re opposed to spending time with people in their field it’s that there needs to be another point of intersection. A doctor I know, for instance, tends to spend his spare time with the SCA, geek community most of which aren’t doctors. He does have friends that are doctors, but as a general rule the ones he’s closest to are also geeks.

7. You don’t look forward to going to school (or work) after a break
When I was younger I used to believe that it was normal to dread going back to your regular life after a wonderful vacation. Now I know that it’s a sign that normal life isn’t compelling enough.

8. You sincerely believe you have better projects to work on than classwork (or job-work)
I have this feeling often. Blogging has the potential to be more useful. Reading good books feels more useful. Developing my leadership skills through my clubs also feels more useful. Unfortunately one can’t get student loans or scholarships for such things. (At least not that I know of.)

Ideally you should feel that doing well in school (or at  your job) is a good way to spend your time. If it isn’t, something’s wrong.

9. You don’t retain most of the material you’re taught in your classes (or you forget things you’re supposed to have learned on the job)
In the classes I’m sincerely interested in I tend to retain the material. I remember quite a bit of the material from my computer science classes, for instance. When it comes to EE, however, no matter how many times I see the material it never sticks. I can do it for a little while and then I forget. And it’s not that I’m incapable of learning the material, it’s that I don’t really want to learn it.

This is definitely an omnious sign, since one presumably doesn’t want to be spending years and years relearning the same material.

10. You rarely, if ever, experience a state of flow when working on classwork (or work projects), nor do you want to.
By flow I mean the experience in which you’re working on something (problem set, project, etc.) and time seems to slow down, you find that you’re incredibly productive, and you feel euphoric. I’ve had this feeling while writing posts, programming, practicing music, and a few others things. I’ve even had it while working on engineering stuff from time to time.

If you’ve never had this experience while doing your work that might be a sign that something’s wrong, but a more telling question to ask is “Do I want to experience flow while working on my major (or career)?” And when I think about engineering I know that I don’t actually want to experience it. That’s a problem.

Why wouldn’t someone want to experience flow? Methinks that’s a post in and of itself. A short answer is that when you experience flow while doing something that means that that something is an important part of your life. If you really don’t want something to be important you don’t want to experience flow while doing it.

11. The work you look forward to is brainless busy work
In ever career and every major there will be some parts that are just busy work: filling out spread sheets, easy problems, easy assignments, etc. After doing some difficult tasks it can feel good to do a few easy things, but it’s really not a good sign if you would always rather have the easy task instead of the hard task. It means you don’t want to think, which means you aren’t really doing what you want to do.

12. Acquiring a Significant Other totally messes up your motivation
I had a boyfriend in high school and was arguably more obsessed with him than I ever have been of Aaron, and yet my high school sweetheart never negatively affected my studies. Aaron did. Looking back, the core reason for this is quite simple: I no longer believed in the sanctity of my work. If I had actually believed that what I was doing was important and a good use of my time, having a boyfriend would have ultimately enhanced my studies not made permanent damage to them.

13. The idea of spending 8 hours a day 5 days a week doing work related to your major fills you with dread. (The idea of working in this field for another 10 years fills you with dread.)
Methinks this is pretty self explanatory.

14. You compulsively [insert feel-good action of choice here] to medicate yourself
I compulsively eat chocolate, but it could be anything. World of Warcraft, TV, sex, potatoe chips, whatever. If you’re doing some quick-fix feel good activity to help you make it through the day with a little more comfort, something’s not right.

If you start calling it your medication…

When you’re feeling good about your work the need to medicate yourself decreases. You get enough good feelings from the work itself.

15. The thought of speaking to your professors (boss) fills you with shame
Why shame? Because you know you aren’t living up to your potential. You’re afraid of letting your professor or boss down. If you’re experiencing this often then you definitely ought to rethink your major or your career. If you can’t bring yourself to take the actions necessary to overcome your shame you’re in the wrong place.

There are many more signs, of course, but these 15 really hit home for me. I think if I’d read this list three years ago I might have done something about it earlier. Such is life. Hopefully you won’t make my mistake.

This post is in Question and Answer format. (It’s like I’m interviewing myself!)

Enjoy!

Are you happy you decided to be abstinent?

Yes. Very much so. It was definitely the right decision for me at the time. Allow me to list the reasons:

• I was a late bloomer. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I was sure I wasn’t asexual.
• I wholehearted believed that children ought to be created within marriage. I certainly wanted that for my own life, anyway.
• I resonated strongly with all of the advantages of abstinence.

To have done anything else would simply have been wrong for me.

My life’s turned out quite well because of it too. I didn’t get pregnant too early or contract any diseases, and I didn’t have to spend any energy worrying about those things either. I have a great fiance, so clearly abstaining hasn’t affected my ability to get a mate. (In fact, it’s never been an issue for me.) I learned how to be patient. I learned how to be assertive. I have an excellent reference point for keeping promises to myself. There’ve simply been a lot of good things that came into my life because I took the abstinence path.

Knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and change your decision to be abstinent until marriage, would you?

Sort of. I wouldn’t change my actions in any way (I’m glad I took my time to get physical), but I would change my promise from “no sex until marriage” to “no sex until engagement and/or I feel ready to have and can afford kids”. If I had held that belief I might have been a little less judgmental of my more adventurous classmates.

If you suddenly found yourself single would you go back to being abstinent?

If it happened right now I’d probably do a variation on the abstinence thing. Like wait a year or two before having intercourse. Even with contraception, sex still means potential children to me, so I’d want to make sure the potential father is a good guy. A year or so of waiting is a good mark for that, in my opinion.

However, I probably wouldn’t wait quite as long to do other non-intercourse sexual activities. I’m over the “first-time” squeamishness, and I don’t associate those things with children-creation, so waiting  for those things really isn’t necessary.

What advice would you give teenagers who are struggling with whether or not to abstain?

There’s only one essential thing you need to do: figure out what your beliefs are about relationships, sex, and children. Do you think it’s OK for sex and children to be separated? Do you think it’s OK for kids to be conceived outside of marriage? Once you’ve figured that out, the rest is straightforward. Not necessarily easy, but straightforward.

It may take a while to figure that out, though, so you’ll need to have a plan for what to do until then. The best thing you can do is avoid getting into a relationship until you’ve determined what you believe. Why? Because you’re figuring out what you believe independent of your partner and because you don’t have to negotiate temporary rules until you know what you want.

That’s all fine and good, of course, unless you’re already in a relationship. If you are you’ll already have some rules in place–whether you’ve consciously set them or not–so keep going by them but make sure you’re staying safe. Unprotected sex is not a good idea for people who don’t have the resources to deal with the consequences! And still try to figure out what your beliefs are. If you feel comfortable, talk to your SO about it. It’ll probably be an intimacy increasing conversation. (Yay intimacy!)

When you figure out what you want you’ll find the strength to uphold your beliefs. Anything else will just make you feel sick.

Final thoughts?

I’m really glad I waited until just a few months ago to have sex. I’m also really really really glad we didn’t wait until we got married, since I’d have lost my blinders after I’d just made a lifelong commitment. Definitely not good.

I hope you all enjoyed this series. I know I would have appreciated it when I was a sophomore in high school. If you have any questions or comments feel free to comment or send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!