The importance of knowing your life purposes
Are you going through the motions right now? Sometimes, we need to know our life purposes. After all, we only live once. Recently one of my colleagues attended a personal finance workshop arranged by my company. I was very interested to attend because the topics seemed very relevant to me but eventually I was unable to make it due to work commitments.
Over lunch, my colleagues updated me that the workshop indeed was very useful as it touched on various money issues in the local context, like CPF, hospitalization shields, life insurance and retirement plans. The instructor also gave tips on investments and the key concept of managing personal finances (budgeting, knowing the difference between “needs” and wants”).
OK, I thought to myself. These information and tips seemed rather useful but are actually quite fundamental stuff to me. Probably it could help a person become more financially astute but probably won’t enable him to become a rich person one day. But what set me thinking was a statement that my friend told me the coach wanted the participants to remember for life and that is: Always question yourself and know what are your purposes in life.
Knowing our life purposes is important. We must have goals in our lives, something that we hope to achieve one day. Money itself is only a means that can probably help us attain our goals faster. But even if we became rich overnight and yet do not have any meaningful goals in life, we will only be lost and empty in our hearts.
In fact, I have read numerous articles on punters winning multi-millions lotteries only to end up spending every single cent away after a few years. Ironically, most of these “lucky” souls ended up poorer than before they won the prizes. Therefore, it is important that we identify our purposes in life. Only when we know our life purposes, then can we set our life targets and determine what are the essential life skills and competencies to obtain.
In a competitive society like Singapore where virtually everybody clocks in long hours at work, we have to know ultimately what we want to achieve in life. We need to have crystallized picture of what we hope to become one day. Otherwise we would be just drifting along without aims. Don’t procrastinate until its too late as life is very short. The worst thing in life is to have regrets.
For the past two weeks, I have been thinking about my life purposes and what I hope to achieve at the end of my time. Hopefully I will be able to share with my readers my thoughts and plans real soon.
Magically yours,
SG Wealth Builder
