Being brave . . .

All my life I have worked. A “grafter” – that’s me. Focused, dependable, pretty well liked at work’ enjoying my job and the intellectual stimulation it provided. I liked the people I worked with and the sense of getting stuff done. And I had worked my way up to a senior position in our organisation – second tier and just maybe the next stop a chief executive.

So one day my wife said – how about we take off overseas for a year and have some fun . . .

​Well that’s corny. Everyone always asks you that. What is it with happiness – and what does that word actually mean? And so I thought . . . and I thought . . . and I thought.

Forget the textbooks. For me, happiness clues are

•    Waking up in the  morning and smiling;
•    Feeling calm;
•    Getting real pleasure when someone else succeeds at something;
•    Not sighing;
•    Feeling healthy and fit; and
•    Felling energetic more times than feeling tired.

​And I realized that actually – no I wasn’t really happy. In fact not happy at all. My life may have seemed pretty much OK to my friends and family. But not really to me. Not really . . .

And so after quite a while I did a brave thing. Very brave for me, and a little bit scary. I said Yes to my wife. Lets do it. And so I quit my job, put my life on hold and took a plunge. And now we are in the first week of our big adventurous year of travelling around the globe.

And finding happiness – maybe . . .