Are You “Making a Dying” Instead of a Living? Here are 7 Clues You Might Be!

Photo courtesy of kthypryn

Most of us have jobs we go to everyday. It is a fact of life that money is necessary in this society to buy things, pay the bills, and simply have fun with, but as a people we are starting to value money over our very lives.

How can you tell you are in fact valuing money over your life? Here are some of the big clues:

1) You start to get upset about Monday morning on Sunday afternoon. If you are physically or mentally affected by your job, especially on days off, there is something wrong. Work should not be something that makes you miserable. If it does, it is time to reevaluate your priorities.

2) You spend your weekends making up for the week. Are your weekends filled with alcohol, expensive dinners, excess television, or spending sprees. If you rethink your weekends and put them in a perspective of a person who loves their job, would you spend the weekends like you currently do? If the answer is no way, then why are you continuing this pattern?

3) You say constantly “There must be a better way”. People who love their jobs do not spend their work week dreaming of better days. They are living those better days now! They wonder why everyone else is killing themselves doing something they hate when they live their lives so effortlessly.

4) You hit the snooze button (probably several times) every morning. Think about a morning where you had to get up to do something you enjoyed. Was it hard to get up? I bet you jumped up without the need of the alarm and got moving. This is what it is like when you are making a true living.

5) You always feel tired. Now this might seem ambiguous but people who spend most of the week doing something they hate are naturally stressed, and stress creates a poor sleep environment. Your body and more importantly your inner noodle (subconscious) needs the sleep. Sleep is when your inner noodle does all the important work. (More on this in another post). The absence of sleep stresses your mind, which in turn makes work seem even worse, which creates more stress; the vicious circle never ends, until you stop it.

6) You avoid the present at all cost. This is probably the biggest clue you are making a dying. When you hate the present, the mind will do whatever it can to avoid the constant pain by using the escape hatch. The escape hatch can be found in the excesses. There are few things in life that excess is not a bad thing. Love, Respect, and Honesty are good things to have in excess. The ones you need to worry about are excess drinking, eating, drugs, television, internet, video games, or anything that has no real value in your life.

7) You envy the lives of others. If you spend any time at all looking up to celebrities,sport stars or even your next door neighbor, there is something wrong. Having goals is ambitious, but wishing you were living another person’s life is insanity. The real problem is you see someone living an authentic life, and you forgot you have the choice to do the same.

I first saw this phrase in the must read book: Your Money or Your Life and it changed my thinking about money. If you just discovered these clues describe your life, that is great because now something can be done about it. Thursday we will delve into how you can turn the act of work from ” Making a Dying” into “Making a life worth smiling about”  Until then take five minutes and see how you put yourself in this situation in the first place. Was it peer pressure, the illusion of security, or did you simply not make a decision at all and just ended up here? Believe me, this happens more than you think. If you fail to make decisions for yourself, they will be made for you. Do not let that ever happen!

Let me hear your thoughts, leave a comment or two. Talk to you soon.

Related posts:

1. How to Make an Authentic Living
2. How to Turn Off Your TV, and Turn on Your Life
3. Finding The Voice Within

Tagged as: Addiction, Goals, Job, Making a Living, Motivation