I own a conundrum of my own making. I need to find out how to get three kids to three different places across the valley (read: multiple cities separated by at least 20 miles) on the same evening once a week. I tend to create these grand scale problems and then drive myself insane attempting to make it all work. It is crazy, yet I do it and I prefer to do it, because I want to give my kids an amazing childhood–in many ways the one I never had.
This is one of my primary responsibilities in life. I have a responsibility to them. I have a responsibility to my partner. More and more I’ve begun to recognize that I have a responsibility to myself. I am no martyr. I want to be happy. Making the people in my life happy is a large part of that. It is important that I discover the rest.
It is equally important to note that I can be happy and usually am happy doing a number of things (coaching, teaching, working with writers, playing video games. Still, those are things I am happy doing as opposed to what fundamentally generates self-happiness.
Is fulfilling my responsibilities what makes me happy within myself? Not entirely. In truth, I don’t know what that internal happiness trigger or fulfillment looks like or how to uncover an answer. I’ve lived surrounded by dark and angry people most of my life and learned but one thing from that: they are fulfilled by anger vs. happiness. I’m not that person at all.