|
Time is short
My father died of cancer at the age of 59. He had a fairly healthy lifestyle. He didn't smoke, ate well, exercised and drank moderately. Yet still he died at a relatively young age. It can happen to anyone at any time really.
I was 27 when it happened, and felt as if my real life was just getting started. I'd met my then fiance just a year earlier, my career was finally taking off, and I had a place to live that felt like a real home rather than temporary accommodation. Everything up to that point just seemed like preparation: school, university, living with my parents, fumbling early relationships, and so on.
I felt young and ready to take on the world.
But when my father died, a terrible thought hit me. If I lived to be the same age as him, my life was already almost half-over.
It was the first real view of my own mortality I'd ever got. Of course I always knew I was eventually going to die, but it seemed like a fantasy. It's a bit like knowing that Paris exists without having ever actually visited it. You see it on TV, and read about it in books, but until you actually walk around the streets, it seems more fantasy than reality.
It's when someone close to you - who you knew when they were young - dies that you really see the inevitability of your own end. For of course, ultimately we're all doomed - you, your neighbors, that person you see every day on the train, the guy at work with the bad attitude, the homeless person you pass on your way home, the rich people with fancy houses - all of us.
Our fate is sealed. Nobody in the history of human kind has ever escaped it.
It's a depressing thought and I don't mean to get you down, but you can also take something positive from it. Realizing that your time is short, makes you really focus on how precious it is. You're only going to be on this Earth for a few short decades, with billions of years without you on either side.
Many people put little value on their time. They work in jobs they hate, stay in relationships that make them miserable, and live in places where they aren't happy. They squander their precious moments because they're terrified of losing some money or being put in a situation that might be a little uncomfortable.
They get themselves up to their eyeballs in debt just so they can have a house with a view they never look at, or a fancy car that's the same as any other once the novelty wears off. They puff themselves up in self-importance over how important ***THEIR WORK*** is, and to hell with having any fun. They stress themselves out over tiny, pointless, stupid things that would be laughably petty if it didn't make them feel so bad.
When you think about just how short time is, you tend not to do that as much. You realize that it isn't a bottomless resource to be squandered and traded for any trivial thing that comes along and demands a bit of it. You think carefully and deeply about what's important to you - what you're willing to invest your most valuable resource on and what you're not.
If there are people in your life who try to make your few short years miserable by forcing their problems and neuroses onto you, don't let them. You haven't got time to put up with that kind of stupid garbage.
If there's a situation that's making you stressed or depressed, think to yourself: "Is it really worth wasting my precious time on this?" Often, you'll find the answer's "no".
Of course, the aim should be to maximize your enjoyment of life, and that means making some sacrifices. We all have to do things we don't want sometimes in order to get things we do. But don't get carried away with it, or addicted to sacrifice for its own sake. Remember that it's a means to an end and not an end in itself.
This view of life is wonderfully liberating, I believe. It really helps you sort out what's important from what's pointless and petty. Once you achieve this state of mind, you'll come to pity those who don't have it. Unfortunately, you'll start to notice that they're all around you.
 | Finding your life's purpose | | Many people find life a bit meaningless. They fall into a routine of living day-to-day, with little to look forward to. Each moment seems to slip by into the void, with little achieved and no feeling of moving forward. |  | It’s not easy being happy when you’re not in control | | The basis for happiness is having control over your own existence. This is a simple and obvious statement, yet who among us has not ceded such control before? To assume responsibility for our lives can be a struggle, often it’s easier just to let outside forces take over. | | Don't get sucked in by the "it's all an emergency" mindset | | What is one of the biggest obstacles standing between most people and what they want? Other people of course. |  | No matter what you do, some people won't like you | | When I was a teenager, I worked out that convincing people to like me was a useful skill to have. I tried all sorts of strategies and experiments for doing just that. Soon, I became a virtual expert. | | How to motivate yourself without the mental crutch of positive thinking | | A few people have written in to say they think I'm too hard on positive thinking. I've been criticized because I haven't supplied an alternative for self-motivation. Fair enough. Here's how to motivate yourself without having to resort to the problem-filled strategy of positive thinking. | | Sometimes, irrational behavior can be explained by attention-seeking | | Why do people do so many things that are so obviously stupid? Why do they take drugs, commit crimes, ruin good relationships, and spend money they don't have? | | Be willing to crash and burn sometimes | | We all have trouble dealing with failure. We play so many mental tricks on ourselves in order to pretend we aren't avoiding it, that they can sometimes become all consuming. At night, while asleep, we have terrible nightmares of others disapproval, or the world rejecting us. | | From adversity comes greatness | | The challenges of the world sometimes seem ready to engulf us. Difficulty appears to stare out from every angle. But hardship and misfortune aren't always the evils they appear to be. |  | Ten good rules-of-thumb for investing | | I've been investing money for about 14 years now and have had more success than failure along the way. I've also read a large number of books and articles on good investment strategy. Here are my rules-of-thumb if you want to get ahead in the investment game. | | The secret of wealth is working easier, not harder | | Want to get rich? Just work hard and you will is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Since the dawn of humanity, the road to wealth has been through working easier, not harder. |
New articles are being added all the time, so make sure you bookmark Paul's Tips and come back.
|
|