She left - My Story, First Post

[gogofo]

I followed the advice given by 25yearsmlc on another thread and watched the TED talk by Shawn Achor. I was completely inspired and immediately read his book "The Happiness Advantage". This book and its teachings will be a big 180 for me and my personality.

When the W and I first met I was optimistic and future thinking and fun to be around. After 9 years of chasing success and perfection in my job, I killed most of the happiness in my life. I couldn't even find happiness while on vacation.

This decline was noticed by the W and was mentioned during our BD talks when she said that our situation was more than the last 6 months of stress. I think this was in part due to my stress and unhappiness with myself.

I based by happiness on finding success instead of letting my happiness bring success. I am now in the process of finding happiness independent of my career.

The person my W fell in love with was not stressed, sad, and pessimistic; I also miss that person and will be working to rediscover an even better version of him.

I tried to make everything perfect and overly stressed about too many things out of my control. The book has a lot of perspectives and activities to teach me how to be happy outside of by career and to lower my stress inside of my career.

I have had comments that recently I have looked happier and look like I have been enjoying life more. It is nice to hear while going through such a hard time. My aunt who was in town last week even mentioned I was doing better than she had imagined.