Money Or Life Satisfaction: Which Will You Choose?

Just heard a podcast about a dilemma that we might all have which is should we wait until we achieve certain financial freedom then only pursue what we love to do? There are voices that say we should amass a certain amount of wealth before we do things we like, such as doing arts, become singer, travelling, going into philanthropy and so on. However, little did we realize that when we are focusing on wealth accumulation, we will never have the time to focus on the things we like. When time goes by, slowly we will lose the passion for the things we love and trap in the cycle of earning money.

Rather than focusing on earning money, why not find something that could bring us life satisfaction while money itself is the byproduct? Let’s take Warren Buffett as an example, he himself is not keen on earning big bucks but to own different companies that could bring value to him and his shareholders in the long term. He loves numbers and spent most of his time reading. That’s what makes his signature well known, which is “tap dancing to work”. To others, we may not like to deal with numbers all day long, but to Warren, it is like a heaven. Some of our interest may not bring an immediate financial return to us, but in the long run, the satisfaction it brings to our life could make us different from others. Then, it is wise to keep on doing what we love to do and become the pro in doing that.

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From the above chart from The Economist, I would not say that there is no correlation between happiness and financially rich. However, if we take Mexico as the case, it shows that even though we are at an emerging economy scenario whereby we may not earn much, we still can have the highest life satisfaction (happiness) among all other countries!

This is also part of what I encountered lately on whether to pursue things that I personally think that is meaningful and could bring me happiness or to pursue the work that could bring me money. Obviously, after having that internal conflict for like four months plus, I finally decided to make a change. However, it is important for me to identify what makes me satisfied and happy in life?

I would list down some of them that I could think of and have to really dig deep down so that I could make use of these and plan out a way to fully utilize my interest to create a career that suits me well. Here are some of them:

• design and build things to better our life
• to share thoughts and ideas with people
• explore new culture and skills
• accumulating assets
• human interaction

So far, I enjoyed the moment when I am doing design whereby I could be just sitting there, immersing myself in the creative zone. Then, I also found myself enjoyed the moment of sharing knowledge and experience with others. This could be another part of me that loves education. To me, writing is also part of the tool to express my thoughts and ideas to many. In the meantime, it acts as a record of my thoughts too. Later on, I could use these written thoughts and compile into publication!

In a nutshell, the above five define what I am interested which may be kinda vague but play an important role to sculpt the career that suits all these criteria. This will be my aim for the next quarter that will change my course to another phase. Again, it is more on self-awareness and self-exploration. I have to dig deep down and ask myself a lot of questions to know what I really want and what I really like. In overall, that’s my direction for now and let’s see how it goes.