Blissed or pissed - I'm following my dreams

As I mentioned in my last post, I had read a couple of books on success since my dismissal.  The first book I read was "The Secret", by Rhonda Byrne.  This book was actually "borrowed" from my former employer from their company library, but I ain't giving it back (insert evil laugh here).  I was actually part way through reading it when I got fired, and it was sitting on my desk when I was escorted to my office to gather my belongings.  Along with the basic necessities (I went back a few days later to clean out my office), I grabbed the book and asked our HR person if I could take it with me to finish.  She said yes, likely knowing they would never see it again, and in all likelihood, she doesn't give a rat's ass.

For anyone who's ever read the book, you may find it odd that I call it a book on success.  But that's exactly how I see it.  I had actually read it a few years earlier and tossed it aside, calling it a piece of crap.  Can I really cure disease just by wishing it?  If I think about money hard enough will cheques magically appear in my mailbox instead of bills?  Can I cure my need for reading glasses overnight just by thinking I don't need them??  I think not.  However when I read it this time, I really enjoyed the book.  I think like most things in life, what you get out of it is based on how you interpret it.  And this time I had a completely different interpretation of it's message. 

The basic premise of "The Secret" is the law of attraction, and that like attracts like - and by like, they mean similar.  So if you think positively, good things will happen, and if you think negatively, bad things will happen.  In general I think this concept to be true.  Have you ever done something silly like stubbed your toe really badly getting out of bed in the morning?  You curse and swear, and then from that moment on your entire day goes downhill.  Traffic sucks going to work, you spill coffee all over your desk, nothing goes right with the work you're doing, and the bad things just keep on happening.  You even say to yourself, or to others, "I am having such a bad day".  Is it really that all these bad things just happen to occur all in the same day?  Or was it because you let that awful toe stubbing incident affect your attitude, and then everything that happened, you perceived as bad.  I truly believe it's the latter.  If you didn't curse and swear and let the toe stubbing incident bother you, perhaps the traffic wouldn't have seemed so bad, and you wouldn't have felt flustered and spilled that coffee, etc etc ... you get my meaning.

So the book then tells us that in order to be happy and succeed in life, you just need to think positively.  Again I think this is all a matter of interpretation; money won't magically appear in my bank account and prospective employers won't start calling me offering me jobs just because I lie in bed at night wishing for it to happen (and trust me, I do this !!).  But what it means is that with a positive and healthy attitude, I feel better in general and get up and take action, rather than wallowing in my sorrows doing nothing.

Admittedly sometimes it's REALLY hard to stay positive all the time, but I do my best and think I do a pretty good job.  Many of my friends in high school called me smiley, and sometimes I get caught walking along smiling for no reason at all - it's kind of embarrassing really ;-)  But I didn't get these deep laugh lines on my face for nothing !!  In general I've always been a pretty positive and happy person.  Even when I went through my divorce and my life was turned upside down, when I eventually told people at work, they were shocked and said they had no idea - I never showed my stress.  But there were times in life when I did go through some rough patches and I started to lose sight of happy-go-lucky Tina.  I started to become negative and that made me miserable, and at one point I viewed myself from the outside looking in, and I didn't like what I saw.  I vowed to never let myself be that person again - I hated that miserable bitch !!  Sometimes it takes some effort, yes, but I still always have a smile and a positive attitude most of the time. I'm a pretty happy person - or maybe I'm just crazy ?!?!

The second book I read since D-Day was called "A Lazy Man's Guide to Success", by Bill O'Hanlon.  I bought it for a whopping $2.99 through iBooks on my new iPad (my I-got-fired-gift to myself - thank you former employer !!).  Anyway, I figured for 3 bucks at the very least it would keep me entertained for a couple of hours.  Turns out, it was a pretty good read.  The title of the book is a bit of a misnomer, perhaps to get attention and garner sales, but hey, it worked !!  The author is actually quite successful and worked very hard to achieve his success, but his point was that he's lazy when he doesn't enjoy what he's doing and procrastinates whenever possible (don't we all ??), however when he's doing a task he truly enjoys he's a damn hard worker.

His advice to career success is to do figure out what your dreams are, and follow them; sounds simple doesn't it ??  In order to find a dream worth pursuing - this isn't as easy as it sounds - you should do one of two things:

1 - follow your bliss
2 - get pissed

Unfortunately #2 is not in reference to my earlier post about one day attending AA.  He means you should either find out what makes you truly happy, something that excites you and drives a passion in you when you think about doing it, or find something that pisses you off; something that bothers you so much in life that you feel the need to go out there and do something about it.  Blissed or pissed he calls it.

Whichever you choose, you should follow these dreams.  Don't worry about how you might make money off it right now, but follow it just the same.  Oh oh ... I think it's time for me to make another list.  Don't worry though, I learned my lesson the first time :)