Defining Wealth and Success
At first, this may seem counter-intuitive. You may think that the first step toward financial prosperity is deciding what you’re going to do next, but more important than that is figuring out where you want to end up.
What we’re referring to is defining what “wealth” and “success” mean to you. Wealth and success are relative concepts. They mean different things to different people, and the differences between what one person thinks of them and what another thinks of them can be quite drastic.
Defining wealth and success isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of things you need to take into consideration and several difficult choices you have to make.
However, if done correctly, having a clear definition of where you want to end up can set the stage for achieving everything you want in life… and that’s why it’s so important.
Defining Wealth
In order to make it easier for you to determine what wealth is to you, let’s first redefine it in very simple terms.
Wealth is simply a measure of the amount of valuable things in your life.
When we view wealth in this way, we are able to break the process of defining it for ourselves into smaller, more manageable pieces.
The first of these pieces is making a list of the things in life that have value to you. We’ll call them your Valuables. These would include, but not be limited to the following.
Money
Family
Friends
Time
Peace of Mind
Freedom
Location
Lifestyle
To help you understand the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself when trying to make decisions about where you want these to end up, here are some examples.
How much money do you want to make?
Where do you want to live?
How do you want to live?
What kind of work do you want to do?
How many hours do you want to work?
How much stress are you willing to tolerate in your work?
How much risk or volatility are you able to tolerate in your work?
How large of a family do you want to have?
How much time do you want to be able to spend with your family?
How much time do you want to be able to spend doing the things you want to do?
What are the answers to these questions now?
What will the answers to these questions be 5 years from now? 10 years from now? 20 years from now?
When you’ve answered these questions for yourself and determined how much of your valuables you want to have at each stage in your life, it’s time for a reality check. Is it feasible to make millions of dollars, spend all your time doing what you want to do, only work 10 hours a week with absolutely no stress, and spend as much time with your family as you would ideally want to spend?
Realistically, the chances of this are slim, so you’re going to have to balance how much you make with how much time you spend working and how you live the rest of your life. This will involve making some comparisons among the things you’ve listed and deciding at what levels each one becomes more important than the others.
CNN Money has a helpful tool called The Prioritizer that can help you choose which of your valuables you value most. Just enter them in and hit continue, and it will pit them against each other and allow you to choose which is more important for each combination.
Once you have decided which of your valuables are most important to you, how much you want of each, and arrived at a realistic scenario, you have set the stage for attaining the amount of true wealth you want for yourself.
Defining Success
Similar to how we redefined wealth, we can redefine success as the attainment of your wealth goals.
Because the definition of wealth will be different for everyone, so will the definition of success. This means that comparing yourself to others will not be a good way of determining how successful you are.
The only true measure of your progress is how close you are to achieving the life you layed out for yourself with your valuables and your definition of wealth.
In the financial toolbox lesson, we stressed the importance of your career in your financial life. Here, we stress it again because it is the vehicle that is going to fuel your success.
Remember that when we say your career, we don’t simply mean your job. Rather, we mean the string of jobs, acquaintances, and professional relationships you will maintain over the course of your entire life.
In order to achieve success, you must pursue a career that is aligned with your definition of wealth.
If what you value most is the amount of time you spend with your loved ones, then a high-paying career that does not leave you with a lot of free time may not be the best one to pursue. If you value making money above all other things, pursuing a career where the chances of making that kind of money are very slim would not be the best career choice.
The bottom line here is that there are careers out there for virtually every kind of wealth definition, but in order to truly achieve the level of wealth and success you want, you must not get in your own way by making career choices that are not aligned with the life you want for yourself.
Take a realistic look at the job you currently hold today, and try to determine whether or not what you are currently doing is a step in the right direction toward ending up where you’ve determined you want to end up. If it isn’t, it may be time to consider doing something that is.
Also take a look at the other aspects of your life and analyze them the same way. If there is something in your life that is standing in the way of you achieving the life you want, it may be best to let go of whatever it is in favor of something else that is a step in the right direction.
We’re not saying it will always be easy… it won’t. But in the end, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn’t settle, you made for yourself the life you wanted to make, and you’ll probably live a happier life because of it.
This lesson has been featured in:
20s Money: Best of the Financial and Investing World Edition #2
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