Health. Wealth. Love. Your three everyday happiness investments.
Health. Wealth. Love.
It’s good to have clear goals or principles for happiness. For me, I’ve found that happiness is a three-legged stool. The three legs: Health. Wealth. Love.
The daily and consistent contribution to these three areas of my life supports my personal happiness.
Health, wealth, and love. You need all three legs to stand up.
Why?
Because pursuing a goal in just one or two areas of health, wealth or love can make for a lopsided or imbalanced life. In fact, the element(s) you skip will adversely affect the ones you do choose to pursue.
For instance, look at people who spend their life earning lots of wealth on the way to reaching retirement – all while not taking care of their health.
When retirement or old age finally does arrive, many find they’ve lost their body and vibrant health that might allow them to take advantage of accumulated wealth. Instead that gained wealth gets an outsized focus on being spent on managing the damaging effects of declining health.
In my life, I have friends under age 50 who are physically already unable to do more and more things and now talk about their surgeries on Facebook more than post about their recent vacations or kids.
Another example. You might have found the love of your life and ready to invest in love. However, without attention to wealth, you find yourself missing out on opportunities with the one you love or you have more fights due to worrying about paying bills. Financial stress and issues with money are the number one killers of love and marriages.
Health. Wealth. Love. It’s about balance.
That need for balance is why, everyday, I try to do one thing that invests in the following three buckets.
Health
Invest in something each day that improves or maintains your health. For me, that is working out at least 4 days a week and or eating healthy daily.
Wealth
Invest in something that improves your wealth. When I say “wealth” I don’t mean rich or lots of money. True mastery of money is understanding that it’s about freedom more than having things and virtual signaling. That means investing in building wealth is about giving you the freedom to focus on the things that truly matter to you (like health and love).
Wealth also means saving and investing in a way that earns income from either multiple work or income streams. That process takes time. As I’ve gotten older, my shift is pivoting from active revenue to passive revenue. That, in turn allows, me even more freedom to build value in the other two buckets.
Love
Invest in ideas, things (including yourself) and time that improves your ability to have great relationships.
That means when I’m in a relationship, I’m investing (making an emotional deposit in it everyday). Checking in. Saying something to get that smile moment out of my partner. I try to make time to talk together or play together. Even if it is for a moment in my busy day. Those add up over time. And definitely better than pissing each other off everyday.
Past experience has taught me that static relationships die like rotting food so I also make myself a continual student about relationships. Like Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists copy but great artist steal.” I look at other couples and relationship experts like Esther Perel to help me figure out how to contribute more value that pleases me and my partner.
Invest in health, wealth, and love everyday.
All three have to be watered with your personal investment of effort. That’s because they are interlaced. You need all three tools to maximize happiness. They also accentuate each other.
Some examples:
Wealth gives you the resources to help you take care of health.
Love is good for your health (People who give love to dogs, have friends or in a marriage live longer). And for intimacy health is good for love. People who are happy and married live longer.
Love can help you take care of wealth.
The right relationship like marriage or partners can help you focus at work.
Health is good for wealth.
Most of us need a healthy body to work and a healthy body is also good for some aspects of love.
Invest a little in each every day. Over time, you’ll create a rich balance that will enhance so many areas of your life.