So You Have Been Living The Good Life
Up until now, I have been addressing people who are in a distress area of one sort or another but what if you have been living the good life. What if your life has been by the standards above the threshold of well to do. You may be wondering what is in this for me? Well let me ask you this? If tomorrow, you were to stop being paid for what you do would you continue doing it anyway even though it meant you had to find another source of income. Also, what have you sacrificed to achieve the level that you are currently at? Has it been you freedom, joy, love, or something all together different? Let me give you an example. I was at one time considered well to do I had a family, job, children, education…well you get the picture. I was for all extent and purposes well to do. Now you may ask so what is so bad about that. Nothing until you look at the fact that in exchange for the success I had achieved by the world standard I had sacrificed not one but two of the most precious resources I had. The first one was my time a topic I will be covering in my article Time the one Resource that isn’t Replaceable. Now in that article I will be focusing only on time because that truly is a resource that cannot be replaced.
The second resource I was sacrificing for the success I was achieving was my health. Now that is a resource that while we cannot replace we can at least slow down the rate at which we are expending it. No, I’m not talking about some new drug or new medical procedure but instead I am talking about living a life where by the actions we do, and the decisions we make are not creating the level of stress that quickly and often silently rob us of our health. I was working long stress filled hours, filled with decisions that would often impact many people’s lives and so I as many others have done turned to drugs for relief. Ok I can here you now so let me say this NO I WASN’T DOING ANYTHING WRONG BUT I WAS STILL KILLING MYSELF. Yes as I said before I was doing nothing wrong in the eyes of society as the drugs I am referring to are drugs commonly accepted in society. I would get up, grab a cup of coffee (caffeine) light up a cigarette (nicotine) and of course pop something for the nagging pains that I would never take enough time off to allow to go away on their own (always over the counter so they can’t be addictive right?). I had to keep up this pace in order to sustain the lifestyle that I had come to be accustomed to living.
Now I don’t know if I would have changed this except that along came some things that forced me to take another look at my life and reconsider the decisions that I was making. First my children grew up so I could no longer convince myself that I was doing it all for them. Then my marriage of twenty four years came to an end so that was another lie I could no longer tell myself but you know what this still wasn’t enough for me to wise up. Did I ever mention how stubborn I can be? I had to have a couple more knocks to make me look at things again. The first came about two years after my divorce when I was treated for kidney stones. I was forced for the first time in many years to take some time off. It was then that I realized that I was living a lie telling myself that I was living the good life but that still didn’t give me enough reason to make a change. The second came along in a manner that was more subtle but by far much more convincing. I started having breathing problems and had to be put on two different breathing medications to be able to breathe anywhere near normal. Of course I was told to stop smoking and so I did (for a while, but more on that later) in yet another article Smoking the real reasons not to . I found out that my breathing actually got worse when I stopped smoking and so I rationalized that in some way the smoking must be helping me, yet another lie. Circumstances caused me to end up leaving the job that I had been clinging to for such a good life and a funny thing happened. The day I turned in my two-week notice my breathing returned to normal (at least as much so as a smoker could expect) it was only then that I came to realize that my stress level was what was affecting my breathing and ultimately my entire life. I have sense realized that smoking only masks the stress and so that is an addiction I am currently working on and will be for the rest of my life. So again, I ask what are YOU trading for your good life and is it worth the trade. If you have any questions that it may not then continue reading the other articles and see if maybe the things that are talked about here might be something of desire. I will cover a lot more on much of this in other articles but for now just think about it.