No B.S Friday: At the end of the day, what’s the point of money anyway?
So I’ve just finished reading a book, and it was a total wake-up call. This is the book here:
It was actually a bit of a slap in the face. I didn’t realise how far down the rabbit hole I had gone.
I mean, if you had asked me what the point of money was, I would have told you it was to have fun. I would have said that.
But it was not how I was living. I had my head down, intently focused on all the different pies I have that bring in the dough, like I had Gordon Ramsey bearing down on me.
“Needs more butter, you numpty!”
Making money was the priority.
How to spend the money..? I wasn’t even thinking about it. It kind of wasn’t even on my radar.
But if you want to enjoy your money, you need to make time to think about what you want to spend it on – what do you want to create? What experiences do you want to have? How do you want to invest in yourself and your wellness? How do you want to invest in your family and friends?
That’s actually a substantial amount of planning, and if you don’t make time for the planning it doesn’t happen.
You also then need to actually make time to spend the money – to have those experiences, to make those investments.
That needs to be blocked out in the calendar as well.
But I wasn’t doing that.
I wasn’t doing the dreaming. I wasn’t doing the planning. I wasn’t doing the spending.
And because I wasn’t doing the spending, I wasn’t doing the enjoying.
But if I’m not doing the enjoying, then what am gathering all this money for?
What am I going to do? Stuff my bean bags with it?
This is what stopped me in my tracks. I suddenly saw how silly my life had become.
Gather money to do nothing but sit on it, like an uncomfortable bean bag?
That’s actually ridiculous.
What am I actually doing here?
Not only that, I realised that I was actually way out of my integrity.
I always talk about how life is for living – that we’re here to have fun, and the whole point is to smash any obstacles – financial or otherwise – that are going to stop you from living your best life.
I say that. I literally write blogs about that.
But it’s not how I was living.
I was living to make money, and I wasn’t even thinking about how to have fun.
So, this is my wake-up call. I’m coming back to my integrity. I’m making time for fun.
And in a way I think this is one of those urgent vs important things.
The tasks involved in making money are always urgent – there’s emails to get back to, deals to research… businesses don’t run themselves.
And so on any given day, the task of making money is always screaming out with 100 urgent things.
But at the end of the day – at the end of a life – they’re not important things. The important things are what did you do with your money? How much did you enjoy it? How rich were your connections with you friends and family? How many barrel turns could you do in a vintage fighter aircraft?
That’s what’s important.
But when we leave life on auto-pilot, we spend all our time doing urgent things, and none of our time doing important things.
And that’s why this book is so great. It’s a reminder of what’s actually important.
But it’s also a game-plan on how to organise your life around what’s important instead of what’s urgent. It’s the why and the how.
And no matter where you’re at in your journey, this is worth doing 100%.
So check it the book. I can definitely recommend it. 5-stars.
JG.