My Journey From the Good Life to the Rich Life

Most of us see ‘the good life’ as abundance… big houses with lots of stuff, fancy cars and all the food we can eat from around the world and around the clock. The paradox though is that ‘the good life’ has created an abundance of lives filled with stress, obesity, and debt. What ‘the good life’, may not be abundant in is family time, strong community ties and affordable healthy lifestyles. I think ‘the good life’ should be redefined and called ‘the rich life’.  The rich life is: rich in time, rich in community, rich in health, rich in contentment. Additionally, when we focus on the things that bring us a truly happy and healthy lifestyle, we need less money, spend less money and save more money for a richer bank account.

Many of us living the ‘the good life’ are living to work instead of working to live. The hours spent working easily go into overtime with the additional time spent getting ready for work, commuting to work and any extra work duties that arise, whether in the office or via electronic connection at home.  

This leaves us with very little time to shop for fresh food and prepare meals from scratch, so we end up eating out or buying prepared or packaged food, with high sodium content and questionable chemical additives. We don’t have the time or energy to commute with our own two feet, so we end up with much less exercise. Some people will even drive a mile to go to the gym for cardio! This is an incredibly inefficient way to offset rising gas prices.

We also are creating an unintended ‘busyness’ to our lives that isn’t really necessary. We have ourselves on tight schedules and we have our kids on even tighter schedules. What happened to unstructured play time for the kids? And I’m not talking about the time spent in front of a computer or TV screen. For that matter, what happened to unstructured time for adults? When we are not at work, we are counting calories, counting reps or running ‘errands’.  We leave ourselves very little time for contemplation, reflection and spontaneous creative pursuits.  

We need to lighten our loads - in our closets, in our garages, at work and with family - for a less burdensome life.   In future posts, I will go into more detail about simple strategies that I used to improve my health, wealth and happiness for a truly richer life.    

A good website I would recommend is www.theminimalists.com.