I think this is entirely the point: How do you improve or change your environment so that it 'fits' you?
What does fit you? I hear many people say a certain level of salary would make them happy. Or that sportscar they always dreamt of. Just 5 more years of climbing the corporate ladder and then it's all wonderful from there. However, when you talk to them 5-10 years later, when some of them achieved those goals, they still do not seem to 'fit'; they have bigger and better goals now. Once they achieve those, they will be truly happy! It's a rat race.
My opinion, and since adopting it I see it everywhere, is that the outer does not change the inner, but rather it is the inner that changes the outer. Take, for example, this part of Jobs' famous Stanford Commencement Address: "[After being fired from Apple] I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me."
Notice what changes first; he did not start working on Pixar and NEXT from his feeling of failure nor from a need to change his environment to get his brainchild back. He changed his inner mental state first to accept reality, figure what is truly important, and follow his heart. The environment changed as a result. Once he saw the pure crushing failure of being fired from his own creation, as an positive opportunity to pursue the things he loved to do, it opened new paths unimagined by his negative self. The inner changed the outer.
Happy, for me, is a deep sense of belonging. It's about acceptance, perspective, creativity and finding interest and passion. The inside and outside will never disconnect; it's life, the one cannot exist without the other.
What does fit you? I hear many people say a certain level of salary would make them happy. Or that sportscar they always dreamt of. Just 5 more years of climbing the corporate ladder and then it's all wonderful from there. However, when you talk to them 5-10 years later, when some of them achieved those goals, they still do not seem to 'fit'; they have bigger and better goals now. Once they achieve those, they will be truly happy! It's a rat race.
My opinion, and since adopting it I see it everywhere, is that the outer does not change the inner, but rather it is the inner that changes the outer. Take, for example, this part of Jobs' famous Stanford Commencement Address: "[After being fired from Apple] I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me."
Notice what changes first; he did not start working on Pixar and NEXT from his feeling of failure nor from a need to change his environment to get his brainchild back. He changed his inner mental state first to accept reality, figure what is truly important, and follow his heart. The environment changed as a result. Once he saw the pure crushing failure of being fired from his own creation, as an positive opportunity to pursue the things he loved to do, it opened new paths unimagined by his negative self. The inner changed the outer.
Happy, for me, is a deep sense of belonging. It's about acceptance, perspective, creativity and finding interest and passion. The inside and outside will never disconnect; it's life, the one cannot exist without the other.