As a financial advisor, I work with individuals to help them live a full, rich, rewarding, fulfilled life. This, to me, is a true RichLife. However, every day I meet scores of people who are short-circuiting their RichLife. They do this in many and varied ways, but in this article I want to point out three main ones.

Failure to Discover and Live Out Your Purpose

Your life purpose is rooted in the gifting and talents that have been endowed to you. One way to learn your life’s purpose is to ask the question,

“If you could spend your days doing what you love whether or not you received monetary compensation, what would you do?”

The answer to that would most likely reveal valid clues toward what you were put on this earth to do – your life purpose.

The RichLife principle is built upon the concept that we are responsible to invest in and live out our life purpose in the best way possible. Living your purpose is the greatest gift you can give to yourself, to those you love, and to the world at large. This is what God created you to be (and do).

Living a Life Void of Unique Experiences

I enjoy spending time with retirees. I love to hear them tell their stories. I love to see the special looks and the laughter exchanged between a couple as they recall special times from the past. I have come to refer to these special times as unique experiences. I have discovered that as those retirees look back on their lives, they place more store by these unique experiences than they do their bank account.

Unique experiences are important in anyone’s life, but they don’t happen by accident. It takes planning to create special times together. I find that those persons whose lives are on fast forward miss the richness of unique experiences and in the end they are the loser.

Buying In To the Accumulation Theory

We now have an entire generation that has bought into the accumulation theory, when in fact the accumulation theory that is presented in most retirement plans seldom works in reality. The entire premise of accumulation is based on hoarding; hoarding is based on fear. The fear of never having enough. I call it a scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset shuts down creativity, robs people of their hope, and quenches their dreams.

I see this every day – those who are terrified of living longer than their money will hold out – will never create value in the world. That individual is unproductive, and so is their money. (Unproductive for that person at least – but certainly not for the financial institution holding their funds.)

If the accumulation of money is the sole life focus, many other things will fall by the wayside and suffer from neglect. And, as is often the case, this distortion will cause the money to decrease rather increase.

Summary
These then are three ways in which I have observed that people short-circuit their RichLife:

• Failure to Discover and Live Out Your Purpose
• Living a Life Void of Unique Experiences
• Buying In To the Accumulation Theory

All three are simple to remedy. You can begin those remedies today.