My husband JP and I are pretty busy during the week, and while we always make time every night in bed to share what we're grateful for about each other and the highlight of our day, that might only take a few minutes.
So on Sunday mornings we put aside a couple of hours to do something I always find exciting. Something I can recommend to everyone.
We have a finance meeting.
We have a big breakfast. There's a beautiful view. And with all that as the backdrop, we spend an hour or two discussing our wealth strategies, where we're heading, how have we done in the last seven days.
It accelerates our results, the results that give us meaning and purpose. It may not be thrilling to everyone but I just love it. I feel empowered by it, and by still following and trusting the path I took to get to financial independence.
I'm many times a multi-millionaire and how I did that from a family base where there was a lot of chaos around money is a story for another day—I'll share my wealth creation secrets here soon—but what I want you to take away today is the knowledge that setting in place rituals around money and self care are important.
Actually, what I will say now to you about money is that if you have challenges around it look at where you cut extras.
If you're a drinker, quit drinking and quit whingeing. If you're a smoker, quit smoking and quit whingeing. Dump takeouts. Jettison the junk. Boo hoo if it's sacrifice.
Okay, back onto things to do regularly that will help create an abundant life. Another must-have for me is making sure that every day—without fail, there's no grey areas here—I have my ideal average day.
I spent 12 years building up to being able to say that, and now I have my ideal average day every day.
It's simple. I do whatever gives me meaning and purpose.
Literally just those things.
If I do that, spend my day immersed in whatever gives me meaning and purpose, none of it is work. Right now, writing this and talking to you, it's not work. Preparing a new class, it's not work. Doing a podcast, not work.
I'm not working and I am getting paid.
Of course you get it, but even though other people might see it as 'work', it gives me meaning and lights me up and if fulfilling part of my ten-year wealth plan. It gives me huge joy and I get energised.
I'm reluctant for it to end and I invest in it, put everything into it. I can sit down to write an essay for uni, and 12 hours later I'm still caught up in it, still at my desk while it's dark outside and I've been lost in a fabulous world of learning and have forgotten about dinner.
One thing I carry with me is a list, a page written with random words of everything that gives me meaning and purpose. Hiking. Art. Drawing. Journalling. Reading. Creating. Studying. Doing classes. Exercising.
Most days, I look at it and check in with how I'm doing. That's me being healthy.
I'm not going to be my parents when I'm their age; they did not provide for their retirement and I am not going to be in that position. When JP and I get to the next stage, we'll still create days filled with meaning and purpose because we'll have the financial freedom.
I build a world filled with things that take me somewhere and that I love, and I just keep building these world. Where choices are involved, I think, 'Will this fill me with meaning and purpose?' then wherever I am in the world, whatever I'm doing, I have the constant rhythm of doing what I know will enrich me, now or later.
That's core criteria for me. Remember, life is happening on the outside and the inside. The two are not linear. We're here to live life in a very full capacity.
I trust you are.