"Money Does Not Buy Happiness" This Is A Lesson I finally Learnt.

Do we all measure success with monetary value? Or materialistic items? I always think this topic is so cliché and everyone always talks about how money and materialistic things are not important but the thing is when you want that BMW, the £50k salaried job, a 5-bedroom house or the latest handbag you cannot comprehend why people say they won’t buy you happiness because you truly believe those things will.

I was very much a victim to this thought process for my late teens and all of my 20’s I was convinced that if I didn’t have the high - flying career that I saw my parents have, family friends and then my friends went on to have I would have failed. I suffered with feeling like a failure and worthlessness that my whole 20’s went by. I couldn’t understand how I would match up to my peers, I had some office jobs that I would instantly get bored of and I would run away from after a year or 2. Before that I did a degree that, wasn’t really my interest at all, but looking back now, how was I to know without correct guidance what degree was the right thing for me? You are so young and you feel this pressure to make the correct decision at 17 years old, now unless you know you want to do e.g., a vocational degree, beauty, childcare qualification it is so difficult to pick the “perfect degree”.

I spent most my 20’s running away from the feeling of feeling like a failure, so I would do everything BUT study and face the truth of just simply the fact I am a person who does not know what I want to do and that is okay! Absolutely fine!! But I wasn’t surrounded by people who told me that it is fine if you don’t know your job/life goal purpose by your 20’s; I almost laugh at the fact that I thought I needed to know.

I soon came to realise it was fine to switch between careers & jobs and actually I am not a loser for doing that, in fact I had mastered it, because I did the job I wanted to until I wasn’t happy anymore. When I “gave up” I would see it as “you give up so easily, you’re so pathetic”. Now I can look back and say wow! I have picked up so many skills and those experiences have strengthened my thought process; maybe I am not meant to only do 1 job only for the rest of my life? I like having many things on the go and it keeps me motivated and inspired!

I think we all seem to forget that in our teens we are so young and without right guidance, how will we know what we want to do? In our 20’s we are loving life and care-free, we possibly couldn’t even comprehend the life and role we need to play in the future of being an adult and then wow you hit your 30’s!! ” Thirty, flirty & thriving” the most liberating age ever because suddenly you realise nothing really ever mattered and everything somehow just worked out and will continue to work out! Suddenly you want to be adulting! And you care about the latest cleaning product or you ask for those bedsheets for your birthday present and pots and pan for Christmas.

This didn’t magically happen to me the minute I entered my 30’s I was still working on the mental health side for the first couple of years. My brain fog slowly started to lift after this meeting I once I had with a CBT therapist and she asked me not to worry about things all day don’t let it eat up your thoughts as it was consuming my whole brain and allowing me to be so unproductive and it became this cycle of waking up feeling worthless, then having an unproductive day; then going to bed feeling terrible. I don’t know about you, but I always go through the checklist when I am trying to get to sleep, of all the things I didn’t get done and then blaming myself right before I sleep, instead of appreciating all the things I HAVE done in the day, Oh! it was sooo tiring! So, she gave me a little tip! It was as simple as allow yourself 15 minutes a day where you use it as “Worry Time” and in that 15 minutes write all the things you want to worry about and the things that are eating you up.

So, I went to write this list and I started to write all these things that were running a marathon in my head, suddenly I had this INSANE lightbulb moment!! What a moment it was in my own head! Suddenly that marathon that was being ran in my head, it finished and I came first! I knew at that moment I had won. It was all so clear; what did I have to worry about!?! I have a roof over my head, my family and friends, my health and I have food to eat. I struggled with this thought process all my life, we all have problems and we are allowed to have them whether we live in a mansion or live in the smallest house. I agree, we are allowed to have problems and we can think about them, BUT it shouldn’t consume us and worrying about them will never change a single thing, not one thing so why do we give our problems and anxiety such attention, imagine if we gave our happy thoughts as much energy; imagine what we could feel and achieve with all that positivity.

And just like that my life changed, my outlook changed, my feeling about myself changed and insane amount of gratefulness and feeling content entered my life and at the exact moment I realised I can choose to look at my life as a failure/depressing or I can just smile and think wow I have so many things to be grateful for and all that worrying I did, did not change a thing! all it did was keep me grumpy 24 hours a day. I realised the true key to success is just to be grateful and content for everything we already have.

Now I know it is MY choice to how I look at everything.

Go and make that worry list or even better try a gratitude list!