I had an epiphany this morning. The difference between a happy life and a miserable one is design. If you live a life of surrender to the status quo you can not be happy. Happy people actively seek and design lives they are comfortable with. They fill their homes with flowers and pretty things that make them happy. They find jobs that work for them and if they don’t they design an environment around them that are happy. They enjoy their meals and only eat food that nourishes their bodies and souls. They are proactive, assertive and positive. This doesn’t mean you need to change your life. You just need to design it in a way that makes you happy. If you watch a couple getting married (in the Middle East), they spend months organizing a wedding and decorating their apartment. Most of it is done for the benefit of others, to impress other people or to assert their social status. But then after that they stop the design process. They have kids because it is expected of them. They settle down to a life they might not want or yearn for because they stopped making it their own lives. They just go with the flow. I am not against going with the flow, but there is a huge difference between accepting and adapting to life’s blows and just being defeated. Almost every Egyptian home has a room usually called the Salon. It is a whole room that is dressed up to the nines and probably used twice in a lifetime. That doesn’t make sense, design wise. It is a waste of space and money. Space that could be better utilized for the family actually living in that home. That is exactly what happens when you design your life badly. You have wasted space. Valuable real estate in your life or time that should be used better. My mother’s grandmother used to say there is no poverty just lack of good opinion. ما فيش فقر في قلة رأي.
Whatever your resources are, proper management they can be more efficiently and effectively used.