Tag: gratitude

No comments

Wealth and Health

  By , , ,

Wealth and health is a huge topic – something I realized after writing several variations of this post.

There is so much to delve into here, wherever you might be on the wealth/health matrix, and I hope I can offer something of value to each.

Full disclosure: although I have had some health issues in my life, they have been temporary, and at the time, thankfully, easily treatable with few if any lasting side effects due in part to excellent health care and living in a country with access to some of the best surgeons and medical practitioners in the world.

All told, I have been blessed all my life with extraordinary health, and I have learned to not take that lightly.

God has allowed me to suffer just enough to empathize with others who are suffering.  It is hard to understand a few days of pain, let alone a lifetime, without experiencing pain oneself.  I also realized that my attitude toward both health and wealth have a tremendous impact on my overall contentment.

I have encountered people who use ill health as an excuse as well as those who, though suffering, exude great joy and empathy.  Some of them struggle with finances while others have more than sufficient financial resources, and not necessarily in the same order.

The Health/Wealth Matrix

So what does health have to do with wealth?   Let’s take a look at the four quadrants of the health/wealth matrix below, where wealth in this instance represents financial wealth.

 

Quadrant 1: High Health Low Wealth

Be grateful you are healthy.  Learn to be content just being healthy.  Use your good health to your advantage and work hard.  In this way you can grow your wealth, but take care not to sacrifice your health to get there.

Your main focus in this quadrant is to be content with just being healthy, doing what you need to do to maintain your health and working consistently to improve your wealth.

Quadrant 2: Low Health Low Wealth

This is not a fun place to be for sure.  However, I do have something to offer.  Be grateful for what you do have and stop worrying about what you don’t have.  Practice gratitude.  Anxiety unchecked only exacerbates poor health.

Your main focus in this quadrant is to improve your health by consistently practicing gratitude and following the directives of your health care providers while learning to be content with the wealth you do have.  Focus on health first, then when health moves from low to high move to the quadrant above.

Quadrant 3: Low Health High Wealth

While this is not a fun place to be either, wealth can certainly make it more comfortable.  Like the quadrant above, those in this quadrant also benefit from practicing gratitude, and checking anxiety levels.  Whereas anxiety above may have been caused by not having enough, anxiety in this quadrant may come from fear of losing it all.

Your main focus in this quadrant again is to improve your health by practicing gratitude and following the advice of health care providers while holding your wealth loosely.  Be grateful you have the wealth to pay for the care you are receiving and be content to lose wealth to gain health.  You can always build wealth again.

Quadrant 4: High Health High Wealth

Congratulations.  You are in a small percentile of people on this earth who are in an enjoyable but precarious position.  One, you are the target of envy of many people in the other three quadrants.  Two, you are highly susceptible to lose your wealth out of greed or ambition, or your health from lack of self control or feeling of invincibility.  If not careful you could quickly and easily lose it all.  You also have a great responsibility.

Your main focus in this quadrant is to be grateful everyday for the gifts you have been given, and to give consistently of your wealth and self to help others:

  • Give time as mentors to those in Quadrant 1 to raise them up to Quadrant 4 so they can then follow in your footsteps
  • Give of your time and wealth to those in Quadrant 2 to encourage them and provide a greater level of comfort and care to boost them into Quadrant 1
  • Give of your time to those in Quadrant 3 to not only encourage them but help them preserve as much wealth as possible, protecting them from those who would take advantage of their poor health to rob them blind.

Conclusion

Health is more important than financial wealth.  Whether you are currently healthy or suffering from temporary or chronic poor health, be grateful that you are alive, practice gratitude for what you have and kindness toward each other, remembering there are others out there who are also suffering, and no matter what state you are in, you always have the power to encourage and bless others.  That is wealth.

No comments

Wealth and Spirituality

  By , ,

It was more difficult than I thought it would be to write this particular post in this series on wealth.  So I decided to start with a simple question.

How do I define spirituality?

Okay, not so simple.  It’s a word that means many different things to many different people.

For the purpose of this blog post I will define it this way:  Spirituality encompasses our morals and ethics, our capacity to love others as we love ourselves, our sense of justice and mercy, the level to which we are able to discern good from bad, the generosity, gratitude and grace we give, and a willingness to let everything go.

As I have mentioned in past posts, wealth is not just about money or material possessions, but also about being content.

Spirituality is tied to contentment and shapes how we interact with material wealth.  Material wealth and the allure of possessing more and more can negatively impact our spiritual health and contentment, but only if we become spiritually lazy.

Spiritual health is like physical health – it takes exercise and training to maintain.  More money and more possessions vie for our focus and time.  We start to worry about whether it is enough, where we can get more, how easy it might be to lose it all, where to store it all, and how to keep track of it all.  Over time we become more self focused and wary of those around us.  Are they trying to get at my stuff?  We even start to call close friendships into question while we make poor choices in new ones.

Yuck.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Spiritual health leads to contentment, and contentment is the key to true wealth.

Contentment is the ability to let things go.  Possessions as well as fears, ideologies, grudges, dreams and on and on.  I have only just begun to experience being content, but with practice it allows us to go places and experience things that we never would have otherwise.

Being content leads to a growing desire to live simply (this does not mean poorly!) letting go of the need for more stuff simply because it is shiny and available and everyone else has one (according to the advertisers).

Living simply means living on less, and as a result leaving more to save.  More to save means, you guessed it, more to build wealth and share.

Those most content in life have what they need, are satisfied with what they have in any circumstance, and enjoy sharing what they have with others.  They are not burdened by any of their possessions.  The few possessions they have are chosen because of the joy they bring.

Tend to your spirituality – it is like a garden, untended it grows wild with weeds and becomes ugly and overgrown, while properly tended it not only provides nourishment but beauty as well.

 

 

No comments

Wealth. It’s more about gratitude than greed.

  By ,

Wealth. It's more about gratitude than greed

Wealth isn’t so much what we have or how much, but about our acceptance of what we have, how we use it, whether we give it freely or hoard it, and whether we are a like a stagnant pond or a flowing river, where wealth flows in, through and out again.

Wealth is what we leave behind, not what we take with us, although realizing true wealth in this life assures us of wealth to come in the next, whatever you might believe comes next.

My word for 2016 was wealth.  I bought Benjamin Graham’s book, The Intelligent Investor, planning to learn about building financial wealth.  I still haven’t read it.  My experience with understanding wealth during 2016 turned out to be less about money (and the greed often associated with it) and more about relationships and accepting the generosity of others.

Relationship

I started spending every Sunday with my godson’s family, sharing meals, spending time in conversations, helping out with projects in the yard, sharing the couch with one of two full sized german shepherds,  basically becoming part of the family.  This made me more wealthy than any amount of money I could have made.  It’s also cool to pull up outside the house and hear two little rascals shouting, “Dave Tornstrom’s here!  Dave Tornstrom’s here!” (Yes they use my full name.  Every time.  I think it’s hysterical since most of my friends from college on only knew me by my nickname, Klondike.)

I also reconnected with old friends when they invited me to their son’s 1st birthday party.  I have been back many weekends for dinner, campfires, and helping out with the odd errand or two.  If I had not accepted the generosity of their hospitality I would never have experienced the joy of hearing a now two year old yell, “Klondike!,” whenever I show up.

A good deal of time last summer was spent outside with friends mountain biking, boating, and camping, reconnecting with my love of the outdoors.  This was magnified in my mind later in the fall, when I was feeling somewhat more melancholy than usual, and I realized this was the first summer in about 4-5 years that my parents and I had not spent a week in the Berkshires hiking and soaking in the quiet of a remote cottage.

The Generosity of Others

It may seem strange, but I was also learning to accept the generosity of others and just enjoy it.  I am one of those types who, when given something, feels compelled to pay it back, or return the favor.  Thus whenever someone was generous with me I felt indebted to them.  I can’t stand being indebted to anyone or anything. So most of the time I learned to simply refuse what was offered, or awkwardly attempt to return the favor immediately.  This is not wealth.

Part of being truly wealthy is understanding how to accept the generosity of others well.  Generosity well received is a generous response to the giver.  In this way we learn the value of being generous to others.  True generosity is giving with no expectation of anything in return, except perhaps gratitude. Gratitude like love, does no harm. But even when gratitude is withheld, generosity is not nullified. In fact generosity in the face of ingratitude is the most generous, as it is easy to give when a thank-you is expected, but much harder when it is not.

I guess you could say by learning to accept generosity, what I was really learning was the practice of gratitude.  I have adopted the practice used by many of listing at least 3 things I am grateful for everyday as part of my morning journal.  It is a simple but profound exercise.

Conclusion

What I discovered is true wealth is much more about fostering healthy relationships, engaging in community with neighbors, being generous, and expressing gratitude with every breath we breathe, than it is about money or possessions.

Wealth is yours to decide and yours to define, but yours only for this lifetime.