Ez made a good point in her blog yesterday that I want to elaborate on, and that is the point of doing what you love.

We are lucky to live in a world with endless choices and opportunities. We can do whatever we want, learn whatever we want, and experience whatever we're interested in. The only problem is, at the end of the day when it comes to choosing a path to follow (I may have mentioned before, but I prefer to call it a path than a career, it just sounds less...responsible).

The thing is, with so many choices available, people are, for some strange reason, sacrificing the happiness you can achieve from doing what you love, in order to make money. Sacrificing happiness for money. Doesn't that sound MAD???

Over a span of about four years I must have changed my mind...10 or so times about what I wanted to do. And each time I was focussed on the end result. I wanted to be a PR chick, a business chick, a magazine editor, a writer,  a book editor and publisher, a photo journalist, a journalist. You have no idea how frustrating it was to think "Yay, I've finally found the right path for me!" only to be massively disappointed when I changed my mind again.

The thing was, I was taking my interests (writing, meeting and helping people, books and reading) and trying to choose the most glamourous, exciting, best paid job I could think of, that would use these interests. I wanted an exciting job with lots of exciting events, hardly any office work, and lots of interesting people. Recipe for failure.

I finally learnt that those were the things my ego wanted, not the REAL me. My ego was the one that said "I want an interesting job, lots of money and lots of recognition." My ego was running the show, but the REAL me was getting sick of it leading me down the wrong paths. My ego decided I wanted a job at a magazine like Vogue or Rolling Stones. The REAL me got me this gig with REAL Mag. And although there's no money involved, the happiness and satisfaction factor with REAL mag is (I imagine) far outweighing that of any other mag.

So, it didn't take me long to discover what it was the REAL me wanted to do. After a lifetime of fascination with anything supernatural, the occult, psychic phenomena, magick, crystals, healing, meditation and yoga the choice was pretty obvious. And guess what? As of Monday 1st of Feb I will start teaching meditation classes. As of the middle of Feb I am starting a Diploma of Metaphysics in Crystal Therapy and Reiki. And as of March I will be a practicing Crystal Therapist. No, there's not a lot of money involved. But do you think that matters when I'm doing exactly what I love, and exactly what everyone says they can imagine me doing (even my conservative family members, which really tells me something!)? It seems I've finally found the right path for me. Once I stopped focussing on what type of job/ how much money/ what cool people I can meet, I found my path of happiness.

Do you get what I'm trying to say? If you only ever focus on what your ego wants, you're never, EVER going to be truly happy. Your REAL self wants to help people and make a difference. Your ego wants to know what's in it for you. Which voice do you think will keep you happy the longest. Learn to differentiate between the two and you'll save yourself a LOT of trouble.

Peace out!

xxMELxx