What Are You Going To Regret Most In Life?
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What Are You Going To Regret Most In Life?
For just one minute let’s think about the following idea:
According to Bronnie Ware’s book The Top 5 Regrets of The Dying, a common regret is having worked so much for so long. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I had worked less and had lived more.” “I loved my work, despite the sadness that often accompanied it. I gave less time to what truly kept me going through life: my family, my passion, my dreams, my meaning of life.”
When you work hard usually you become “successful”. This “success” brings you less and less time for you and your family, even if it does bring more money. We are all working harder and longer, only to be less happy, less healthy, and more stressed than ever. We are surrendering our lives for money.
Are you trading your life away? It seems that work has taken over our lives. We became people who are willing to give up our lives for the sake of work. We are working more but enjoying less life.
Many people had their identity so wrapped up in their work that they couldn’t imagine their life without it, often they think there is no choice. We spend so much time working assuming we have all the time in the world when all we ever have is our life today.
Where Are You?
Most of us fall into one of these 3 main categories:
- People Who Love their Work
Anyone could find true purpose in his work if they are in the right field for who they are. It doesn’t feel like work when you are doing work you enjoy. It is merely an extension of who you are.
If you enjoy and love your career and want to continue to work in it, then you are undoubtedly lucky and should remain on that path.
There is nothing wrong with loving your work, but there is so much more to life. Don’t work too hard, keep yourself healthy and try to maintain balance. Don’t make work your whole life.
- People Who Have to Work
If you must keep working to make the money needed to support yourself and your family, then keep at it while seeking ways to reduce your financial needs or to shift to a source of income that doesn’t involve sacrificing your lifetime.
Part of the problem is that you must work to earn the money. You work for the money, the money is not working for you.
This relentless work is called “making a living” and people are so busy “making a living” that they have little time to live.
- People Who Don’t have to Work
If you don’t need and don’t want to stay in your fast-paced stressful career, you can choose to stop or change it.
You could quit your job or work less by taking a different approach -changing to a more fulfilling or less stressful type of work. People in this group, work by choice and not by necessity. Usually, they are or are moving toward financial independence.
With no need or less need to work, you can find low-stress work options that you truly enjoy, on a schedule that gives you time for yourself — doing what you want, when you want, and to start your own purpose, your meaning of life.
So really, why are you working so hard? Are you on a jail sentence of mandatory work? Why do you trade most of your life for money? Why trading the most precious resource in your life? There probably are multiple reasons.
Maybe because of the social consumer’s culture, the get and spend mindset, live for work norm, the spiral of addiction, temptation to overspend, the chase “for more is better”.
Perhaps the need to be recognized through your achievements, belongings, or comparing yourself to others around you.
There might also be confusion or lack of purpose; not having identified the real meaning of your life or values.
Or emotion-based thoughts are leading your actions, what we call inertia or inability to perceive that there are other options available.
The truth is there are always choices. It is a matter of changing your perspective, observing and controlling your emotional thoughts, acknowledging and feeding that desire for a change, identifying what is your purpose in life, and what are the meaningful components.
Do you really need to live in that big house? Do you need those expensive cars? Why do you sacrifice peace of mind, time together with your family, and meaningful relationships so you can pay for more and more?
This irrational consumption and debt play an important role in locking people into jobs for most of their lives. You may be spending way too much on things you did not need and then feeling deprived of the things you wanted most.
When you don’t consciously control your personal finance, someone else takes everything you have, including your work, your money, your home, and your lifetime.
It is important to realize that every time you owe someone money, you become an employee of their money. If you take out a 10-year loan, you’ve become a 10-year employee. “A man in debt is so far a slave”. Set yourself free from the work-hard trap.
Stop, Think, Take Control of Your Money and Do
Stop
- Do not build a life in which you would regret working too hard. You really don’t have to work until you are 65 or 67. You don’t have to spend your precious years on Earth sitting behind a desk, or doing decades of working a nine-to-five job. Don’t inflate your lifestyle. Build a lifestyle that aligns with your meaning in life.
- Stop working all your life as a slave to money or as a slave to your personal debt due to mainly your own emotion-based thinking.
- Realize that the largest purchase decisions are the real make-or-break freedom deals if they mean you getting into or increasing your debt. Those debts are the ones that will make you work harder and many extra hours.
- Remember the quote from Jim Rohn; “It’s important to learn from your mistakes, but it is BETTER to learn from other people’s mistakes, and it is BEST to learn from other people’s successes. It accelerates your own success.”
Think
- You need to search for a sane alternative. Your reality must match reality. Keep your feet on the ground. It is your own decision and willpower to find meaning in this life and plan to leave so many years of hard work ahead for a different life. Figure out what you really want to do with your life; define what’s truly important to you.
- Could the solution be to live below your means? Or instead of living below your means, focusing on expanding your means? Instead of you working for the money, the money is working for you? Stopping and changing your lens of perspective will help you see options and opportunities where there was nothing before.
- More money will not solve the problem if money management is the problem. You already know that more money makes some people poorer because they often get deeper into debt and increase their spending.
- You could stop working so hard, by making your life simpler. For some people, a simpler life is a happier one. You probably don’t need to spend too much money to enjoy life. Sometimes the real problem is not how much you earn, it’s how much you waste. Rather than increasing the amount of hard work to acquire too many “wants”, try reducing spending to just “needs” and few “wants”. This will reduce the amount of necessary hard work and will save years of your life. In that way, you will get more meaningful things done. You’ll have more free time as a result of working less because you need less money to finance your spending.
- Take control over your finances and your money cash flow. During your work period, you’ll need to spend less than you earn, putting that extra money to work for you, building up savings over years to provide income and financial security for the rest of your life.
- Remember that you need to learn to observe and control your thoughts. You need to identify which thoughts are emotion-based and which ones are logic-based. People who struggle the most financially tend to let their emotion-based thoughts do the talking and control what they do and have in life.
Money
- Anyone who says that money isn’t important obviously has not been without it for long. However, we place too much focus on money. We should focus not on money at first but on understanding what makes us genuinely happy -our meaning of life- and then make money choices that improve our long-term happiness and contribute to lasting fulfillment without working so hard and for so many years.
- Money is so misunderstood. Money gives you possibilities and freedom. It can be used as a tool to fund your long-term goals and happiness. Money can be a vehicle to expand your life experience and it can buy you some happiness. Money is important, but you don’t want to spend your life working for it. Don’t forget you are exchanging part of your life for money; it is simply something you trade your lifetime for. Trade it with purpose and integrity. Value your lifetime by increasing your consciousness in spending.
- The point is: don’t work hard, work smart and you won’t stress out about money nearly as much.
Do
- You need to find out what you want to do with your time, what makes you happier. Find meaning outside of work and be willing to make short-term sacrifices to gain long-term success and happiness in everyday activity.
- You need to create a lifestyle where every day feels like a weekend, having the option to wake up in the morning and make the day your own. The way to do that could just be finding a way to live a simpler life. That could mean more time for your family, and for you to do what you really want to do.
- One option to achieve freedom can be spending less and living more simply. Spending less than you earn will allow you to invest the difference and put some money to work for you. Focus on the big-ticket items to get spending down. You don’t have to spend most of your money on expensive items, experiences, and activities. Buy what you need, and only a few want. Don’t forget that if you spend less that means you need less money.
- Another option is expanding your means. You can do that by having your money working for you, rather than spending your life physically working for money. You want to work less, earn more, and enjoy more free time.
If you fall into these categories: “People Have to Work” or “People Don’t have to Work”, your job is not the main event of your life. Life is bigger than your job. Break the link between work and money to get back your life.
Life is over so quickly, that finding meaning in life is paramount. One regret of the dying is that we are trading our life away because of the excessive amount of time we spend working so hard. To get back your life, you need to either keep it simple by just living simply and below your means, find the way to expand your means without sacrificing your life, or a combination of both. Three options, which will you take?
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