Tag: healthy

No comments

How Do YOU Define Wealth?

  By , , , , ,

As we have seen over the past few months, wealth can be defined in many ways.  Unfortunately, if we are not consciously grappling with what wealth means for ourselves, most of us take the path of least resistance and define wealth on the basis of how much money someone has.

  • A billionaire is wealthy.
  • A trust fund kid’s parents are wealthy.
  • Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are wealthy.
  • Our neighbor with the shiny new BMW must be wealthy.

And we are generally correct from the standpoint of money or assets. Except when we are fooled by appearances.

People can look wealthy and actually be quite poor (the BMW is leased and the payments are so high that he or she is living in an apartment with no furniture and eating rice and beans or tuna from a can), while others may appear to be poor or just average, and actually be quite wealthy (your neighbor who owns a landscape company and always buys used cars and lives in a modest but nice home might be sitting on a nest egg that would blow your mind).

Most of us want to be wealthy, which is not a bad thing to want, but we tend to focus only on the financial aspect, so much so that we often try to “fake it ’til we make it,” or sacrifice other areas of wealth in the pursuit of this one.

How else can we define wealth?

Would you consider the Dali Lama to be wealthy? In a spiritual sense I would think him extraordinarily wealthy. He is also much happier than many who are financially wealthy.  Our spiritual wealth is just as important as our financial wealth.

What about relationships? Strong bonds between friends and partners are worth more than gold, and as Proverbs says, the right spouse or partner is more valuable than rubies.  Like financial wealth, relationships take work and are built over time.  They can also be lost in an instant when we make poor choices.  Sadly we tend to discount the true wealth of our relationships as we pursue the incomplete image we have of wealth.

Are you taking care of yourself, your body?  Are you making healthy choices for yourself regardless of your actual state of health?  Someone fighting to survive a long term health issue might see someone who is poor but in great health, as wealthy, or they might actually consider themselves more wealthy because of the challenges they have had to overcome.  It may come down to a matter of perspective – what is yours?

Discover your Definition of Wealth

What is your definition of wealth for your life?  Is it out of balance? Are you pursuing financial wealth at the cost of your relationships, spirituality, or health?  How do you know?

The first thing to do is to face it head on and ask yourself what wealth means to you.  What wealth looks like in your mind, what wealth feels like in your heart.

You can do this on your own, but if you have a spouse or partner, I highly recommend you also do it together – you might be surprised how different your ideas of wealth are.  The trick is then to define what wealth means to you as a couple or partnership.

It is also helpful to have someone prompting you with questions and providing feedback to really get at the heart of your definition.  A coach perhaps.  Contact me below if you are interested in discovering your definition of wealth.

No comments

Wealth and Emotions

  By , , ,

Out of curiosity I often type the titles of my posts into Google search just to see what pops up.  Type “wealth and emotions,” into Google Search or click the link for a glimpse of the wide range of posts published on this topic.

Whether you like it or not your emotions – and how well you understand and account for them – have a huge impact on your capacity to build wealth.

Investing Your Emotions

Most great investors would tell you when they keep their emotions in check they almost never lose and almost always lose when they allow their emotions to rule the day.

It gets even better – all of us deal with emotions differently and are more prone to certain types of emotions than others.  For some of us anger is the dominant emotion while for others it is fear, shame, or even happiness and joy.  How we interact with these emotions – whether from a place of stress or a place of stability – can either hinder us or help us in our efforts to build wealth.

Consider the recession induced by the sub prime mortgage crisis of 2008.  Or the the dot com bubble bursting in 2000-2001.  The markets declined rapidly and left many investors watching their portfolios slide down the seemingly endless slope.  Individual investors as well as seasoned fund managers panicked and let fear spur them on to sell, sell, sell!

At exactly the wrong time.

When the market is going down you want to buy, not sell.  Selling on the way down is how you lose wealth.

The fear incited by watching stock indexes plummet causes normally rational people to forget everything they know about how the market works.

Seasoned investors and most savvy individual investors understand the market will eventually start climbing again and in relatively short time surpass market levels prior to the crash or recession.  Over the history of the stock market, the market has always grown.

The key is to diversify your investments, stick to a process for selecting, buying and selling, and sit tight during the storm, possible looking for opportunities to buy more shares of solid mutual funds or index funds at a discount price.  Remember when the market is down, shares are generally cheaper, and thus you can purchase more shares for your investment dollars and benefit from the returns when the market swings back up.

If you invested in one or two risky single stocks and the companies are about to implode, you probably want to sell as quickly as possible and contemplate the lessons to be learned while licking your wounds.  If this is you, I almost guarantee you bought those stock based on emotions and not on solid research with evidence of long term growth potential.

Emotional Wealth

I tend to be methodical and rational in my investment choices and leave things pretty much alone.  My advantage here is that I am a highly rational person who by nature does not tend to make big decisions based on emotions.  I tend to do the opposite in an emotional state; I simply make no decisions at all.  This is not necessarily a good thing.

When I am in a place of stress, I tend to withdraw from relationships and hold on tightly to liquid funds and possessions.  I make choices based on a fear of not having enough or being seen as cheap by my friends when I ask for a separate check.  If I don’t think I have enough to split the bill evenly, I will avoid the outing altogether.

The crazy thing is that this fear is often irrational and dare I say selfish.  Oh, and then pride steps in and refuses to accept charity when all my friends want is to be gracious and generous out of the love in their hearts.

Earlier this year I started new daily practice of short meditation followed by a brief daily journal right after my daily scripture reading.  The meditation allows me to practice awareness and clear my thoughts, and the morning journal exercise gives me an opportunity to set the course of my day.

In my journal I include the scripture I have read, three things I am grateful for, location, weather and emotional state, concluding with random thoughts such as what I need to do that day, things that I am wrestling with, or that kept creeping into my meditation.

Starting the day being grateful and taking time to take stock of where I am emotionally has had a huge impact on my ability to stay balanced.

No matter what we do, we all fall prey to our emotions and all become overwhelmed at times.  The idea is not to avoid our emotions, but to learn how to embrace them well and give them space to take their course without bankrupting us financially or emotionally.

Hey, ever heard the phrase “emotionally bankrupt?”  Google it.