In the book “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, he talks about the difference between career planning and lifestyle planning. Many people are accustomed to the traditional “career planning” or deferred life plan where you try to accumulate a certain amount of money in order to “comfortably retire” at some point. This approach may be very restricting and risky in the long run. Our income, personal/vacation time, personal satisfaction, and other parts of our lives may be restricted when we let a company or entity determine our financial value and worth. Their are many other risks involved including economic cycles, layoffs, jobs available, taxes, inflation, along with a potential lack of fulfillment and one’s overall health and well being.
I believe our life is too precious to take a passive approach, and let someone else or another entity determine your destiny and worth. We all have individuals goals, dreams and and a vision of which our ideal lifestyle would be like.
Below is an article from Jim Rohn talking about the difference between making a living and creating the ideal lifestyle that we desire.
After having struggled for so long, it took a shift in attitude for my family and me when success started to happen. When I started making a little extra money at age 25, my mentor Earl Shoaff taught me to let it serve as a new inspiration for lifestyle. Take my family to dinner after I’d had two or three pretty good weeks and it looked like it was going to continue. I would say, “Today we get to order from only the left hand side of the menu—we don’t have to look at the right hand side.” It didn’t cost much, just a little extra. But you can’t believe the effect on the family. Wow—that these are new days.
It’s called changing your life as well as changing your skills when earning more money. It’s best to invest some of that early money in lifestyle. Go to the movies. Go to the concerts. My parents said don’t miss anything. Don’t miss the play, the music, the songs, the performances, the movie—whatever is happening.
When I started making some extra money I opened up an account for my wife and I called it the “No Questions Asked Account.” I said, “Here is the checkbook for a new account, and it’s called No Questions Asked. I’ll just keep putting money in there and you spend it for whatever you wish.” It was life changing. It wasn’t a fortune. But she didn’t have to ask for money any more. I could sense that it was a little embarrassing at times when she had to ask me for money. I thought, that’s not good, so the first time I get a chance, here’s what I’m going to do. And sure enough, I did it. The “No Questions Asked Account.” You can’t believe what that did. It was absolutely amazing.
With that little extra money, work at creating lifestyle. Social friendships, church, community, country. All those things that make a composite of our overall life. Start furnishing that with new vigor, vitality, money, whatever it takes to expand your life into what I call the good life as well as economics.
When I discovered those kinds of concepts at age 25, you can imagine it was hard for me to sleep nights that first year. I got so excited about changing everything. And one discipline leads to another. One change leads to another. Feeling good about yourself and starting to make the turn to do something you’ve never done before, then it starts to work, wow, and then you get excited about changing other areas of your life as well.
Now after you have made your fortune, the money might not seem as big a deal. Fortunately you can then create even more powerful opportunities, in particular, opportunities for benevolence, philanthropy and giving.
Now I’m certainly not saying to focus only on external pleasures and rewards. Your relationships, health and spirituality are all of more consequence.
But in the beginning, when the rewards of your hard work begin paying off, make sure and treat yourself and those closest to you to a new world of lifestyle and celebrations.
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