Thoughts

Long and Short of Your Long Run

perfect sun set in thailands koh tao

Greetings lovely ladies and gregarious gentleman,

I’m about to share something with you, something I’m assuming 99.98% of you have never thought about but should be totally COGNIZANT of. I’m talking about the long run of your life and how to manage it like an overpaid money manager catering their hunger with caviar and tantalizing their taste buds with a thirst for tequila.

The main money making and “making moves” portion of your life is from 20 years of age to the ripe old age of 60. That’s exactly 40 years of potential exaggerated earnings. If you take 40 years and break it down into 20% quadrants it means every 8 years is 20% of your prime earning years.

When a businesses passes a quarter, they do a quarterly review and assess their weak points, strong points, h3ll they probably even do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis if they are prudent and worth their egregious salary.

As a result, from 20-28 is your first 5th, 28-36 the second, 36-44 the third, 44-52 the fourth and of course, 52-60 being the final installment.

The beauty of acknowledging your role in the short term is to better define your long term. To curtail your habits to success and steer clear of disaster. When is the last time you took an objective look at your life and decided to cull all the negative influences and habits while engaging and accelerating your strengths?

When I hit 28 years old not too long ago, I sat back with a smoke in my mouth realizing that I had done a “good job” but still pathetic compared to my potential. There are many facets of my life, like everyone’s that are producing positive results, while their are other darker sides which are delivering nothing but dread and depression, especially when seen in the long run.

The beauty of growing older is that if you’re cognizant of all this, you start to see that this “long run” comes a h3ll of a lot faster than we all thought and the positive decisions you made yesterday, a month ago and a years ago are seriously paying positive dividends.

I urge you to take a moment and stop what you’re doing in the near future and pull out a pen and paper or if you’re like me, open notepad on your computer. Write down what you’re doing well, what you’re doing poorly, what you must start doing and most likely, an even longer list of what you must STOP doing.

I thought of this today as I woke up from an 8 hour sleep and lit a smoke after selling ridiculous quantities of stocks and began shaking my head when one of my once biggest positions skyrocketed for the moon in the final hours of trading.

I digress.

Point being, we all have good and bad parts to our life and if you’re in your late 20’s, early 30’s you’ve already entered the long run and the clock seems to be spinning at an ever increasing rate like a chaotic carousel at some carnival controlled by a crazy carny.

I also started thinking, how many of you along with me waste ridiculous amounts of money and time on literally nothing, you may even waste that money on stuff that is actually killing you and making the rest of your life less enjoyable. (Raises hand)

Long story short, we’re already in the long run and we live the short term every moment of our lives. Stop being a tool who is throwing away money, health and other things that in the long run are the keys to happiness and being able to define one’s life as a “success” regardless of what route was taken.

beautiful turquoise water at shark bay koh tao thailand beach

It’s a crazy notion but once you see the big picture, doing what’s best for you and those around you becomes clearer than the turquoise water surrounding many Thai islands.

beautiful turquoise water at koh phi phi thailand beach

I’m off to meet some people I met in Kuala Lumpur for a laugh and lunch at the Raffles City Mall, then I will go to Raffles Place and take some inspiring photos of what’s happening in Singapore’s business district and share them with you.

Long story short, we all have many areas of our lives that can be fixed quickly and if they are not will be catastrophic in the long run. Similar to getting an easy 20 minute oil change on a car or leaving it and having your engine cease a month later. Sure it sucks at the time and you’d rather not, but what’s the alternative?

Think about it, or don’t, I don’t really care, it’s your life, not mine.

Tips hat,

P.S If your current long run outlook looks grim at say 28, think about what it will be like at the next junction of 36. We have lots of time but no time.

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