Life is funny sometimes. Days seem to crawl, yet years fly by. What once was yesterday is now 5 or 10 years ago, and there is no slowing it down.
Looking backward, it can be easy to focus on the big life events that seem to shape and control our lives. And we often forget about the everyday decisions that truly form who we are. But Wayne Dyer said it well with his quote, “Our lives are the sum total of the choices we have made.”
Now I don’t think any can say that “big” decisions don’t matter, because they do. But I wonder how many “big” decisions we actually make over our lifetime. For example, most people see getting married to be a very big decision. In my opinion however, getting married is not one big decision but thousands of small decisions that compound over time. We make decisions everyday of who we spend our time with. Out of that group of people, we then choose who to date or form a romantic relationship with. Then out of that much smaller group of people, we decide who we want to commit the rest of our lives to.
And yes, the one decision of committing to marriage can completely change the course of your life, but only because you already made thousands of “small” choices to get you to that point. What I am trying to say is that “big” decisions probably aren’t as big as we think, and “small” decisions probably aren’t as insignificant as we think. Because where we are in our lives at this moment is the sum of all the little choices we have made up to this point, whether good or bad.
Now I am sure many of you are wondering what any of this has to do with money. This is a finance column after all. But if we really think about it, this has everything to do with money. Our lives are not nearly as segmented as we’d like to believe sometimes. Every aspect of life affects all the other aspects of life. We cannot disconnect our finances from our health, family life, or spirituality. Because after all, the goal for many of us is not to have one area of our life thrive with all the others falling by the wayside.
As a finance guy, I know the importance of investing but not just in retirement accounts. Investing our time and energy into every area of our lives is so important to get where we want to go. Afterall, the choices that we made in the past define what choices we are able to make today. And if you want your future to include different choices than what you have had so far, it is up to you to improve all the little choices you make today.