JLM & Associates offers personal development counseling to help you take control of your personal and business success. Learn how to seize the kind of income you deserve and achieve the successful future of your dreams.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Keep Your Life In The Proper Perspective

When a person is busy working toward economic well-being, that is, getting a nice house, food on the table, an education, good health care and so on, often times the individual is too busy working toward these goals to worry about other important things.

It's at this time that the person is most productive and innocently engaged toward his or her own good, but what happens after the goal has been reached? When that person achieves financial freedom and becomes affluent, when all the economic goals have been reached, what then?

During my career I have given many talks to high school and college students and I often find students that are not happy with their life, and many of them surprisingly will blame their parents for their problems. On the other hand I've often heard my friends and clients voice disappointment in their children.

I think this disappointment stems from a lack of understanding on the part of people in different age groups not understanding one another. For example, parents who work hard so that their children can have all the things they themselves never had are often amazed that their children could care less. They are also shocked discover that the easy life they have provided for the kids, when they themselves had to get out and work at an early age, did not produce conscientious, hard working people like themselves, but just the opposite.

People who reach their goals are often unsatisfied. For example, a man or woman who hasn't planned beyond retirement. The person now has the rest of his or her life and doesn't know what to do and therefore finds the rest of life very unfulfilling.

Economic goals are excellent and you must have them. We all must earn a living before we can look beyond our daily income to other meaningful accomplishments, but to not look beyond economic goals, to not have economic goals in the proper perspective is to miss a great deal of living.

For example, parents will often think and sometimes say to their children, especially when the children are in their more-difficult teens, “Look what we've given you; a fine home, good clothes, good food, good schools, vacations, a car, spending money, everything a young person could want.”

But all this isn't everything a young person could want and that's the trouble. In the hierarchy of needs, once security and want have been satisfied, it is perfectly natural for a young adult to look for something else. It's not the teen's fault that once his or her material needs have been met the he or she is not satisfied completely.

Parents too will often find new dissatisfaction, new arguments and new problems once the children are gone off to college or have moved out on their own. For example, one of the parents might think or say, “I wish we could go back to the time when were living in that small apartment, when we wondered where out next meal was coming from. We were really happy then.” Yes, they were happy then, because people are happiest when they're striving toward identifiable goals, when they know what it is they're trying to accomplish.

They are least happy when all their needs are taken care of and all the fun has been taken out of striving. That's when they become unhappy, lethargic, critical and often develop a sense of entitlement.

Are your goals in the proper perspective? How would you feel if you achieved them tomorrow? Remember to set some goals for your own health and peace of mind. For example, how about, “I will laugh a lot this year, or I will spend more time with my kids.”

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