Being proactive on your journey to financial independence.
If you’re pursuing financial independence, you’ve likely spent a significant amount of time figuring out exactly what you value in life. And at some level, it may seem like our values drive our thoughts and feelings about money.
But this isn’t always the case.
Sometimes, our feelings don’t align with our values — at least not completely.
Our feelings reflect what we want in the moment, but our values go much deeper. The way we feel may be influenced by one or more of our values, but it may directly contradict another.
Healthy eating, for example, is something that I value. Because of this, I often feel stressed when I don’t have time to cook. On the surface, this makes sense — I feel stressed because I’m not living by my values.
But when I really think about it, eating healthy is not synonymous with cooking.
It’s just as possible to eat a healthy diet by adopting a few simple recipes into our weekly meal rotation, so my feelings about not having time to cook aren’t really a reflection of the value I place on eating healthy.
In fact, spending too much time on meal preparation would likely take away from some of the other values I hold strong — it could mean not having time for an after-dinner walk or a visit with family.
It could mean becoming more anxious and overwhelmed, taking away from the value I place on maintaining my mental health and avoiding stress.
Or it could mean sacrificing the time I’ve set aside to work on personal development and long-term goals.
In Stephen Covey’s book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about the difference between feelings and values and the importance of being proactive.
Essentially, being proactive means making decisions based on our values and not simply reacting to how we feel in the moment. And this allows us to align our actions with our goals and commitments.
If we simply react based on our feelings instead, we’re at the whim of our current conditions — reacting to stress, anxiety, or any other emotions that happen to come our way.
Being proactive is especially important in our pre-FI lives. When time and money are limited resources, saying yes to one thing will often mean saying no to something else.
If we want to reach financial independence, we need to prioritize that over the constant barrage of advertisements that point us toward mindless spending and overconsumption.
But we also need to be proactive when it comes to our time and energy. The decisions we make can have a direct effect on our path to FI — in terms of both the time it takes to get there and our happiness along the way.
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Interested in learning more about financial independence? Check out Why Doesn’t Everyone Retire Early?
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