I’m a cost conscious guy. I don’t enjoy or think it’s smart to waste my money. In most cases it is easy for me to be aware of the value exchange of money for goods and services. What gets trickier is the value exchange for my time, my well being, and my pursuit of being the best man I can be on this planet.
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** Time
Where do you spend your time? In the 1,440 minutes you have each day, how are you using them? You will never get them back once they pass. Minutes are not like dollars where you can capture interest and grow more dollars than you started with. Your minutes, my minutes are finite. We just don’t know how many we have.
How do you trade your time for goods and services? Are you wasting your “money”?
What was the value exchange for watching six hours of Netflix in one sitting (I’ve been there), or hanging at a gathering when you checked out mentally hours before (done that too), or engaging in your addiction of choice (had my challenges). Tick tock go the minutes, never to be seen again.
If you had to insert one dollar in a device every minute you engaged in activities like these, would you pay? Would you continue? If not, then you may need greater awareness of your time, and consciousness of its value.
Is it worth the cost to figure it out?
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** Well Being
Well being is made of many factors involving our physical, emotional, and mental states. Each of these is worth our attention and concern to ensure we are operating optimally in our lives. When one or more of these areas is sick, damaged, or not fully functioning, what is it costing us in terms of quality, enjoyment, and satisfaction of our lives?
If you had to pay one dollar every time you felt tired, felt stressed, or had a negative thought, how much would you be spending each day? What is the cost to your personal life, your career, your social interactions, and your spiritual practices to live this way?
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** Best Self
Who do you want to be by the time you leave this experience on earth? What contributions do you want to have made? Who are the people and lives you want to have touched? What is the cost for this? More importantly, what kind of cost is this?
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There Are Two Costs in Life
One is the Unseen Cost.
Not doing something that benefits me today appears to have no cost. Down the road, however, the cost becomes apparent, maybe in the form of ruined relationships, poor health, or lack of income. Unseen costs always come due.
The other is the Upfront Cost.
Whether it is money, time, or attention, it is the cost I pay now to have the benefits I want later.
How would it feel to be everything you can be, maximizing every talent you have, creating opportunity after opportunity for yourself? This reality is only a matter of cost.
The question is, however, which cost are you paying?
