Decluttering since 1973. Age 2.
It is easy to forget about what is most important to us. Especially during the frontal daily assault of today’s fast paced world and the demands it places on us.
Reinforced by daily undermining by social media posts, colleague’s family, friends well intended words, and society at large all competing for self-validation. Trying to convince themselves/ourselves and others that they/we have all their/our s**t together, when the truth is, they/we are far from together and blind to their/our own brokenness.
Today’s ‘silver bullet” solution to this problem is only a hack, an app, or a pill away. So, we are told.
The problem is these “quick fix - silver bullets” do not address the real root of our problems. They merely they provide mild relief to our pain, helping continue our illusion that we are fixed, so we can continue to “solider on” in front of others, but ultimately to our own detriment.
If we are to truly heal, become strong and resilient we must first go to the root of our problem.
Consider the following examples: Addressing excess weight.
The logical answer is eating less calories than you burn. The marketing and nutrition industries make billions of dollars every year selling their solutions and tips; however, obesity continues to increase and be the leading cause of preventable death.
The root of the problem however is not calories. It is our relationship with food, with ourselves and our intent. The sustainable life changing solution to reducing our weight is to implement our actions/belief system in the right order. As a result, we will consciously and subconsciously exercise more, eat better food and less calories thereby giving ourselves the greatest chance of success.
More time and money.
This is another problem that the wealth industry, marketers, and media outlets are making billions of dollars every year, selling their secrets and tips to wealth and financial freedom.
The simple answer is save/invest more and spend less as well as get others to do the work for you.
Simple? Yes. Easy? No.
Again, the root of our problem is not our capacity to save or get others to do things for us. It is our relationship with ourselves, with others, our priorities, the things that are within our control and the things that are outside of our control.
Not only does having more time and money require all I have just mentioned. We also must implement our actions/beliefs in the right order.
Personally, speaking this required me to address the issue of more time and money in the following order.
Firstly, getting right my relationship with my creator. Only after I was right with this, my most important relationship, was I able to focus on my own relationship with myself.
Next in support my own relationship with myself I realised I had to start talking to myself better i.e. acceptance. I had to consciously eat better i.e. worthiness. Exercise more i.e. live healthier and heal important relationships i.e. strengthen my support network.
Only then was I in the right mindset along with having physical, nutritional, emotional support to focus on improving my career i.e., my work opportunities and the potential for increased earnings.
Ultimately when I implemented all these actions in their right order both more time, opportunities and money flowed as a result.
Not by focusing on saving/investing more and implementing a better time management schedule.
However, even more surprising and profound was my discovery that I needed far less money to do the things that were important to me and I had more time to discover more about myself. Deepening my experiences and enriching my life, even more abundantly.
The point is if we focus only on addressing the symptom aka, hack, app or pill, we deny ourselves the opportunity to truly discover who we are and miss discovering for ourselves life changing choices that will improve our own lives and those important to us.
My tip is the next time you find yourself frustrated, envious, self-loathing, angry or disappointed.
Stop what you are doing and ask yourself why?
Then try digging a little deeper by peeling back another layer of your inner onion. i.e., ask yourself what and why to the last answer you gave was important to you, until peeling your layers of onion make you cry.
Then you will know you are on to something real to you!
If you are stuck in a funk or you’re lost in a cloud of complexity feel free to contact me. Most often in life we just need someone to talk things through and to lighten our load a little.
This post was written by Me, as such they are my personal views and not financial or general advice.
You should always seek independent financial advice when it comes to choices about your personal finances. This is one area of your life where it’s worth paying for it to be done right.