Project Description
The challenge with a wealthy life is understanding what it means to you. I think to summarize, for me, it’s about planned spontaneity; knowing the direction I want to travel in the goals I want to achieve, but being open to new ideas, to a change of plan. Achieving this adaptability is so much easier when you’re in control of your own time, as I have written a few weeks back.
Over the last five articles, I’ve been talking to you all about creating a happy and wealthy life. And in some ways, this could be seen as early annual planning for the year ahead, instead of waiting through to December – or worse, January. Planning is actually something that you can do whenever you want to. Planning to be happy is something that you can start on any day of the year. In fact, 365 days of the year, you should be planning to be happy. If it’s not your plan to be happy, then I guarantee that you’re playing a role in someone else’s plan to make themselves happy.
In my book, The Wealthy Retirement Plan, I talked about “The Four M’s.” These are the different ways that you can spend your time, and this could actually help you focus on how you want to shape your legacy. The first M stands for Mission. It could be spending your time on something that you are passionate about; this could be something very personal to you. It could be working in the community. It could be sharing your knowledge. It could be creating an arm of your business dedicated to giving back, because you already have enough or even more than enough.
It could actually be that your mission is to become an artist or a musician, or to be a sports player – not necessarily a famous athlete, but that you want to finesse a skill – that could be your mission. Your mission could be to be present for your family. Your mission could be to be an exceptional boss for your staff. The choice is yours. This is a very personal, powerful driving force in you. And when you have the time, you can spend it on your mission, in your mission, living your mission.
Another one of the M’s is Memory, and this is maybe spending valuable time with others, maybe family or friends, creating lasting positive memories. This is about enjoying your time in the company of others or – and equally important – enjoying your time in your own company. Maybe this means going for that walk, painting a picture of the lake or the tree, or a flower; whatever your happiness is. Memory refers to the place and the time that you can stack in your happy. You can spend time being happy and then have that memory, that recording of that time, to play over in your head again and again.
Another M is Multigenerational, and here it’s really about spending time purposefully. This is about being with older people and younger people. Maybe you are the older person or maybe you are the younger person; or you’re somewhere in the middle and considering how you can share and transfer knowledge. Transferring that knowledge and understanding up and down the generations is like taking a box and turning it over and looking at another side. When you’ve looked at all six sides, you think that you know something; it’s then that point where you turn it and you look in at one of the corners and maybe you see a completely different shape. When you speak about topics with older and younger generations than you – people outside of your normal scope – and you see the way they perceive things, that’s where you get a deeper understanding that really adds value to life.
In doing so, you get that opportunity to learn and gain more understanding for your self-development, and knowledge transfer. It’s problem solving. It’s challenging. It could be something that you do within a business. It could be something that you do within a community. It could simply be something you do within your family.
And finally, the fourth M is Means; this is how you earn your money. Whether you are employed or you’re running a business, whether you’re a property investor, a trader, or involved in any other form of income generation, the choice is yours. The less time you spend earning that income, the more time free and wealthy you will be. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with earning an income, staying employed if you want to, as long as you are in a position where you have income on the other side and you know that you don’t have to work just to pay the bills.
So, a couple of quick points to summarize this series. Number one: it’s up to you to work out what makes you happy, and then find a way to build that into your life so it becomes your way of life 365 days of the year. If you don’t do this, someone else will be doing this, and you will become part of their happy story – which is great if what they need you to do also makes you happy – but if one way of making them happy is making you miserable, that’s not so good. So, work out what makes you happy and prioritise that.
Create and own your own happy plan, your own wealthy life. Your life, your choice, your plan. I hope that the insights that you’ve read about here will continue to help you create a wealthy life where you can spend your time doing what you love with those that you care about.
If you are interested in learning more about creating a wealth plan, make sure you listen to my podcast A Wealthy Life, and look at the free resources I offer like the Readiness to Retire Wealthy Audit. It’s your life, It’s your choice, it’s your plan. For more impactful wealthy life tips, please visit my website www.vickiwusche.com, listen to my podcast here and here, or schedule a free call with me.