185: Health, Wealth, and Happiness – Friday Fundamentals

Life is a balance of many things – work and rest, learning and applying, patience and action, progressing and relaxing, earning and spending, silence and communication, etc.

With so many things it can be hard to know where to focus at times. You might feel that in order to one thing, you have to let other things fall to the wayside. Often times, this is the case. You simply can’t do everything at all times. If you are one of those people who think they can, I bet you feel stressed with the constant pressure to do everything. I know, because I’ve been there.

If you have only two or three things you try to balance, that’s probably manageable. But as soon as you start adding things, you look like that new bus boy at the restaurant who might as well be wearing skis trying to balance trays full of plates and dishes from that 10 person dinner party. It’s just a matter of time before you drop one thing, trying to balance everything else.

This dilemma is true for most people these days. People are busy. They have many things going on, from work to side hustles (for some), to family and soccer practices, paying bills, exercise, vacation, holidays, and dare forbid the occasional time to relax and unwind. Everyone has their own struggles.

But what if you could simplify your life without having to quit the things you want? That’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Every functioning bar stool has a minimum of 3 legs. 2 legs… well, you’re on stilts. The same applies with areas you can focus. For me, I’ve broken these areas of my life into three “buckets” – health, wealth, and happiness (not necessarily in that order). You might also like the three same buckets, or you can change it up to say, health, happiness, and travel, or wealth, family, and charity. Whatever the three buckets are, identify them and begin to put everything you do in these three buckets.

Let’s look at three buckets – health, wealth, and happiness. It’s hard to order the importance of these buckets sometimes, because you can’t have one without the other. So let’s start with health.

Health seems pretty obvious to us all. Without it, not much else matters. When put like that, it’s amazing that health is not at the top of our minds every single day when we wake up. We can even take our health for granted, until we no longer have it. But we don’t always prioritize it accordingly. We can be so busy in the day to day hustle of life that we allow our health to diminish over time, until it becomes a problem and everything else comes to a screeching halt. If instead you make health a priority every day by doing little things, you can spend the rest of your time filling other buckets in your life. You don’t have to wake up tomorrow, run a fasted marathon, eat bean sprouts and kale for lunch, and half of a smoothie for dinner. For the average person, simply exercising a few times per week, eating moderately healthy, and monitoring your health is enough.

Happiness is one of those underlying things we all want, but never really articulate. We instead talk about things that will make us happy – like family, travel, giving back, etc. Happiness is the root of all these things that we desire. It’s different for everyone too. If you’re not living a life that makes you happy, then what’s the point? Seriously! You only have one life. Why would you live it any other way? I’m not talking about being happy some day, or when you reach a certain milestone, or during your retirement years. I’m talking about being happy today, tomorrow, next week, and for the rest of your life. Anything less is just a waste.

Wealth. Wealth can be taboo topic, but not here on The Real Estate Way to Wealth and Freedom podcast. In fact, wealth can be the lifeblood for you to do good things, live a life you want, allow you to be your true self, and do good in the world. Without it, you could find yourself at the mercy of others doing things you wouldn’t necessarily do if you had that wealth. Wealth isn’t something you should shy away from because it’s evil and bad. If building wealth isn’t in your top three buckets, I get that. There’s no right or wrong way to life your life. If you can figure out how to fill your three buckets without wealth, then in my opinion you’ve just shortcut the entire process.

Remember, life is a balance. Do too little, and you leave untapped potential out there. Do too much, and you become ineffective at everything. Find that balance that works for you. Prioritize the things that are important in your life, and focus on those. Nothing else matters. You can do anything you want in this life, you just have to decide what that is. So go build the lifestyle you want.