Feelings Aside, True Wealth Require Getting Your Priorities Right

Having money with you is never going to solve anything in your life and is never a guaranteed source of personal fulfillment.  Even if I were to get my magic number (ksh. 4 Billion) today, I will definitely need some other KSh. 5 Billion more and so on.

 So the imaginary feeling of fulfillment will never come; there will always be a new target in front of you and you will consistently find yourself falling short, no matter how much money you have.

Therefore, we need to stop viewing money as a solution, and consider it a tool that can be used to grow us and challenge us to change certain aspects of our character.

Most people want to get the Ksh. 4 Billion without changing anything about themselves, which is really where the hard work is. Circumstances do not make a person; they reveal them, and what they still need to work on.

For instance, to make a “mere” Ksh. 1 million ($125,000), you need to foster financial discipline, and that may be a big lesson your current state of affairs is teaching you. I you cannot manage saving at least Ksh. 5,000 a month, bother to reconcile your bank statement or cut back at least 30 hours from your TV time every week, do not expect to make the Million.

What is the Real Fulfillment?

Without financial discipline, even if you did get the Ksh. 4 billion, you will squander it. This is the reason why those people who get loads of cash overnight lose it within a week (fishermen and gamblers are a good example). Having money doesn’t resolve the core main problems with their character.

 Another thing you will need to consider is that wealth is not a feeling.  Euphoric feelings are flighty and temporary, and unfortunately, most of us are ruled by feelings. You may not feel like cutting expenses, you may not feel like getting up on Saturday morning to be able to attend your investment group meeting. What feels good is not always right.  In the quest to chase what feels good and feel rich, we have got ourselves into major problems with our spending, priorities, debt and so on.

Since the ‘feel good’ factor only lasts a few seconds, we then need to look for something else, like new clothes, a bigger house or car.

Let us focus more on values

Without understanding that feelings should not dictate your actions, you can get your KSh. 4 billion only to spend it on temporary ‘feel good’ items and find yourself with the same problems.

Let your goals and every action be underpinned by values, not just making money for the sake of it. You could work towards building income generating investments so that you can spend time with family.

Your fulfillment will come not so much from the investment but from being able to spend time with your family. You will find that you are being driven not by what you feel but by value. Then the decision to cut down on expenses or spending time to create extra income is not seen as a sacrifice, but a choice.

Courtesy of WECEKE NDUATI-OMANGA -