I am much happier chasing my own dreams than chasing the American Dream. You see it all around you, the checkbox life.

• Job
• Spouse
• House
• Kids

Those are not life end goals, just checkpoints on the way to a happy life perhaps. If you check all those off and you are not in pursuit of your own happiness, you are likely living someone else's dream.

Finding a job that you love and pays you well to afford the life you want is very hard, but not impossible. Each of us has to decide what we are willing to give to get the things that truly make us happy.

I am very fortunate that through hard work, and lots of luck what I do for a career excited me to the point that I look forward to going to work. That is a byproduct of thousands of choices in a lifetime, and not all fully in my control. However it is up to each of us, to make the choices we are self empowered to make to define the life that gets us closer to our personal dreams.

I do wonder if life is easier to live those checkbox dreams though. To find happiness in the simple checkboxes, but then what?

A great documentary on this topic is "I'm fine thanks" which you can see on YouTube, the trailer is below: