Your Money or Your Life

As a wealth planner and in my life coaching practice, I have met a lot of people who share the belief, (often reinforced by their life experience) that being financially successful and doing what they love doing are somehow mutually exclusive. Of course, we may encounter people in our lives who have a "gift", or a talent that they love and are able to make money from it; but these individuals seem like the exception rather than the rule.

As adults, we spend the majority of waking hours at work or commuting to and from work. If we are expending all that time and energy on a career that is unfulfilling, we could say that energetically speaking, we’re living beyond our means. We will most likely find ourselves needing to obtain energy from the people around us, particularly those we love, and have very little to give back in return. If we look at our choice of work in different terms, e.g. how we are spending our time and energy, we’ll quickly realize that we can’t afford to be in a career that does not fill us with a sense of purpose.

Have you ever been so immersed in a project or a task that hours go by and it seems like minutes? Psychologists refer to this as being “in flow”. Flow is a concept proposed by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. It means you are so passionate about what you are doing that you are completely in the moment and have forgotten about the outside world. Athletes refer to this as being “in the zone”.

Often I meet people that take jobs that pay well, so they can afford to do the things they love. Others may opt for occupations that afford them free time on the weekends so that they have the time to do the things they love. Yet we all know people that make very little money or work weekends that love their lives and seem so satisfied with the work that they do. It confirms the old adage that if you find a career that affords you the opportunity to do what you love doing, you will never work a day in your life.

The people who are most happy with their careers and their lives are those that are in flow. Being in flow decreases stress and increases productivity. It is a key to finding happiness in a career. People who are in flow wake up believing that their vocation is their unique expression in the world. They believe to their very core that they are contributing something worthwhile to the world. Find work you love. Find work that is important. Find work that is in alignment with your unique expression to the world. When we start focusing on what we want to express and contribute to the world, we will likely discover a source of limitless energy and inspiration that is far greater than any material possession.