Abudance AND Happiness?

I had a discussion recently regarding abundance (in terms of money and time) and personal happiness. Could it be true that what we've been taught - that in order to be wealthy, we must sacrifice our personal happiness and spend all of our time in pursuit of this wealth?

My answer to this is a resounding NO. My personal belief is that in pursuing our most passionate past-times, we are able to create an abundance of whatever we need, including time and money.

I read a book years ago, Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow, and the entire book was about just this very concept. If you've bought into the belief, through social conditioning (absolutely present, and completely unnecessary), that you must sacrifice everything else in order to have "enough" to do what you really want to do, I'd like to challenge that belief. You can wake up every day, full of energy, vitality and positive expectation. The first thing you have to do is make the decision to do it! You may not be able to leave your law practice tomorrow and go to culinary school, but you could in 1, 3 or 6 months if you created a plan to do so. You could start that business you've always talked about, dreamed about, and perhaps stopped wanting because you've stopped believing you could do it.

It's up to you to stop believing it's not possible and step into all of the ways it could be possible. Really, the only thing standing in between you and everything you've ever wanted, everything you still want, is you.

You have to become unreasonable, and when you do, you raise your standards and start to go for what you truly want. Don't settle, you only have one life and the time is right now to start living it exactly the way you want it. Go for it!