Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘paradigm shift’

Ulti­mate Lifestyle Design: How Are You Wast­ing Spend­ing Your Time?

Read Time: 6 minutes

As an avid Lifestyle Design fanatic, I have to admit, I have been bug­ging all of my Face­book and twit­ter friends about this topic.  I ask them, Which would you rather have? Time or Money? To which 99% reply, they’d rather have more TIME.

So my fol­low up ques­tion is, What is stand­ing in the way of your abil­ity to get more TIME? To which they all respond: Money or My Job.  So it seems to me that most peo­ple draw the con­clu­sion that inevitably TIME = MONEY.  But is this really true?

Retir­ing

As I write this post, my won­der­ful father will be retir­ing in less than a week after hav­ing “served” the phone com­pany for most of his adult life, 39 years to be exact.  Started as a line­man and worked his way up into impor­tant man­age­ment posi­tions.  I am so proud of my dad for mak­ing the deci­sion to retire.  They are finan­cially secure and will have their house paid off in less than 2 months! A mon­u­men­tal undertaking!

I said to him, “You know, you’re the last of a dying breed.”  He acknowl­edged and said that not many who retire after him will be receiv­ing a pen­sion and excel­lent ben­e­fits.  This rep­re­sented a major turn in our country’s work his­tory going from Defined Ben­e­fits (Pen­sions) to Deferred Con­tri­bu­tions (401Ks and the like).  I guess my dad was one of the lucky ones, but he cer­tainly did sac­ri­fice a lot to get to this reward.  But I do also know that part of him is ter­ri­fied, not because of the money, but NOW, what does he do with his TIME??

What will be my rea­son to wake up in the morning?

“Kenz, [my dad’s nick­name for me] I just don’t know what my rea­son for wak­ing up in the morn­ing will be if I don’t go to work.”  Ugh! Just pulls at my heart strings, and of course, I men­tion 101 things he could do aside from he and my mother try­ing to kill each other for spend­ing too much time together.

Retire­ment depres­sion is so com­mon among new retirees, that AARP addresses this issue on their web­site.  Part of me is fear­ful that my dad will end up one of these sta­tis­tics.  These are some of the things that they men­tion that can curb retire­ment depression:

• What do I want to do? (Go back to school? Be a gourmet cook or mas­ter gar­dener? Start your own business?)
• Who do I want to do it with?
• What resources do I have?
• What resources would be avail­able in a new com­mu­nity if I choose to relocate?
• How can I make this happen?

Now hold on a sec­ond… When I read this list, I was flab­ber­gasted!!  Why are we not doing this NOW? Why don’t we ask our­selves these very reflec­tive ques­tions today?  Do we have to wait until we retire old to ask our­selves these questions…especially this one:  How can I make it happen?

Oppor­tu­nity Cost

I recently read a great book by a won­der­ful Author, Tisa L. Sil­ver, MBA enti­tled The Time Value of Life.  Tisa was an esteemed finance pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware’s Alfred E. Lerner Col­lege of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics, and unlike many pro­fes­sors, takes a dif­fer­ent (read: refresh­ing) approach in her view on money.  In her book, she looks at sev­eral fac­tors that play into the time value of money and then also explains why our time is so precious.

I obvi­ously agree with her argu­ment that, money is a renew­able resource and time is not, “Time can be spent but only money can be replaced” (Sil­ver).  And one inter­est­ing con­cept that relates to both time and money is “Oppor­tu­nity Cost.”  In money terms, if you invest in a bond or other invest­ment, you’re giv­ing up your money for a cer­tain period of time for some­one to use it, and you for­feit any other ben­e­fit that you may have received by using that money in other invest­ments (or to spend on yourself).

Time works the same way. There is an oppor­tu­nity cost to time.  When we spend our time being angry we are for­feit­ing our time that we could be using being joy­ous, happy, silly, or even indif­fer­ent.  Even more delib­er­ate than that, when we choose to spend our time doing what we feel is an oblig­a­tion rather than a choice; we for­feit our time to do what we choose.

So there are choices with how you spend your time, every minute you spend holds an oppor­tu­nity cost.  Where and how are you spend­ing your oppor­tu­nity minutes?

If Only’s and Once I’s

Do you do this?  Do you wish for some­thing so badly and then once you get it, the result did not make you feel the way you thought it would?

Sil­ver calls these fal­lacy state­ments, I call them “If Only’s and Once I’s”.  We have all been vic­tim of these state­ments.  I remem­ber my hus­band early in our mar­riage would say, “Once I become a police offi­cer then every­thing will be alright, and I’ll be happy…finally.”  Take a guess at what hap­pened.  Yep, he was the same per­son, no more or less happy!

Do you say this to yourself?

• Once I get that really nice sports car, then I’ll feel good about myself.
• If only I had more money then I’d be happier.
• Once the kids get older, then I’ll have more free time.

Fal­lacy state­ments do not allow us to spring into action, instead we wait for the “per­fect tim­ing” of an occur­rence, or we wait for the occur­rence to hap­pen to us rather than go after it.  We give up our power to be present in the NOW when we use fal­lacy state­ments.  We would rather focus on wish­ful future events, rather than appre­ci­ate what we have in front of us.

How DO you Trade your Time?

I know what is true for me that I make a hor­ri­ble employee, and pre­fer entre­pre­neur­ship.  But I know a lot of peo­ple that LOVE their jobs and they make great employ­ees, this is how they choose to trade their time, for money, and I think that is won­der­ful!  I am not in the busi­ness to tell peo­ple to quit their jobs.

For these, the oppor­tu­nity cost is a fair trade.  They love what they’re spend­ing their time doing at work, and gladly col­lect money for doing it. In fact, time seems to breeze by, they feel free in their life, and they don’t nec­es­sar­ily feel their time is being sucked dry.

There are, how­ever, far more peo­ple that are mis­er­able, hate their jobs and the oppor­tu­nity trade off does not seem fair in their book.  So then what?

The Tim­ing is Never Right

You have options about how to spend your time, good and bad.  If you’re spend­ing it in a way that is not con­sis­tent with a fair oppor­tu­nity trade, then you have a choice to change it.  Some­times it seems impos­si­ble, but you do have choices.

One of my favorite reads, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim­o­thy Fer­riss, tack­les this very issue of decid­ing when the time is right.  He describes the time he asked his mother about how she timed when she would have a baby, to which his mother responded, “We fig­ured we would do it at some point, the tim­ing is never per­fect to have a baby”.

I can cer­tainly attest to this one…and not just one baby, two!  My older son was a sur­prise pack­age when we least expected him, and our younger son came right before I was start­ing our mega ven­ture busi­ness.  The tim­ing was so wrong for both of them, but if I waited until it was right, I likely would have no kids!!  Yet I sur­vived and real­ized that my worst case sce­nar­ios never usu­ally manifest.

So with this in mind, are you wait­ing for per­fect con­di­tions to change?  Are you wait­ing for some­one else to tell you what to do you get your act in gear?  You can do it the Band-Aid method, make it fast, and let it hurt for a few min­utes until the sting­ing stops.  Or like jump­ing into a cold pool, it is numb­ingly shock­ing, but then you warm up to it.

Every Day Opportunities

While my dad was one of the “lucky” ones to retire with a pen­sion, he sac­ri­ficed a lot of time to get him to where he is at today. In fact my mom will argue that he was a work-a-holic.  He did not know any dif­fer­ent, it was in his pro­gram­ming.  He is now faced with a totally for­eign chal­lenge, and that is to learn to have, do or be what he loves!  Yet, what he did not real­ize all a long, is that he could have cho­sen that path every day!!

Which path are you on? One that mis­uses your oppor­tu­nity cost?  Or one to HAVE, DO and BE what­ever you desire?

Leave a com­ment below and let me know!!

Many adven­tures to you!!

What an excit­ing week it has been for me! So many great things going on.  I recently did an inter­view with a great entre­pre­neur: Josh Roa, The 80 Day Millionaire!

Stop By to Read My Interview

I know what you’re think­ing 80 Days?  Well, I have to tell you that it’s been done before, and this young man’s per­se­ver­ance is absolutely inspir­ing, he is doc­u­ment­ing his every step in his Blog! I have no doubt that 2010 will be an amaz­ing year for him!

So my ques­tion for you in 2010 is: Are you cre­at­ing worth­while goals? Are you aspir­ing to be your great­est like Josh, or are you just cre­at­ing goals so that you won’t fail?

Stop by his blog and lis­ten to my inter­view.  I divulge a lot of infor­ma­tion about me and my businesses!

Josh Roa — The 80 Day Millionaire

It started the Thurs­day before New Years, a last minute trip to take the kids to the snow.  We promised them we would do a snow trip dur­ing Win­ter break, and so I found a cheap Hotel (not cheap as in dive…but cheap as in $49!) in Reno, and we set sail to the biggest lit­tle city in the world.  Luck­ily, there is a Cir­cus Cir­cus there for the kids to immerse them­selves in what I call “gam­bling for kids” or the arcade.  To be hon­est, it was my hus­band that was the big roller here.  You should have seen the streams of tick­ets that guy won!

Reno was fan­tas­tic and the kids had a blast…  here is “Fluffy the snowman”:

we decided to make our snow day a snowman-challenge mak­ing day.  I just hope that the Snow­man doesn’t real­ize the kids were call­ing him Fluffy, I am sure he would have pre­ferred to be called “Ice­Man” or some­thing like that.

On our way home from Reno,  I get the con­fir­ma­tion that we will be need­ing to drive to Los Ange­les the next day.  I was get­ting rid of my Range Rover, and the buyer was in LA.  The Range Rover was a casu­alty of my deci­sion to retire.  Not being active in the busi­ness any­more did not neces­si­tate the need for the  vehi­cle  and the tax issues would get sticky, so it had to go.  Plus, I was unwill­ing to drop $925/mo on a car pay­ment from my per­sonal funds ugh! Cer­tain logic ruled in this instance.

We spent one night in our own beds, and the next morn­ing, on the road again for five hours to LA.  The accom­mo­da­tions were not as nice, the hotel was 2xs the cost and there were no blink­ing lights or danc­ing clowns.  Yet, as always, we man­aged to have fun, and made our way to Her­mosa Beach the next day to bask in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sun.  70 degrees, warm sand, surfers in the water, it was a typ­i­cal SoCal win­ter.  Ahhh, I love the sun.

The hand-off of the Range Rover occurred seam­lessly, the new owner, a late 20’s some­thing New Yorker-turned-LAer-turned-High-Roller was now in proud pos­ses­sion of the beau­ti­ful sil­ver SUV.  I showed him the bells and whis­tles, he signed the papers, and that was the last that I saw of my lux­ury vehicle.

We then got on “the” 405 free­way to “the” 710 and were on our way to the Long Beach aquar­ium, when it hit me…the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.  I tried to cough, no.  I tried to gag, no.  It wouldn’t go away, then I got short of breath. Was this a panic attack?  The tears started to roll down my face, I was dri­ving a car that I was unfa­mil­iar with, on a busy LA freeway…oh no. Snif­fle, cough, gag, sniffle.

I just gave up my prized pos­ses­sion, handed the keys over to a per­fect stranger! I loved that car.…people loved that car.  If I had a dol­lar for every time a man said to me, “My wife so badly wants a car like that…!”

My dar­ling hus­band was speech­less because I had been so “matter-of-fact” about need­ing to get rid of the car for the last two months.  “But my Satel­lite radio, and my seat heaters…I don’t have those in the Explorer!!”, I con­tin­ued to snif­fle and cough and gag.  It just won’t be the same.

I parked the rental car, and dried off my eyes, and heard a deep-down voice say to me:

“No Maken­zie, this is not what you want, that is your Ego talk­ing and not your true self.  Your true self wants to spend those pre­cious moments with your kids.  If you keep that car, you will need to get a job instead of spend­ing time with your kids. Your true self wants to design the life that you want.  Your ego wants things and approval.  Your ego has failed you count­less times.  Now is the time to lis­ten to your true self.”

That car wasn’t who I was, it didn’t mat­ter to my kids what kind of car I drove.  It was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make log­i­cally, or financially…but the ego and emo­tional play was far big­ger than I anticipated.

I think this is what hap­pens often when peo­ple get “stuck” in a sit­u­a­tion.  They fear that dia­logue with their ego…the one that asks them, “What will peo­ple think?” or tells them “You are not smart enough to try some­thing new, you will surely fail…and then…what will peo­ple say?” They are so afraid that their Ego, rather than their True Self, is right, that they stall and say things like, “It’s just not that easy” or “Life is complicated.”

Well, life is not com­pli­cated, as I am here to tell you.  Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to over­come adver­sity with phys­i­cal injuries, career changes, fledg­ling finan­cial mar­kets.  But really, our life is simple:

We Love each other, We spend time together, We enjoy adventure.

That’s it.

Many adven­tures to you!

Maken­zie

This sum­mer has been quite an adven­ture! I have to admit, for the first time in almost five years, I actu­ally was able to spend almost two weeks straight with my fam­ily!! This was very unusual because we have been grow­ing our busi­ness for the last four years and we have had lit­tle fam­ily time. The work-life bal­ance is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge for me, and I rou­tinely feel like I fail at one or the other.

But as we embarked on our 11 day adven­ture to Yel­low­stone, I was excited and anx­ious at the same time. I did not know what would hap­pen over the next eleven days.…I love and live for adven­ture, but I knew that this trip would be dif­fer­ent. I must have had a pre­mo­ni­tion about what was to occur.

The adven­ture was filled with an Emer­gency Room visit, Travel Trailer fail­ures, Thun­der­storms, Vom­it­ing, Diar­rhea, Mos­qui­toes the size of birds, Truck fail­ures, and on and on.…! How did we man­age? For those that were for­tu­nate enough to fol­low my vaca­tion on my Face­book, you were able to see the daily strug­gles that we encoun­tered on our vaca­tion. Many peo­ple com­mented that they would have quit by this time! But NOT us! We were deter­mined to have fun irre­gard­less of the dif­fi­cul­ties that were fac­ing us.

It had been a long time since we were able to be together as a fam­ily like this and to come through this tri­umph the way that we did. The kids were Fan­tas­tic! They were such troop­ers and flex­i­ble and strong! We were all deter­mined to be adven­tur­ous and have fun! We had such a dif­fi­cult time in the last two years with the strug­gles of a grow­ing busi­ness and a hurt daddy. This trip had more mean­ing than any other fam­ily trip I can remember.

Yel­low­stone was amaz­ing, truly a won­der of the world and per­haps one of the most beau­ti­ful places I have seen. The rivers were wide, the grasses were green, and the sky was def­i­nitely the most blue that I have seen. It was so refresh­ing. On day 9 we were on our way out of the park, dri­ving through Wyoming, on our way to Pow­ell, WY to visit friends. My busi­ness part­ner called.… I was anx­ious to find out the news of a meet­ing that he attended in my absence. Sud­denly my fun stopped. The news was not what I was expect­ing and I became anx­ious. So anx­ious, I felt that my vaca­tion needed to stop and I needed to be back at work today. I became so anx­ious, I didn’t stop wor­ry­ing for a day and a half.

The next day was spent at our very good friend’s house in Wyoming, which I must say is absolutely God’s coun­try! Rolling fields of wheat are con­trasted with fields of corn and painted hills of red, orange and burnt umber. The sky is like sap­phires in the evening and the clouds are beau­ti­ful. The neigh­bors are friendly and every­one waves at a pass­ing vehi­cle. The atmos­phere is relaxed, and fam­ily is more impor­tant than the dol­lar here. Imag­ine that.… They are out-riding the “reces­sion” because peo­ple in Wyoming just make it work. They are in it for the long haul, not work­ing for the money, but work­ing to cre­ate a pur­pose for them­selves and their families.

The Fourth of July parade in Cody WY was a cel­e­bra­tion of a cul­ture that I do not rou­tinely see in the hus­tle and bus­tle of the SF Bay Area. It was a cel­e­bra­tion of com­mu­nity and a cel­e­bra­tion of true free­dom. It was the first day that I real­ized I was not liv­ing my life truly free. I was trapped in my work and also in my fear.

The last five years of my life have been a strug­gle for riches and glory. I felt that if I strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed that I would be able to work less and have more time with my fam­ily. Boy, I really did not know how much I was miss­ing my kids! I had the par­a­digm shift that over this quest for finan­cial free­dom, I may have been going about it all wrong! Oh no! Has it all been wrong? All of a sud­den the money did not mat­ter to me so much. I would have given every­thing up just to have more time with them. I was liv­ing in such fear and felt so shack­led to the busi­ness that my time and my emo­tions were trapped. I was a caged bird.

But that day in Cody and the three days we spent dri­ving home, I did some seri­ous search­ing. How could I be free from worry? How could I get more time with my kids? And I was not going to accept “I can’t” for an answer. My mom…and bless her for teach­ing us this.…taught us that “Can’t NEVER could!” There is a pos­si­bil­ity for everything.

Often as I do, I pick up books in stores, or just out of curios­ity and some­times hang onto them for a time before I start read­ing. I picked up a book called “The Secret of the Ages” by Robert Col­lier. Not really know­ing what it was going to say, it really looked inter­est­ing, or at least inter­est­ing enough to buy it on sale for ten bucks! I don’t always nec­es­sar­ily feel that one book is bet­ter than another. I really feel that a lot of them have mes­sages that are very impor­tant. This book was really able to speak to me in a time where I really needed to receive the mes­sage. A cou­ple of notable quotes from Collier:

“Begin to free your­self at once by doing all that is pos­si­ble with the means you have, and as you pro­ceed in this spirit the way will open for you to do more. ” “Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself every­thing needed for its fulfillment. ”

The tim­ing was right for me to free myself from the inter­nal fear that I was expe­ri­enc­ing and real­ize that there was an option for me to change my sit­u­a­tion. Not only my sit­u­a­tion of fear, but my sit­u­a­tion of miss­ing my children.

So as I am mov­ing for­ward with this inten­tion, I am work­ing on find­ing ways to work on my Lifestyle Design. Work­ing less.… Mak­ing more. Evolv­ing from my exist­ing place in my life into a more sat­is­fy­ing and rich lifestyle. Stay tuned! The adven­ture is just beginning!