Having your cake and eating it

My fellow coach Annie Wigman recently started a fantastic discussion on a website for co-active coaches I frequent. The topic is essentially - if you get yourself a great life, what's the impact on others? Should we feel guilty? What's the moral implication of seeking to create a life that's about you, that suits you, that is the way you want it?

In this discussion "you can't have your cake and eat it" has been considered quite a bit. It strikes me that the idea that is SUCH a load of crap. The big fallacy here is that there's a limited amount of joy available - if you get a bit more, someone has to get a bit less. Bollocks. If you're happier, people around you are happier. You create joy for others through creating it for yourself. It's like in the safety drill on planes - they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others. Why? Because until you do, you're just another body gasping for breath.

There's something I recently got very clear about - sharing makes me happy. Whatever that looks like - making dinner for friends, buying someone a drink, having a conversation letting people know about something great I've discovered. Think of anything you like doing - don't you enjoy it more if you do it with someone else? You don't need to be told to share - you love it. Look after yourself, and you can look after others. Stock up on joy (including joy in who you are), share it around, notice how your joy replenishes as you do this.

The trick is truly to know what gives you joy and happiness. Annie cites the dilemma of wanting nice clothes versus knowing that so many companies exploit sweat shop labour in the developing world to produce them cheaply. What's clear is that what makes Annie happy is having nice clothes AND paying people properly for their labour.