Mindset Over Money

A Quick Story About Values

Today’s mindset over money blog post is going to be a bit different, in fact it’s not even the post that I had planned.  You see as I was writing yesterday’s post about values I had something occur where I needed to assess my own value system.

I don’t know whether I have told you yet but I am married to the most wonderful lady, her name is Stephanie.  In fact she is the major reason that I educate people and share my thoughts like this, that’s a story for another time.  Yesterday Stephanie received a call to tell her that a member of her family was in hospital and not expected to live through the night.  Now this was not unexpected as they had been slowly deteriating, but it was still a shock.

We were at least an 8 hour drive away from being able to visit Steph’s family member and Steph and I looked at each other.  Without a moments hesitation we started packing the car, we dropped all of our plans for the day and just packed up and left.  Now when something like this happens some people will way up the pros and cons, some people will go after just doing the bare minimum needed, but for us we dropped everything instantly and jumped in the car.

So it became amazingly obvious to me yesterday that Steph and I have the same value highest in our value system, family.

This story does not have a happy ending as despite our efforts to drop everything and take action straight away we were 20 minutes too late to be with Steph’s family member.  Today I want you to take 2 things away from this post:

1. Values – When writing down and assessing your values ensure you are being true to yourself.  Only once you are true to yourself and your values will you be able to find your internal motivation.
2. Life – Life is not like a movie, there is not always the fantasy ending, but no matter how something ends there is always good to be seen.  The true challenge of life is to see the good despite being surrounded by the bad.