Investing (lifestyle edition)

Welcome to Travel Onist featuring lifestyle design inspiration, personal growth reflections, and content recommendations.

Let’s get to it 👇

Lifestyle Design

Young people are often told to “invest while you’re young.”

It’s great advice, but typically, these discussions focus on finances, nothing more.

So much gets left out when we focus on financial investing.

Plus, leaving those other things out of the conversation perpetuates the idea that money is the most important thing in life.

I want to approach investing more holistically. Here are the 5 buckets I’m investing in:

Life experiences

This bucket is what I think people mean when they refer to the “spice of life.” Life experiences are one of the largest fulfillment drivers on this list. Sticking with the investing theme, life experiences provide memory dividends (credit to Bill Perkins), which, like investment dividends, increase in value over time.

Personal health and wellness

My physical and mental health and wellness enable me to enjoy life on this planet. A lack of investment here erodes the quality of my life.

Community

Community is something I’m focusing on more and more these days. It’s easy to get caught up in my own life, but the sense of purpose and connection that comes from investing in others provides invaluable enrichment.

Education and personal growth

I never really enjoyed school, but continuous learning and personal growth are core values of mine. Investing in my education and development allows me to show up better for myself and others as time goes on.

Financial stability

Ultimately, money pays the bills. It may not be the end all be all, but it's hard to argue its importance. It's always better to be ahead than playing catch-up. Plus, financial stability unlocks optionality in all other buckets, allowing me to invest in them more freely.

Investing in these five buckets — life experiences, personal health and wellness, community, education and personal growth, and financial stability — allows me to approach life with a balanced perspective. That is what lifestyle design is all about in my eyes.

What are your buckets?

Weekly Write-up

On Wednesday morning, I woke up, made breakfast, got ready for work, and drove an hour to my company office in New Jersey.

As I sat in traffic, I was reminded that I was not where I wanted to be, both physically and regarding my goals.

It’s a familiar feeling. Sometimes it kicks off more powerful feelings of frustration with my lack of progress and a desire for immediate change.

These feelings eventually subside and I return to my baseline understanding that I’m on the right path. If I stay on course, I will accomplish my goals.

These waves of feelings have come and gone for the last two years.

I shared this with my life coach, explaining that my 9-to-5 often derails my personal work. The reason for this, I said, is “my 9-5 is the priority.”

My coach then offered a different perspective. He said, “You can have more than one priority. Your job, relationships, health, and personal work can all be priorities.”

This simple statement challenged my long-held belief that my personal work comes second to my job.

I had no problem viewing my health and relationships as MORE of a priority than my job, but I had never thought about my personal work this way.

Deprioritizing personal work for the sake of my job allows my job to dictate how much personal work I accomplish. This leads to more resentment.

This conversation helped me realize three things:

1. Where I spend my time is my choice.

2. As long as my job gets done on time, I shouldn't feel guilty about prioritizing personal work.

3. I can't control all job commitments, but I can control my priorities.

To shift my perspective, I'm creating a set of personal agreements. These will enable me to be grateful for what my job provides while elevating the priority of my personal work.

Content Recommendation

The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson

The Long Ships is my latest read and one of my absolute favorites. A historical fiction account of Viking life, this book gives off a similar energy as Game of Thrones. As a travel lover, I also enjoyed that the story takes place all over Europe — imagining those cities long ago is fascinating. However, what struck me the most about the story is although life is very different today, core themes remain the same such as the older generation’s belief that younger generations are softening. I HIGHLY recommend this book!

Cheers ‘til next week,

T.O.