What Comes First Money Or Lifestyle?

You’ve made your decision – you want to create the lifestyle of your dreams!

But here’s the difficult part…

You still need to generate an income while you design your life!

You may be able to build your lifestyle around your existing job, career or business BUT – BE CAREFUL – it’s so easy to slip back into your old routine – the comfort zone you know.

For many people it’s the current job that’s holding them back from the lifestyle they crave. Either there’s not enough money coming in or the time left after the work isn’t enough to do what they want. For most it’s BOTH!

And this is where the idea of creating the perfect lifestyle falls flat on its face.

The focus is on:

“What should I do to generate the money I need”

All that leads to is a lifestyle fitted around the new existence!

The real focus should be on what the lifestyle needs to look like first.

Of course, generating an income is vital. Without money you’ll not be able to have or do what you want. But working on creating a business first will only lead to more pain.

You have to work out whether your lifestyle is based on material possessions (in which case you’ll always be wanting more) or more activities focused.

For me the process was simple but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time!

Here are my main drivers:

• To play golf when I want.

• To be debt free.

• To be able to travel where and when I want.

• To be spontaneous.

• To work when I choose and from where I want.

• To be able to generate income quickly when required.

• To be there as my children grow up.

• To be a great husband, dad and friend.

• To have time to laugh.

• To see the beauty of the world.

• To take my time.

So building a business that is dependant on me, with staff and responsibilities just doesn’t work for me. Even though a great income would be the reward there’d be little or no time for the things most important to me.

My only option, after working out what is most important to me, was to create a business that I could run from not only home – but any location I chose.

I needed a business without staff and without premises.

Initially it needed to generate a high income -  to be debt free! – and that would be time intensive.

I made a big mistake years ago because I hadn’t put my lifestyle first. I created a business that was dependant on me being there. If I wasn’t around there’d be no income – when I returned there’d be a pile of work! A business that grew like topsy and ultimately took up 10 hours a day minimum.

That’s not the lifestyle I wanted – there was little time for life, just work.

The new business needed to be one I could turn on and off when required.

I spent 4 years messing about! Nothing I looked at really met my requirements and I quickly lost interest. I dabbled at this and that without ever focusing on what I really wanted – the lifestyle first and the money second.

It was only when I set out exactly what I wanted my life to look like it became clear to me.

I worked out how much I needed to generate to do what I wanted – it was much less than I thought and I gave up just saying “I want to be rich” or “I want to be a millionaire” or “I want to have enough money”

I now had a real focus and my energies were directed at exactly what I needed to do on a daily basis to achieve my goals.

So if you too are looking to change I encourage you to start with the end in mind – what will your lifestyle look like when your done?

When that’s totally clear to you – the route you need to take and choices you need to make will be much easier.

Who Chose Your Lifestyle?

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