With all our job and time responsibilities today and as a small practitioner looking for those bigger and better clients, this simple question can be a hard one to answer. Look at this article in AccountingToday by Edward Mendlowitz for his insight in how to possibly answer this question:

http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/managing_practice/art-of-accounting-am-i-happy-71034-1.html

This can be as simple as ignoring things and people that make you unhappy or structuring your life to keep things in your ‘happy’ zone, but it is more than that – it should be an outlook on things that is independent of outside influence. Years ago I found this writing by Charles Swindoll called ‘Attitude’ that helped me rethink how I responded to people:

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church….a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.”
― Charles R. Swindoll

Looking at life this way makes it a lot easier to handle and gives you the power to influence others rather than just respond to them.

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