Spend enough time on social media you will come across maniacs selling a certain lifestyle. They tend to start with something along the lines of:
- 05:00 wake-up, have an ice bath.
- 05:15 eat 1kg of chia seeds that have been soaking overnight.
- 05:30 5km sprint
- 05:45 start work on your fulfilling job.
Of course, it is nonsense (no one can sprint on a stomach that full of chia seeds). Most of us go to work to earn enough money that we can one day stop working and enjoy life. A few lucky people get to work at something financially rewarding and fulfilling but they must be the lucky few.
Contentment is available to us in many ways, and the risk is that we miss it along the way. It is one of those qualities that can hover just outside of our field of vision. If we are too focused on working hard and saving hard for future contentment, we run the risk of missing contentment now by spending time with our young children.
Of course, contentment can be found in our work, but also relationships with others, family connections, hobbies and in wide variety of places.
It is important though to look for it and not just assume that we will miraculously trip over it at some point in the future. Looking for it is a little like looking for a camouflaged animal on a jungle trek. You can walk right past it unless you get into the habit of pausing, looking and listening, with no distractions.
Technology can be useful to us, but in its current phase, it is a very needy baby that constantly demands our attention. With the collective power of the time lost each year globally to our phones, we could probably crowd-source a solution to many of the world’s problems. We might also look up and start to see the things that are important to us.
We have written in the past about the power of achieving balance in life and your finances. This includes balancing life in the now and finding current contentment, as well as saving for a future self that will also be looking for contentment but will need money to support the search for it.
If you have a plan already built that tells you where you will be financially at each of the major milestones in life, you should be able to relax a little and focus on what matters.
We are planning for our clients’ university costs, first houses, marriages, babies, house moves, holidays, retirement and giving from our offices in Hook, Hampshire and throughout the UK.