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I went back and read a list I wrote last year called my “What if and Whatever List”- it was basically a list of a bunch of goals that I thought would make my life happier.
I realized 3 things:
As I read them butterflies of excitement and a surge of desire coursed through me.
None of these goals were really were about money. Many had to do with money, but they weren’t about the money.
Depressingly, out of about 10, I had only checked off ONE.
I didn’t take the list too seriously. Somewhere along the line I started focusing, instead, on simply needing more. More savings, more income, more everything before I could get to a place of happiness… and, not surprisingly, I was feeling as stressed out as ever.
I mean, achieving one of my what if and whatever goals is better than none, but if I hadn’t been so caught up in thinking I needed more before I could be happy, I could have accomplished 8 other goals at little to no expense. And looking at them, I realized I would have felt very successful.
So here’s what I think- maybe we should all ask ourselves a few things every now and then.
What things could I purposefully inject into each day, each month, each year, in order to make myself happier?
How much do they really cost?
What actions/thoughts do I get caught up in that shift my focus?
When I look at my goals, how do they make me feel?
I think we all recognize that we have things we want. I think we also realize our goals are in some way connected to money or time.
However, I don’t think most of us make those goals crystal clear. We end up with the constant stressed out feeling that in order to get what we want we need more.
More money, because we don’t really know how much. And hey, it’s impossible to know if you can afford something if you don’t know what it costs.
More time because we’ve never really thought about what it is we are aiming for and why we want it. I mean, you’re never going to be motivated to achieve something you don’t really want & it’ll take forever to hit a target if you have no idea where it is.
So it’s time for me to go back to the What if and Whatever list now, and give it some more attention and figure out how to get it done. I’ve written a list of all the things I can do to make myself and my year feel like a success, I’ve been quite crazy to ignore it.
What it all really boils down to is What you want to do, Why you want to do it, and How you are going to do it.
