Email Elizabethbucket lists
Happiness is Not So Much a Goal as Being at Peace
Being content and at peace with your life trumps sheer happiness.
Happiness is somewhat overrated. I prefer to strive for being content and at peace. I’m not saying this just because I watched REVIEW last night as the character Forrest MacNeil had to review what being relentlessly happy all of the time is like. In case you’re wondering, he gave “happiness” 3 stars out of 5 stars, and in my opinion, after what he went through, he was generous. I’m saying this because happiness is often equated to giddiness and joy, and it’s short lived. Being calm and at peace with your life is long term.
People say I am way too cheerful, especially in the morning, and I possess endless amounts of energy. I started out purposely being cheerful in the morning as a way to annoy my family and it just sorta stuck. Given a choice of moping about, dragging my feet, shoulders slumped, stumbling through the house grumbling, I tend instead to lean into the anticipation of the day. That’s something to be excited about, a fresh day of hell and new beginnings.
Besides, I have much to be grateful for today. For starters, I got rid of the horrible website company in Oklahoma last week that messed up my website so terribly and overcharged. I realized my sanity could not take one more day and immediately fired them. This was after the owner threatened to hold my website hostage. He refused to release it back to my host because he knew it would not function because his team, which I think consists solely of his son in Texas, coded it incorrectly. That was a fairly stressful time. Within a few days of firing them, my website guy, who is local, fixed almost everything, and it’s working great. Lesson learned here is do not hire a website company out of state.
I have two listings coming up next week that I am very excited to represent. One is a condo in West Sacramento and the other is a duplex in Carmichael. And I am working on selling a home in Elk Grove, which is held open today, along with another home in West Sacramento, that is also open today. My Sacramento real estate priorities are focused.
The icing on the cake for me is a Mediterranean cruise we just booked for after next summer on the Regent Seven Seas. The staterooms are suites, around 300 square feet with balconies. You can dine whenever you want, no designated seating. There is a spa on the ship. It’s not one of those super-sized Disneyland cruises, our ship is much smaller, and we hit all the fabulous European ports. Ever since I was a kid, I have yearned to experience a luxury Mediterranean cruise. We will also spend about 5 days on the front end in Barcelona, in my book the most glamorous and exciting city in Spain. It’s an incredible journey to look forward to.
My husband and I could have saved this excursion for when I retire from real estate, but that’s still so far off, it makes a lot more sense to simply enjoy life now and not stuff our desired adventures into a bucket list. People who say they will do this or do that when they retire might never get there. Life has a way of interrupting our plans. Life is short. Then it’s over. The late Harry Chapin said: it’s got to be the going not the getting there that’s good.
On the Fence About Buying a Home in Sacramento?
If you’re on the fence about buying a home in Sacramento, this blog is for you. How often have you said to yourself, I would like to do this other enormously fun and hugely rewarding thing, but I have to work or perform some other pure drudgery I don’t really want to do, so I’ll have to pass? Yeah, I’ll have to do the responsible thing. Make the adult choice. And then later you regret it? I once passed on a trip to London with my mother because I spent the money I would have used for the trip on fixing my car, a 1965 Mustang. I should have gone to London, even if it meant borrowing the money.
When faced with choices of do or don’t, this is where analyzing risk comes in. You’ve got to ponder what would happen if you did it anyway and whether you could live with the possible downside of those results. I’m not saying you should do something stupid like run out into the freeway at rush hour because the likelihood is you would get killed. But what if when faced with an unusual decision, you did something nice for yourself or someone else instead, something that was out of the ordinary for you?
People spend so much time trying to plan for the future. As though we have all the time in the world and nobody can take that time away from us when everything can change overnight with the snap of a finger. We’re so busy with our noses stuck in our cellphones that we don’t see the here and now. We can’t be here and now if we’re elsewhere. The future most likely will come regardless of our plans, but the here and now will be gone tomorrow.
Why not give yourself permission to enjoy something different or just be happy? There is innocence in happiness, and as we grow older sometimes we forget about that innocence, but it’s still there. We tell ourselves that we’ll be buying a home in Sacramento when we have secure jobs (ha, ha) and have socked away a big down payment, but that day might never come. Emergencies pop up, stuff happens, things change. Life gets in the way. Before you know it, you’re in your 40s and have never owned a home. You get into your 50s and your bucket list gets longer and longer.
If you want to take tomorrow off work and head for the beach, just go, follow your heart. If you’re thinking about buying a home in Sacramento, talk to a mortgage broker and find out what you need to do to clean up your credit report or apply for down payment assistance. Think how you’ll look back at your situation 5 years from now. Try a different perspective. For guidance, call a Sacramento real estate agent like Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759.
