Category: Personal Development

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Money Time and Energy

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Money. Time. Energy.

Most of us have ideas about all the things we would like to accomplish in our lifetime, but seem to protest too much about not having enough money, time or energy to do them.

The solution is simple but hard. We have to plan.

Money

  • We have to create a budget to make sure we are setting money aside and not spending more than we make. Then we have to follow it, changing it as necessary.
  • Bust a Myth: Budgets are not set in stone, they can be changed as often or as little as you want. The only unchanging principle is you can’t spend more than you earn.

Time

  • We have to plan ahead and schedule in the important things. If you want to read more, schedule time each day to read. If you want to meditate more, schedule the time each day and meditate. Whatever it is that you never seem to have time for, schedule the time and then do it.
  • Bust a Myth: Schedules lock us in, they restrict our freedom, man. Actually, done right, scheduling in the important stuff and doing it actually frees us up to enjoy the remaining free time more fully, because we aren’t being nagged by our subconscious about all the things we aren’t getting done

Energy

  • In order to have energy we need to plan time to take care of our bodies. We need about 7-8 hours of sleep consistently. We need exercise or activity of some kind daily. And we need time for stillness, to clear our minds and just be still.
  • Bust a Myth: I have too many things to get done.  Sleep can wait.  I’ll hit the gym tomorrow.  Sitting still doing nothing is a waste of time. Time is money.  And so we burn out.  Our ability to accomplish tasks efficiently and precisely is greatly increased with healthy sleep patterns (when our brain kind of “reboots”), regular exercise (which increases the efficiency of oxygen flow to the brain), and periodic times of stillness (which gives us time to make sure we are on the right track or off down a rabbit trail).

Planning takes effort. It’s sometimes a painful process (at least at first). But the weird truth is the more you plan, the more money, time and energy you will seem to have.

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3 Simple Principles for Wealth and Happiness

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I know, this is a pretty big claim, but yep, I’m saying it’s pretty much this easy.

It’s also this hard.

 

1. Spend less than you earn.

If you are spending more than you earn you have only three options to correct this: spend less, earn more, or do both.

Our in-come must be greater than our out-go.
– Pretty much every treasurer in history

2. Set some aside.

Take a small percentage off the top of every paycheck and use it for savings:  emergency funds, sinking funds, vacation, retirement, etc.

“A part of everything you earn is yours to keep.”
– George Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon

3. Give generously from what you have.

Giving doesn’t always have to be financial, but giving financially helps us maintain a proper and healthy attitude toward money.

Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth… Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.
– Sir John Templeton

 

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My One Word for 2017 Is…

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SeveraMy One Word for 2017l years ago I started a practice introduced to me through the book One Word That Will Change Your Life (Britton/Page/Gordon).  At the end of each year I do some reflection and pick a word that will be the main focus for that year.

My One Word for 2017 came to me with some difficulty, partly because I was resisting it.

Discipline.

Yuck, right? But as I was reading a similar book called The One Thing (Keller/Papasan), the authors described discipline in a way I had never considered it before. Discipline for me was always a long term continual process that was necessarily painful in some cases, but nearly impossible to maintain and ultimately resulted in crashing and burning and starting over.

This new way of looking at discipline was as a temporary intense effort, reduced to as simple an action or practice as possible, that would eventually become habit, done automatically, no longer requiring the same discipline energy to do it.

For example, two of the big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs) I set for myself in 2017 are:

  1. Read 36 books (3 per month) and
  2. Drop my weight to 220 lbs by 2/20/2017 (I started the year at around 255 lbs – more than slightly overweight for me).

The discipline I instituted was going to the gym on a consistent basis 4-5 times per week every week. To keep it simple, I decided to focus on just getting to the gym and walking on the treadmill for 50 minutes or so while reading e-books on my iPad’s Kindle app.

After about 2 weeks I started to enjoy this time at the gym. It was no longer a dreaded thing that required the same amount of discipline, but a habit I looked forward to and actually miss when other responsibilities take precedent. I converted what I thought was time consuming to something enjoyable and productive for my health and brain.

Of course I missed my 220 by 2/20 goal and am now on my 220 by 5/20 goal, but I have made progress, tracking my weight daily (“what gets measured gets managed“), and as of the past few weeks I am weighing in around 240 lbs – that’s 15 lbs since the beginning of the year.

More important than the weight loss, I feel better about my health and about myself, and hope this successful use of discipline will continue to help me with my other BHAGs for 2017, which I’ll save for a later post.

Oh yeah, what about the books?  So far I have finished 16 books and almost finished with 2 more (4 Fiction/14 Non-Fiction). that’s a pace of at least 4 books a month, so I am well ahead of my goal.  (If you want to know what I’ve been reading let me know with a comment and I’ll include in a future post).

“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.”
??Proverbs? ?12:1? ?ESV??

 


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Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of More

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We can’t be content with more if we have not yet learned to be content with less.

Interestingly, once we become content with less we seldom want more, but are better equipped to manage it when it inevitably comes our way.

When we are content with less, more seems to come our way, and we are more likely to give it away or share it with others. Our generosity increases as our contentment grows. When we no longer find ourselves in the pursuit of more, and begin to pursue less, our focus inevitable shifts away from ourselves and towards others.

No one can be generous while they are selfish. We can appear generous to others, but if we have ulterior motives – like having others think we are generous – this is selfish. When we do something for our own benefit it is by nature a selfish act.

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A Brief Reflection on Clarity, Purpose and Passion

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In the midst of dusting off my resume and moving toward the next phase of my career, I have been thinking a lot about purpose, and just how hard it has been to figure out.  A long time ago I read Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and have been searching for my purpose ever since.  I still don’t know my what it is.  I’ve read at least 5-10 other books about purpose since then and they’re all great, but…

Then not too long ago I was either listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast, reading one of his blog posts, or perhaps it was reading his most recent book, Tools of Titans, when I came across this great quote:

Forget purpose.  It’s okay to be happy without one.  The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.
-James Altucher

 

Thanks James, I mean Mr. Altucher.  That statement kind of freed me a little bit.

I also read a lot of other books about business, building a client list, how to be successful, yada, yada, yada…and they all talk about following your passion.  If you look up passion in the dictionary you’ll see a picture of me listed as an antonym (that means the opposite for those of you who were snoozing through english class).  Seriously.  A friend and client of mine even nicknamed me “Flatline.”  So following my passion never quite made sense to me – I didn’t really see my self as passionate about anything.

Then I was listening to another podcast and heard this gem:

Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you.
-Mike Rowe

 

Cool.  I can definitely move forward without following a passion, but I know I come across things occasionally that get me fired up, and it’s good to know passion will be there when I need it.  It’s in my car, but it’s not driving.

Then the other day I was simply going through some past journals and notebooks gathering quotes to type into Evernote for future blog posts, and I came across this last gem, that pretty much inspired this post:

Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of…I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.
– Mother Theresa

 

I have never had clarity either, and I always thought something was wrong with me.  It’s nice to know I’m in good company, now all I need to do is work on trust…something I have had to do a lot of in the past five years.

 

 

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Control your emotions - or they will control you.At what point is it okay to to let loose, be angry and cuss someone out up one side and down the other?

If some something sets me off in the morning do I let it impact my whole day? Should I?

My unscientific hunch is it’s not healthy to let negative emotions impact our whole day.  If we are angry in the morning and that anger becomes our traveling companion for the rest of the day, chances are we won’t be very productive

We may lose respect or even a few friends or clients if we can’t rein it in.

So how do we leave the negative thoughts or feelings behind?

Here are some things I do:

  • Exercise – whether it’s a trip to the gym, a brisk walk outside or even some airsquats or push-ups, it helps
  • Take a cold shower or bath. It sounds crazy but you’ll definitely have a change of attitude when you are finished
  • List things you are grateful for – you can’t be angry and grateful at the same time
  • Pray or meditate – spend time just quieting your mind – take deep steady breaths.
  • Write down what happened to get it out of your head. Looking at things on paper gives us a different perspective and helps us detach in a healthy way from our negative thoughts and emotions
  • Go out of your way to be kind to the next person you come across

Control your emotions – or they will control you.

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It’s Your Choice: Are You Victim or Victor?

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Action cures fear.

Anxiety creates fear.

Action then also cures anxiety.

By action I don’t mean occupying ourselves with busywork as a coping mechanism.  Action as a cure is action taken to achieve an outcome in direct opposition to the fear or anxiety we experience.

So our action needs a direction. It must have purpose.  That purpose we can find by reflecting on our fears, our sources of anxiety.

If we are anxious about having enough to eat, then maybe we decide to fast.

Then maybe we think about how to feed others who have less food than we do.

Then maybe we go to work, or we go looking for a job, and if neither of those choices is available we seek out someone who can help.

If we are anxious about money, then maybe we decide to give more away and try to live on the rest.

Then we figure out how to help others who have less than we do.

Then we work more hours (if paid hourly), or get a job, or get a second job if necessary, but not out of anxiety or a fear of not having enough.

Then we get rid of the extra stuff in our lives, the stuff that takes up space without having a purpose.

Then we get rid of cable so we aren’t watching so much television and filling our minds with images of unrealistic lifestyles and other crap that makes us anxious about what we don’t have.

Clutter amplifies anxiety.

Three Takeaways

“As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (p.45)

We all have the power to choose to be a victim or a victor.

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?”  ?Luke? ?12:25-26? ?ESV??

We are more likely to lose an hour of our lives by being anxious than to add one. (See Google search results for the effects of anxiety on life span.)

“And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”  ??Luke? ?12:22-23? ?ESV??

Life is more than food and clothing, money and possessions.  Worry less about these things and choose to start living.

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One Thing is Necessary

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One Thing is Necessary Lk 10:42

I have read in several books and blogs about the myth of multitasking.  While we can multitask at times, such as talk and walk, it is only when one of the things being done is automatic or takes no conscious thought to do.

Our brains, like computers, can only think through one thing at a time.  What we think of as multitasking is more like task switching.  We switch between many different things in a short period of time, giving us the sense we are accomplishing more.

It is becoming more apparent through research that type of task switching is counter productive.  It makes us look and feel busy, but is inefficient and wastes valuable time.

When Jesus comes to the house of Mary and Martha on his way to Jerusalem, Mary sits with Jesus listening to his teaching, while Martha is busy serving the disciples and others who have come to see him.

Martha, flustered, complains to Jesus and asks him to send Mary to help her.  Jesus responds, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.” (Emphasis mine).

One thing is necessary.

He then says, “Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.”

One thing is necessary, and it will not be taken away.

This can be scaled from the big things, like saying “I do” to your spouse and “no” to everyone else for life, all the way down to “I’m working on Project X for the next 2 hours” and “no” to any other distraction for that 2 hours.  After that you move on to the next one thing.

One final thing:

No project is completed until its objective has been achieved.
– Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Further Reading

Two excellent books come to mind as I write this that explore this concept in much more detail.  I have encountered this idea in many other books, but these two are a good place to start.

 “The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time.”
The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

 

 

 

 “If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”

Essentialism by Greg McKeown