I decided to be happy · Get Real with WesleyGW

1d (edited) • BRAG

I decided to be happy

I gave a speech last night at my toastmasters club and I talked about when I decided to be happy. I write my speeches usually similar to what I will paste below. Sometimes I just do an outline. This was for a storytelling speech so most of it was from my memory. I know this will be a long post and I fully get it if you don't read it or just skim over it. For What it is worth I wanted to try and contribute more to our little community here! God Bless everyone!

I decided to be happy.

Introduction:

As many of you may be familiar I was blessed with a long career in the Air Force and retired a little over three years ago. Many years back I was talking with my wife and I was telling her I was thinking about Applying for a supervisor position on the Flight line. The flight line was where I started my career and at this point I was working in the Quality Assurance Office. She looked at me and asked does that mean you would go back and work on the flight line. I answered well I would be a supervisor there I would not be doing what I did before but yes I would go back to where I had started. What she said next set me back on my heals. She, matter of factly said something to the effect of “That would be good then you could be happy again”

PAUSE

I sat there in silence pondering the words she had just spoken! Usually when I hear something that I don’t exactly understand I ask follow up questions… but here I sat quietly pondering those words. “What does she mean I would be happy again?” She said this as if everyone but me was aware of this! Was I projecting unhappiness where I was currently in my career? Was I unhappy where I am currently in my career?

Some retrospection/introspection definitely occurred after this event.

I examined myself deeply and pondered why would she say that? When I left the flight line and went “Upstairs” to quality assurance that was what could be called the next higher level of management and leadership. I used to joke around that I used to think that my job on the flight line had a lot of “Bologna”. Or BS as they say but when I went to QA I realized that it was not even in the same league. In examining my current life in my job at that time I realized I was internalizing things perhaps a little too much. I was taking it home with me and my wife recognized it clearly.

The next day at work I could not help but pay attention to my day more closely. To my interactions with others and how was I representing myself to others?

I believe this was the moment which eventually lead me to “decide to be happy!" “Decide to love my job again !”

1. Don’t let your mood be in charge of you.

During this time and when I dived into retrospection I realized some things. I was not optimistic much of the time. I was not joyful and I was allowing my mood to be in charge! I decided to not allow that anymore. The myth here is “you have too wait for happiness to show up!” You can choose happiness even in trying or stressful situations.

2. I realized I was postponing Happiness.

This became evident early on in my career. Life in the Air Force is driven by many things and there is schedule to it. Almost maddeningly so. Ever two years you have some kind of inspection every 36 months you deploy somewhere and so forth. I caught myself over and over thinking Once we get past this next inspection when we can ‘breath”. But guess what! There was always a “next thing”. This is how life goes by! The next thing and the next thing and you look up and 30+ years has gone by. The Time to choose happiness is now!

3. Happiness changed how I showed up not what happened.

Same stress, same problems, same circumstances, But I viewed things just slightly different. A more optimistic outlook and perhaps being present more in the moment. By the way There is almost always room for levity!

I still have bad days where I don’t represent this well.

I am still processing and dealing with things in my life that happened decades ago. I had some things I was very angry about inside for a long time and I am working through those.

Choosing happiness does not remove pain or frustration. However It does keep it from running the whole show.

Conclusion:

In review : We talked about

Don’t let your mood be in charge of you.

I realized I was postponing Happiness.

Happiness changed how I showed up not what happened.

“I didn’t decide to be happy because life got easier.

I decided to be happy because life was already hard enough.”

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