What’s more important than money?
I’ve said there was one question that helped me shift into a more vital relationship to money.
That one question helped put money back into its (healthy) place…which is, for me, as a tool. A tool that opens up opportunities for me to live a life that feels rich, meaningful and fulfilling.
So here’s the question:
What does living a wealthy life mean to you?
Here’s the thing — the most valuable commodity you have is not money. It is time.
Time is everything.
How you spend your time is how you live your life. It makes up your experiences and the quality of your days.
When you look back over your life many years from now- you will be reflecting on how you spent your TIME — what choices you made, what opportunities you took, what priorities you held firm to.
Money can’t buy you a great life…but it can buy you more choices.
It can open up more OPTIONS for how you spend your time.
The key is to know how to use the tool of money in a way that reflects who you are and where you want to grow.
Get out some paper, open up a journal and begin to explore and sketch details around these areas of your life and what it would actually look like if you felt wealthy in these areas.
This is about painting a picture. Literally, drawing out specifics examples, scenarios, and opportunities that you would engage in, that would help you experience the sensation of true wealth in these areas.
- How would you spend your time as a family?
- How you spend your time working?
- How would you spend your time running your household?
- How would you spend your time in your marriage?
- How would you spend your time with yourself?
When I really began to reflect on what a wealthy life meant for me,
I realized that elevating money was a losing game.
What was more important than anything was my time.
Specifically, my ability to make choices with my time the way I wanted to.
What you do with your time determines the kind of life you live.
I know wealthy people (according to their bank accounts) who live an impoverished life because they are miserable, anxious and spiritually empty.
What makes you wealthy in the truest sense is the degree you live and spend your time intentionally.
So perhaps here is a better way to bring in more wealth.
1. Get clear on what living a wealthy life means to you. Specifically, think about who you are (your deeper values and beliefs that feel worth living for), who you are becoming (the person and life you want to grow into), and what impact you want to have in the world (what purposes feel meaningful and fulfilling to you).
2. Get clear on how you would spend your time in each of the key areas of your life if you felt truly wealthy in those areas.
3. Understand what kind of supports you need in order to be able to spend your time in those ways.
4. Begin to align the money you have with the ways you want to spend your time. Take honest assessments of where you have “leaky” holes – where you are spending your time or money in ways that are not aligned with the version of a wealthy life you’ve described.
5. Clearly state for yourself where you would invest additional money coming into your life. I’ve found that when I knew exactly where I wanted additional money to flow into, it was much easier to make ways for more money to come into my life and I felt like a wise steward of the money that kept flowing in.
