#setbacks #OvercomingAdversity #LoseTheVictimMentality
Life is going your way. Suddenly, a setback – an injury, death, business disaster etc.
“It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up,” says legendary football coach Vince Lombardi.
Andy Bailey, lead entrepreneur coach with the firm Petra, quoted Lombardi in an Oct. 11, 2015, column he wrote for The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
“A setback defines your company or career only if you let it keep you from trying to move forward, “Bailey writes.
In other words, no matter how well things may be going now, setbacks will come. Perhaps you will lose a job. Perhaps your biggest client bolts. Perhaps the one person you relied on the most in life dies.
They all hurt, but they shouldn’t kill you. You can recover from almost anything if you want to. You just have to use the inner strength to move on.
Bailey suggests three things: lose the victim mentality, recalibrate and do the hard work.
Let’s discuss each of those. Do you know anyone who can’t escape “woe is me?” A setback will send them right into a tailspin. They will blame everyone and everything for ruining their lives. They will believe they were meant to have something bad happen to them.
They are the victims. However, good, strong people are NEVER victims. They believe when bad things happen, they can, and will, overcome them. It may take them a bit longer to achieve what they want, but no matter. They know to press on, and they do.
Maybe you’ve done something wrong in your great life plan. Presuming you can figure out what it is, you fix it and move on. Most strong people can determine what they should have done differently, and recalibrate, or adjust.
Of course, these same, strong people know about hard work and do it. They look at problems as fixable, as long as they are willing to do what it takes.
It’s not just working hard. Some very hard-working people lose their jobs every day. Sometimes it means finding something different to work hard at.
If you are someone who has worked hard, and suddenly have what you’ve worked so hard for disappears, there are many ways to recalibrate, or adjust. You don’t have to be a victim. If your job disappears, there are many ways to make money that have nothing to do with a traditional job. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Oh, you’ll still have to work hard, but you may find life more fun and more lucrative.
It doesn’t necessarily take a village to overcome a setback. But an individual could create a village to get him past what was holding him back. Let not your circumstances define you. If things go badly, turn them around. Anyone can do it, if you have the motivation.
Another tip: hang with people who encourage you, rather than those who discourage you. Sometimes, when one combines bad circumstances with pessimistic people, the mixture is toxic to one’s psyche.
As motivational speaker, author and leadership expert John Maxwell has said, one will not necessarily be a great singer just because he believes he can. He has to have some God-given talent to get him there. But, for many other things, you can achieve what you believe.
Follow Bailey’s advice: don’t be a victim, recalibrate if necessary and do the hard work. No matter what you are trying to achieve, don’t let setbacks squash you.
Peter
Author Archives: pbilodeau01
CONTENTMENT VS. HAPPINESS: GO FROM FORMER TO LATTER
#happiness #contentment #HappinessIsCreated
Most of us would probably say we are happy with the way things are for us.
Some, of course, would say they live one crisis after another. These folks may never see happiness, perhaps because they don’t pursue it. They wait for it to come to them.
But let’s talk about the former group.
Pose this question to yourself: are you HAPPY with the way things are for you, or are you CONTENT with the way things are for you?
Though it’s truly a blessing to be alive, let’s not talk about those who are just happy to be standing upright, or those happy to be on the right side of the dirt.
Let’s focus on those who say they are happy with their lives as a whole. If you are HAPPY with your life, you ALWAYS wear a smile. You have no worries about anything. The sky is never falling. Tomorrow will always be better than today.
If you don’t look at life this way, but feel that, when you balance your ups and downs, that life is OK, you are merely content. If you say to yourself, “I’d really like that, but I’ll settle for this,” you are merely content. If you look forward to your good days, but have occasional bad days, you are merely content.
So let’s take this premise a step further. Once you determine whether you are HAPPY, rather than merely CONTENT, what do you do next if you discover that what you thought was happiness was just contentment?
Chances are there are steps you can take to change your status. It’s not just a mood change, or putting on a façade of happiness. It’s a life change.
Ask yourself whether you are governed by your circumstances, or whether you are governing your circumstances. If it’s the former, what do you do to change to the latter?
To borrow from the song Dusty Springfield made famous, wishing, hoping and praying alone aren’t going to give you what you want.
You have to determine what you want that will make you truly happy. You certainly can live with contentment for a time, but you have to really aim toward happiness. Once you aim toward it, you have to pursue it relentlessly and continuously. That, for some, is the hard part.
You see, contentment may be good enough once some of us realize what it takes to achieve true happiness.
For others, they have the determination to achieve happiness, but need the vehicle that will get them there. If you are one of those, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. It’s one of many, and indeed one of the best, vehicles for those who not only know what they want to go from content to happy, but also want to take others on the same journey.
Going from content to happy may not always be easy. However, for some, it could be a simple adjustment in the way one leads a life or uses his time.
For those happy to be content, perhaps now, at least, you may understand the difference between contentment and happiness.
For those who want true happiness, find out what that is for you and do what you need to do. It seems simple, but, for some, it’s very hard.
Remember: happiness is not given. It is created.
Peter
HAVE TO MOVE FOR A JOB? THINK LONG AND HARD
#JobRelocation #RelocateForAJob #WhereTheJobsAre
So there is no job for you where you live.
What goes into your decision to move where the work is, or stay where you are?
Susan Ricker of Careerbuilder.com discussed this in an article Sept. 13, 2015, in The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
The article quotes Jodi Chavez, senior vice president at recruitment and staffing firm Accounting Principals, as saying that relocation is common in certain professions – usually those jobs that require travel as part of the work. (Read: high-level jobs).
But even if the employer pays the cost of moving, one could be moved from a relatively low-cost area to a higher-cost area. The salary change, presuming there is one, has to compensate for that. If it doesn’t, that should provide some food for thought.
There are many perks, the article states, to some locations vs. others. Certain cities, like San Francisco and New York, provide a wide range of potential off-the-job activities. They are also among the more expensive places to live.
But let’s step back a moment and presume that you are just out of a job. Either you’ve been laid off, your job has gone away or you are being “retired” before you want to be. There is no benefactor to help with moving expenses.
But, there is, or at least could be, a job waiting for you as long as you move to a certain location.
What do you do?
Let’s say you are in a tough housing market now. You could rent your current house, move to your new location and let your previous house be financially productive for you. There are significant headaches to being a landlord, even if you hire a property manager to deal with day-to-day tasks. You’ll find there’s a difference between renting a house that was your home, and renting a house that you had bought specifically for that purpose.
The tenants may not know, or care, that the house they are renting used to be your home, and may not take care of it as you had.
If you are moving to a place at which the cost of living is considerably less than it is at your current location, you might make money simply by moving.
If you don’t want to rent your current house, the benefit you may get from the lower cost of living at your new location may mitigate having to sell your current house quickly, perhaps getting less than you believe it is worth.
Of course, there are emotional attachments to where you live – friends, family, off-work activities etc. But, if you have to work, and there is no work where you want to be, sometimes difficult decisions have to be made.
Another thought: what if there were other ways to put money in your pocket besides having a job? There are many such vehicles. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. What if you, and your friends, family etc., could help each other succeed, without having to move?
Still, moving, whether you are being relocated, or are relocating yourself, is a difficult decision. If you ever face it, here’s hoping that your employer is helping you as best he can. If not, think long and hard about all the advantages, and disadvantages, of moving and act according to your best interests.
Peter
HOW DOES CHANGE GO DOWN WHERE YOU WORK?
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African proverb
#change #workplaces #innovation
The workplace can be cruel.
It can also be awesome.
Are you the type that is eager to go to work? Perhaps you are the type that isn’t eager for the commute, or some other extraneous issues, but are happy to be at work once you arrive.
Perhaps you are there for the paycheck only. Paychecks are very nice, but you spend lots of your life earning it, so it would be best to find something good, other than a paycheck, at your workplace.
Your attitude toward work may be a reflection of the management where you work. Is the culture one of collaboration, competition or coercion?
Bob Nelson, author of “1501 Ways to Reward Employees” has followed up that work with “Companies Don’t Succeed, People Do.”
The book is a primer on how to create a work atmosphere at which people feel valued, have power, autonomy and are allowed – actually encouraged — to innovate.
Does this describe where you work? Some employers are old school. They believe a successful organization in one in which employees compete with each other, fear failure and feel almost enslaved by what is probably a measly paycheck.
The newer organizations, the ones Nelson praises, have cultures that think outside that old-school box. They offer employees creative time to find better ways to do things. In turn, the employees work well with each other, find teams in which members have complementary skills and have departments that work together, not compete for credit or blame.
Management in these new organizations are constantly looking for ways to reward collaborative behavior, instead of finding ways to punish.
In organizations like the ones described in Nelson’s book, there are very few levels of employees. Those who work there seldom need permission to do something beneficial. Those who work there have a common goal, understand that goal and do what THEY feel they need to do to best carry out the goal.
In these organizations, change is easier to accomplish because the employees have a clear understanding of the need for change, and do what they must to make it happen.
In old-school organizations, change is difficult because there are too many layers of employees. Some of those employees get hurt as a result of the change, making it even more difficult.
If you work in an old-school organization, and need a way to get out — probably before you are asked to go – visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll see a fresh organization in which people are rewarded for helping others succeed.
Some organizations and some managers are resistant to change. They fear empowering employees because it will hurt THEM – not the employees. For those organizations, when change has to come, there is anguish, anxiousness and real fear of loss. Good people often pay a steep price for that change.
If you believe change is coming where you work, and you fear it will not be for the better for you, take charge. Find that Plan B before you have to. There are many good ones out there, for those who want more control in their lives.
If you work in one of those flat, dynamic organizations, be thankful. However, change could still come up to bite you, so have your Plan B ready to go.
Peter
SO WHY ARE YOU HERE?
#FindYourPurpose #StopProcrastinating #JustDoIt
How do I stop procrastinating?
How do I gain more confidence in myself?
How can I reduce my fears and anxiety?
These are questions Gregg Steinberg gets from people struggling with their careers.
Steinberg, a professor of human performance at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, says there are no easy answers to those questions. The best answer, though, is to fill your life with purpose.
Steinberg discussed his strategy for doing that in a column Aug. 16, 2015, in The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville.
His three-step strategy includes thinking of a time in your life in which you had a meaningful impact upon another person’s life. Then, think of words that represent that situation for you. For example, if you successfully mentored a younger colleague, your words might be, “be the teacher,” Steinberg writes.
When you are feeling de-motivated and burned out, you need to say the words and visualize the situation in which you created success, Steinberg says.
It’s easy to put things off. It’s easy to think that you CAN’T do something. It’s easy to be AFRAID to do something.
Most motivational experts advise people to create urgency in their lives. In other words, do what you need to do TODAY to make your lives better tomorrow. Once you begin the path to success, it will be easier to keep going. Sprinters and other racers have to wait for the gun to go off to start running. Pretend the starting gun has just gone off in your head. That will help you conquer procrastination.
The motivational experts often tell you to “do it afraid.” It’s OK to be afraid to do what you need to do, but do it anyway. Putting it off won’t make the fear go away, so do it now, and do it afraid.
You also can reduce your fears by acknowledging any successes. You complete a project, make a sale etc., so celebrate. Take yourself out to dinner – and take your favorite person(s) with you. Celebrating alone is no fun.
As you feel successes, your fears decline. Once you “did it afraid” a few times, you become less and less fearful or anxious.
Once you discover what you want, and learn what to do to get it, don’t wait. As the Nike slogan says, Just Do It! Chances are, whatever you want to accomplish will be done over time. You don’t necessarily get one shot. Even the sprinter who loses a race gets to race again. So, if you do what you need to do immediately, and not find success, chances are you’ll have other opportunities to find success. You just have to know what you are seeking is good for you, and for others, and stay committed to it. It will become, as Steinberg says, your purpose.
If you have the need to change your life, and have the ambition to do it, but are unsure which path to take, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. That path has proved successful for many who were once in your shoes.
So the best advice is to find your purpose, create some urgency to moving toward it, do what you need to do, even if you are afraid, then celebrate your successes along the way.
To wallow is hollow. To pursue is cool. Pursue your purpose.
Peter
SUCCESS A MATTER OF CHOICE
#Success #ChooseSuccess #SuccessIsStateOfMind
Many of us look at people we deem successful and believe we cannot be like them.
Either we believe our circumstances are holding us down, or we believe we are not as smart as successful people are, or that luck is not on our side.
Rory Vaden, co-founder of Southwest Consulting, spoke to one of the most successful people he knows, Spencer Hays, founder of Tom James fine clothing and executive chairman of The Southwestern Co. Vaden discussed that conversation in a column in the June 28, 2015, edition of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
According to Vaden, Hays believes that success is simply a choice. It’s the choice to do whatever it takes – or not – to be successful.
To most of us, that’s a very simplistic answer. We all would choose success over failure. But it’s not a matter of wanting success in the abstract. It’s a matter of defining success in one’s own mind, and going out and getting it.
In other words, make up your mind to be successful and do what you need to do.
Vaden said the idea of making up one’s mind to be successful was the one thing that Hays said that struck him in his conversation.
It appears to many that making up one’s mind to be successful is very difficult. How many people do you know start something and give up without finishing it, especially when things got tough? These people wanted to be successful at the beginning, but later discovered that what they had to do to get there was not worth the effort or the sacrifice.
An idea has to travel from one’s head, to one’s heart, to one’s gut. When one finds what he wants to do, he does what he needs to do to accomplish it, no matter what happens.
Another scenario: how many people do you know who had a goal, but listened to those who told him he could never accomplish it? The naysayers believe they mean well, and some actually do. But the successful person believes more in what he wants to achieve than he does others’ opinions of him or his goal.
We can certainly find people who might tell the person who lost a job that it was his own fault. Most of us have circumstances we can’t control. Those are not important. What’s important is how we respond when those circumstances hit.
We can complain, and convince ourselves that the world is against us. Or, we can look for something that will give us the motivation we need to conquer our circumstances.
A third scenario: a person has the motivation, work ethic and has made up his mind to be successful. He just needs a vehicle to help him find success. If you are one of those, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. It’s one of many, and one of the best, such vehicles for personal success and for helping others find success.
Choosing success is not like choosing from a restaurant menu. You can’t just say you want something and someone else is going to bring it to you. Choosing success is choosing to do what you need to do, regardless of whom or what surrounds you. It’s about believing in your goal, and pursuing it above all other things – except perhaps faith, family and friends.
It’s having faith in what you know is good, regardless of what others think. If you choose success, you’ve chosen wisely.
Peter
FINANCIERS BEHAVING BADLY, AND OTHER CONCERNS
#MenBehavingBadly #financiers #WallStreet
The book, “Straight to Hell,” by John LeFevre, describes the drunkenness and debauchery of financiers working in Citigroup’s Hong Kong office.
Regardless of what you think about those who work on Wall Street, and whether you believe that personal behavior may not affect professional behavior, this book might give you pause.
It was reviewed by Philip Delves Broughton in the July 21, 2015, edition of The Wall Street Journal.
It describes leud play and solicitation of prostitutes by those to whom we may entrust our wealth. Hopefully, they are not spending the money their clients entrust with them for their fun and games, but they probably make enough to afford such entertainment. It appears, from Delves Broughton’s review, that these guys’ maturity did not correspond with their wealth.
The deeper question Delves Broughton poses about the culture of financiers working away from home is whether deviant personal behavior and professional behavior are connected, and whether men behaving badly matters. Broughton says his hunch is that bankers are not so different from other male business tribes when on maneuvers. “They simply have the cash to do more of the nasty stuff,” writes Delves Broughton, author, most recently, of “The Art of the Sale: Learning From the Masters About the Business of Life.”
Let’s forget, for a moment, the nasty specifics of what these guys were doing. Let’s instead extrapolate the behavior(s) of your employer(s) toward you.
Let’s presume, too, that your employer is not getting too personal with you, i.e. sexual harassment. There are ways to deal with that that may be too complicated to address here.
Let’s take an example of your employer heading home for the evening, leaving you alone with tons of work on your desk, and knowing you won’t be able to go home at a reasonable hour.
Let’s also consider the example of your employer telling you that you cannot have the vacation time you want, or need, because you are too badly needed at that time. Yet, he never loses out on the vacation he wants.
Your employer is enjoying the gobs more money he’s making than you, while you are forced to put your life on hold for him.
Certainly, in this day and age, if you have a job that you need, you are fortunate. But how long can it go on? Will you one day walk in and be told your job is gone, after all the sacrifices you have made?
How would you feel if you worked for one of the men described in LeFevre’s book, and he came to you one day and told you, you were being laid off, despite your good behavior?
If you are feeling as if your current situation is not giving you the life you want, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. There, you may see the pure happiness, joy and prosperity to be found, simply by helping others succeed – a whole different milieu from the one LeFevre’s book describes.
Delves Broughton’s speculation about how businessmen behave when no one, but them and their friends, is looking, perhaps is true. But there are certainly good, kind, ethical and very professional business people out there, who would be a pleasure to work for.
They would never make you stay late when they weren’t, or deprive you of a vacation while they took theirs. But even good situations don’t always last. It might be best to plan now for the day when the goodness, or necessary evil, of a job disappears. You may even get to exit on your own terms.
Peter
BE NICE WHEN YOU TRAVEL
#travel #rudetravelers #customerservice
It’s been said that one catches more flies with honey than vinegar.
Christopher Elliottt, editor at large for National Geographic Traveler, goes a step further. When you travel, customer service people will go out of their way to give you what you want, and more, if you are nice. If you are rude to them, they will actually go out of their way to make sure you are not accommodated.
Elliott discussed this in a Sept. 21, 2015, column in USA Today.
And it’s not only the service providers that could work against the rude person. Fellow travelers will hope rude behavior doesn’t produce the desired results.
Let’s examine this. Certainly, when we travel, we spend a lot of money. We’ve worked hard to get the time off. We pay dearly for transportation, accommodations, food, drink and activities. We have a certain level of expectation for what we pay.
When something doesn’t go right, it’s perfectly normal to be upset. However, when you think of all the steps it may take to put a trip together, sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as you would like.
Most service people want to please you. But you have to want to please yourself, too, and getting angry at the service person, who is doing his or her best to make your trip as enjoyable as possible, ruins your good time. Handle the distress calmly. Your trip will be better for it. As Elliott advises, pack your hammers.
Put yourself in the service professional’s shoes. Don’t you think he or she won’t want to help you if you are rude to them? They may show calmness and restraint with a rude customer, but deep down, they don’t want you to get what you are demanding. On the other hand, if the customer is nice, especially when something goes wrong, they will not only want to rectify the problem quickly, they will want to give you something extra for your patience.
Have you ever eaten at a restaurant at which a diner was making a scene over some part of his meal? Have you ever stood in line behind some unhappy person, and the argument is holding you up?
It’s best to begin the trip thinking that some glitch will occur, and, when and if it does, tell yourself to deal with it with good humor. Elliott says it will pay off for you in terms of service, and you won’t waste all that valuable energy being rude. The service providers and fellow travelers will thank you in many ways.
Another hint: if you are traveling with small children, take them to restaurants that can best accommodate them. If you want a quiet, adult dinner, get a baby sitter. Your fellow diners will thank you.
So travel. Have fun. Make the trip what you set out for it to be: as relaxing as possible.
Don’t have the money to travel much, and want to? Visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll find some people who have made their travel, and other dreams, come true.
Not only should you pack your manners when you travel, you should wear your smile at all times. You’ll have a better time and your servers will give you more.
Peter
THE SINCERE PLEASURE AND AUDACITY OF GETTING OLDER
#gettingolder #gettingold #aging
Young people worry about everything – their looks, their climb up the corporate ladder, how their children will turn out etc.
For Dominque Browning, who recently turned 60, aging has become liberating. All those things she worried about in her youth she now finds almost laughable. Oh, and her excuse? “I’m too old for this,” she says.
Browning tackled the topic of aging in a liberating way in a New York Times article. It was also published in the summer of 2015 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As a young person, you tend to believe that you want to be young forever. You hear older people lament that “youth is wasted on the young.” In other words, you’d love to have had the wisdom and years of knowledge that you have at age 60 when you were, say, 30.
Browning writes that a younger woman advised her that “old” may be the wrong word. Perhaps at 60 she is too wise for this, or too smart for this. “But old is the word I want,” she writes.
“I’ve earned it.”
She writes that women inflict torture on themselves by obsessing about things. “If we don’t whip ourselves into loathing, then mean girls, hidden like trolls under every one of life’s bridges, will do it for us,” Browning writes.
Instead, she writes, one should be happy that the body one has is healthy, presuming it is. She says she’s too old for skintight jeans, 6-inch stilettos, tattoos or green hair.
Let’s look at the wider picture. Let’s say you are 50 years old, and have been told you are no longer needed at your job. You look at other jobs, perhaps ones that may be more physically demanding. Do you tell yourself, “I’m too old for this?”
Or, do you take on one of those jobs to prove that you aren’t too old, presuming the employer hires you – and there’s certainly no guarantee of that.
Employers generally see age as a disadvantage, no matter what the job. They may not be allowed by law to discriminate, but there’s nothing telling them they can’t tell you – the older worker – that they have chosen someone else. If you try to prove age discrimination, good luck. You’ll need all the evidence you can find, and you still may not succeed.
So what to do if that predicament arises at 50? Or even younger? There are many ways out there to earn money, without a traditional job. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. If you like what you see, you might be able to one day gleefully show the employer who dumped you that you didn’t need him after all.
Imagine seeing your children, or younger colleagues, sweating each day as they go to work. They don’t know when they might get shown the door. It might come at a worse time for them than it did for you. But you will have done what you needed to do to put your life in order again, perhaps even making it more prosperous in the process.
How fun would it be if those younger folks presented you with the trials and tribulations of the working world, and you could say to yourself, “I’m too old for this.”
Remember, it’s best not to gloat, and to keep one’s thoughts to oneself in that regard. However, if you are reaching, shall we say, advanced age milestones, don’t fret. Use the wisdom you’ve gathered, and the energy you still have to create a second, and perhaps more prosperous and rewarding, life.
As discussed previously, wishers wish they were young again. Dreamers don’t care how old they are. There is so much to be said for being older, and not having to face the insecurities many young people face today. If you are older, you’ve lived in some good times. Now it’s time to do what you must to make your future even better.
Peter
DON’T PANIC: INVESTORS ARE CHANGING THE WORLD FOR THE GOOD
#investors #stockmarket #socialproblems #purposeoriented
It’s tough to love the stock market with the volatility we’ve seen in recent weeks.
Certainly, both the market and the government have tarnished reputations, as New York Times columnist David Brooks recently pointed out.
But there are a few big-money types who have tried to use the market to solve social problems. Brooks writes that these investors have opposable minds. They are part profit-oriented – nothing is done in the markets without someone making money – and part purpose-oriented.
These investors have created organizations that look a little like businesses, a little like a social-service providers and a little like charities – or some mixture of the three, Brooks writes. His column was published in July 2015 in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream led the first wave in this sector, Brooks says, but now you’ve got a burgeoning array of social-capitalist tools to address problems. They range from B Corporations like Warby Parker, which gives free glasses to the poor, to social impact bonds, Brooks writes.
Brooks cites a phenomenon is called impact investing, which seeks out companies that are intentionally designed to both make a profit and provide a measurable and accountable social good.
We all would like to put our hard-earned savings into companies that do good. But as a small saver, or one who is diligently saving a small portion of what he or she earns toward retirement, one has to focus on getting the most growth and income from his contributions.
For these folks, gyrations in the market, like the ones we’ve seen recently, cause great consternation. But most experts in the field would advise them not to panic. Usually, what goes down goes back up, as we have seen. You see, those with some cushion in their accounts, and with good advisers, will have raised cash by selling some of the underperforming investments, so they can use that cash to buy some great stocks cheaply when the overall market tumbles.
Remember that when the market reacts this way, an individual stock is just following the market. It does not mean the companies, or their products, are no good. Those good companies will come back because investors see discount shopping opportunities in tumbling markets.
So, if you are small, careful investor, who has put his or her money into good companies or good funds, relax. When the market drops, it’s usually a temporary glitch. Stick to your original plan, and follow the advice of the person you trust. If it helps, don’t watch the news – at least the parts about how the market is doing. If you know that your savings and investment plans are well-thought-out, cringe if you must at what’s going on, but breathe easily.
Someday, you may have enough money to make a real impact on a global problem. For now, though, secure your own nest egg little by little, and don’t let the market gyrations get you down.
Of course, there are many other worthwhile things you can do to enhance your wealth. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. If you are thinking of getting a second, part-time job to throw a little bit more toward your retirement, think a little outside the box. You just might find a way to better utilize any free time you would devote to a second job, and have a lot more fun than a second job would be.
It’s a marvelous thing that some smart, rich folks are looking for ways to solve the globe’s problems with their own money. We all may wish to be in that situation, but, for those who are not rich, it’s best to work on enhancing your own wealth FIRST, and help others do the same.
When, and only when, you’ve done that, by all means feel free to make an impact on the world. Work hard, play hard, save and invest hard. Help others, and you will be enriched. Once enriched, keep helping others. It will bring you great joy.
Peter