Where do you see yourself in ten years from now?
Five years?
One year?
Do you look into the future at all?
I was talking with a colleague about this today, as they asked me about my ten year plan and all I could really say looking out that far, was quite vague. Five years is easier and one year quite clear, but it did make me think as to whether "where I see" is the same as where my actions are headed.
When we imagine the future, we are predicting what we think might happen, but we rarely seem to attach that imagine to where we are now. It is more hopes and dreams. However, if we look at it from an investment return perspective, we would have to think about what capital resources we are putting in, what we are putting them into, and what we are expecting the return to be.
Are your fundamentals sound?
The fundamentals of a business are one thing, but what about our own indicators to predict future success? If we were to take a step back from ourselves and look objectively at where we are now and our current behaviors, are they indicative of reaching our one, five or ten year goals?
Over the years on Hive a few select people have often said how living in the moment is better than planning for the future. It is said in a way that assumes that whenever a person is talking about planning for the future, they aren't actually living the moment, but this is not actually true.
We can only ever live the moment.
However, not only can we only ever be exactly where we are now, when it comes to living the moment, having a plan in place that we are working toward gives that moment purpose. And, purpose is a massive indicator of whether someone feels content in their life. When we are acting without purpose, we tend not to feel that great about what we are doing in the present moment, as it makes whatever it is, pointless.
When our present moment actions are directed to something that we find meaningful however, the quality of those moments are far more rewarding, no matter what we are actually doing. Often, the people that have commonly said to "live the moment" tend not to have very good moments themselves, spending a lot of their time wishing that they had higher quality moments, than the ones they are living.
For instance, if we go back five years on Hive and found some of these people and their words, the ones who still happen to be around, tend not to have moved very far at all. Yet, at that time, they were looking for change. Looking for change and changing are two different things. And like it or not, we as humans are built with mechanisms that want to see (or at least feel) progression in our lives. No matter how happy or sad we might be at any given point of time, our humanness will want to experience something different in short order. And as change is inevitable anyway, we are destined not to be wherever we are in the next moment, regardless of whether we want to move. And again, through our humanity, if we feel that we don't have agency over our direction in life, we tend not to feel that great about our experience.
As an example, the pursuit of financial reward or security isn't about just collecting something, it is about having options to change. It is about having power, but not necessarily over others, but over our own direction in life, our own ability to affect our outcomes. In order to build that wealth takes either luck, or the right actions to be consistently performed in a way that leads us down that path. Actions can only ever be performed in the moment, right?
So, even if they are future-based in terms of looking for an outcome, the act of them is performed and experienced right now. And as said, when those actions are something we believe will lead us to somewhere we want to be, we feel okay performing them, even the less than fun ones. Changing a baby's nappy isn't enjoyable, but that act is part of the experience of raising a child and adds to a future wellbeing of that child. If we live the moment in the way that many people seem to position this in their minds, we wouldn't change the nappy and ultimately, that child would be harmed.
Does everything we do have a purpose?
Yes.
But, life itself is rather meaningless in the grand scale of things, so we have to make the purpose of our lives ourselves. We could choose to be hedonistic for instance, where every moment is made to be as enjoyable as it can be, but what we would likely find at that extreme is that the quality of the moments will degrade over time, making it increasingly difficult to actually enjoy the moment. It isn't impossible, but at the extreme, extremely unlikely, as things would get so hard in our lives that we would be in constant pain, essentially having to become increasingly masochistic in order to enjoy the moment.
Not many follow that path.
But, the path that many do tend to follow is one that looks to not take responsibility for outcomes, which means that they can live the moment "freely" as if they aren't going to pay the consequences of their behavior. These people eventually tend to spend much of their present moment complaining that others aren't doing the right thing by them, that things aren't fair, even though they haven't helped any one at all along the way.
Self-entitlement.
It is self-serving, because living in the moment doesn't consider the impact that their actions have on others, because impacts happen after the fact, they are a reaction to what has happened. And, because these people don't spend time thinking about how they affect others, because they have no plan for the future, their fundamentals indicate that they are a bad investment.
When we consider an investment vehicle for our financial resources, we are looking down the track to see if we think there is a higher future value than what we are putting in. We do the same thing when we are evaluating how much time and effort we put into those around us, because like it or not, we want a return on our activity, which is what gives our action purpose.
As I was saying to my colleague today, no one I have ever met likes learning. What they like is the feeling of progression that comes through learning and the outcomes of learning, the return on the investment. The process of learning itself however, is not actually the valued experience. If what we are learning has no purpose, are we learning anything at all? If it doesn't help us get to where we want to be in our experience, there is no value in it.
It is busy work.
People who want to live in the moment think that whenever someone is working toward something, they are wasting their life, as they are doing things that are unpleasant in the moment in hope it will lead to some kind of better and uncertain future. However, the more I live, the more I believe that living in the moment without purpose is likely the worst experience on earth, where we are acutely aware of being utterly useless. It is a type of constant death while living.
If we were looking to invest and found a company that made nothing, had no market demand, no prospects for growth in the future and had no plan to do anything at all - would we invest into it?
Probably not.
When someone has no plan for where they want to be, are not doing anything to be anywhere, and are only interested in maximizing their enjoyment in the moment, even if it costs others around them, do we spend our time and resources to support them?
Probably not.
Where do you see yourself ten, five, one year in the future?
Are your fundamentals in order and would you invest into yourself?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]