YOUR LIFE’S INTENT

What do you want out of your life?

“While many people strive to build their net worth, others want to feel happy, live an abundant lifestyle, create powerful memories with loved ones, enjoy vibrant health and treasure the opportunity to share their financial blessings with others.  Someone who achieves this may have a high net worth, but certainly has a high life worth as well.

Growing the right kind of wealth, says Paul Stolz, author of The Invincible Investor has become the new conversation about money.

Money certainly has its place.  It can pay for a university education, launch a dream business, or help someone in need.  Money can cover the cost of an urgent medical procedure, build a school, or a hospital in a third world country.  With it you can build your dream home or embark on a dream vacation.  All the money in the world , however, won’t buy your goals or determine your aspirations.  It is just a tool that may help you achieve your goals and aspirations.

FROM SURVIVAL TO SUCCESS TO SIGNIFICANCE

In our quest to achieve our goals and dreams, we move through several stages of accomplishment:

SURVIVAL:  When we start out in life, nurturing a budding career, we may have few material assets.  We worry about paying bills and reducing debt, providing for the needs of a growing family.

SUCCESS:  Through consistent effort, personal development, building relationships and seizing opportunities, people can begin to build their careers and start making money.  They might receive rewards at work for their contribution and indulge themselves in trophies to show off their material success.  A bigger house, a newer luxury car, a family cottage, finer clothes all show other people that we’ve succeeded while feeding our ego.

SIGNIFICANCE:  Sooner or later, the excitement of a new toy fades and then we strive for something more.  If we pay attention, we may realize that the pleasure of our rewards depends on the difference they make to other people beside ourselves.

Of these three stages along the journey of life, where are you today and where would you like to be in the future?

A survey of people aged 95 years and over asked what they would do differently if they could live their lives over almost unanimously said they would:

1.  Reflect more.  Respondents said they would set aside more time to identify their deepest priorities.  They’d develop plans to live according to those priorities  and to accomplish goals that best helped them to fulfill those priorities.  They’d define success for themselves and design their lives in a way that allowed them to achieve it in all areas, including health, relationships and charitable causes, not just careers.  Yet most people spend more time planning their wedding than their marriage and more time planning what they want from a two-week vacation than figuring out what they want from life.

2.  Risk more.  Respondents said they’d have stepped  up to the plate more often and faced possible rejection, disappointment or defeat, knowing that, by daring more, they could also have accomplished more.  They would have given less thought to the opinion of others and dared to stand out from the crowd.  As Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”.  Given the chance, these seniors would have taken more shots in life.  They’d have been more daring, bold, audacious and courageous.

3.  Do things that would outlast them.  Given the chance to live life over, the respondents said they’d have invested more time in creating something more enduring.  They’d have done something to make a positive and lasting mark on their community and the world around them.  Beneath people’s graves lie a wealth of unwritten bestsellers, un-filmed Oscar performances, un-built skyscrapers, and a multitude of other dreams that never came to be.

EXERCISE

REFLECT MORE .

What is the greatest priority in your life, and what could you do this week to invest in that priority.

RISK MORE.

If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do?|

DO THINGS THAT WILL OUTLAST YOU.

What do you want to be remembered for?”***

***Excerpts from Life Rich Real Estate by Richard Dolan

Tourist or Traveler?

“There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who want something more; that of the sick who want something different; and that of the traveler, who says, anywhere but here.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

dictionary.com came up with these definitions of the words “tourist” and “traveler”. A tourist is a person who is traveling, especially for pleasure while a traveler is a person who travels, especially habitually. Very similar meanings but the operative word is “habitually” – yes, traveling can be habit forming.

Who among us has not succumbed to this pleasure that is more and more within reach to many of us? Closed borders are now more of an exception than a rule so that every progressive county is working towards opening up their domain to include rather than exclude and be a part of the global community which is a mosaic of the aestheticism that each culture brings and we can all enjoy.

A company called Travel Marketing Decisions set out to understand more fully the mindset of people like baby boomers when it comes to travel and vacation experiences by interviewing an extensive panel of experts and they came up with 10 factors that influence people’s decisions and here are a few of them:

1. People like baby boomers consider travel a necessity, not a luxury. People will set aside time and money for their priorities, no matter how many days or dollars they have left.

2. People have traveled more than their predecessors. By the time they reached their thirties, boomers, for example, had traveled more than their parents.

3. People are time-deprived facing hectic days, demanding jobs and challenging home lives. On vacations, they want to escape from all this stress.

Going back to my first question – do you enjoy being a “tourist” or would you rather be a “traveler”.

Please bear with me as I have a point in this seemingly “worldly” conversation and not to worry – I have not shifted careers from being a real estate professional to the travel business.

A friend who enjoys traveling once shared with me that in as much as cruises or coach tours offer one of the best values in travel, she doesn’t like the idea of visiting places with just enough time to pose for pictures and move on to the next destination. She’d rather explore places and immerse herself in the culture, food and unique lifestyle that each city or country has to offer.

I think what she has just indicated is the difference between a tourist and a world traveler. Not that one is better than the other, but in this new global community that is getting smaller and smaller – we all have these options and opportunities that will allow us to live a “Life-Rich” life.

Financial Planners constantly bring up the concept of someone’s “net worth” – the total value of our financial assets minus our debts. Allow me to share and introduce a new concept – a new way of looking at what our worth is in the universe – our Life Worth.

“Life Worth is the value of all our intangible assets, including our talents and abilities, our relationships, our overall purpose and mission, our impact on the world, and our feelings of happiness. It includes our internal life worth (feelings of happiness, deepest values and priorities, accepting ourselves) and our external life worth (the positive impact we have on the lives of others).” *

Richard Dolan, Life Rich Real Estate, An Investment Philosophy based on the Phenomenon of People’s Pursuit of Place with Purpose.

Allow me to invite you to this group of like-minded friends, family and clients and business colleagues and together explore this journey of finding our “Life Worth”.

Here are examples of topics that will be explored:

• Your life’s intent

• What do you want for you?

• The Science of Happiness

• Uncommon Luxury for the Common Man

***Resource material is from Richard Dolan’s book entitled “Life Rich Real Estate”. Copies available for free upon request.

We will be posting topics of interest on a weekly basis and feel free to share it with your friends. We also encourage you to contribute your thoughts and ideas to the topics on hand with the hope that we can all learn from each other and enrich our lives and together enjoy a “Life Worth” life.

Cheers!