This post was very much inspired by Rolf Suey's 5 sets of Priorities in Life (Part 2) and B's Financial Independence Isn't Necessarily All About The Money. Yeah, so I was thinking about my own priorities in life....
While this is an investing and personal finance blog and my goal is to reach financial freedom, I think that this goal is only our first step into achieving our end goal, which in my opinion is to be happy. Being able to do what I like makes me happy, not having to work 9-5 just a paycheck to survive to the next month makes me happy, spending time with my friends and family makes me happy. What more is there to life other than being happy?
Money is just a means to an end. Having enough money to live have a decent standard of living while doing things that I enjoy is good enough. I'm not sure where I read this statement but it goes something like this: We spend money on things we don't need to impress people that we don't like with money we don't have. I don't want to be stuck in this cycle of working, spending and back to working all my life and achieving financial freedom by saving and investing my money seems like the best way to achieve that.
So, I've been thinking about my priorities in life, some things which I should focus on in my strive towards financial freedom. I think I can categorize them into 3 broad categories: Relationships, Health and Rest
Relationships
What is happiness when you have no one to share it with. I hope to be able to spend more time with friends and family to help build and maintain relationships. It's important to spend time talking to family members and friends to help understand each other better and build better relationships.
Health
How can you enjoy life if you are constantly ill and bed-ridden? Spending time to take care of my health be it through eating healthier meals, exercising and watching my diet is something that I really hope to be able to place more emphasis on in my life. With our busy schedules, it is hard to allocate time to watch our health as it is a non-urgent aspect of our life and pushing these activities to "tomorrow" is very tempting especially as we do not see the short-term benefits.
Rest
While working towards our other goals, we also need to remember to rest. Doing things we love (maybe, blogging for some of us?) or just taking a day off to rest and take our mind off of stuff (reminds of an article by Singapore Man of Leisure to take our minds off the clock for a while) can also help us to refresh our minds and body and be more productive at work as well.
Having a life filled with work, work and more work is a very boring one, unless we really LOVE our jobs. So, I hope to spend more time on my own hobbies and hiding away from work and other stresses.
Summary
I hope to be able to continue to maintain on the 3 priorities while I continue working towards achieving financial freedom, but then that's just a means to an end to allow me to have freedom over my own time and do what I enjoy with it.
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Hi Some Ideas
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for the mention.
I share the same thoughts as you.
It is important to keep on asking ourselves what do we really seek for or what do we want in life. On the face of it, it can be pretty upright easy but in reality i can be very difficult to ascertain.