Tony's Rewrite of the Machine's Blog post
REFINE don't retire! Tony's re-draft
tunnel that signals a life of leisure and relaxation. But is that really still the case in
the modern world?
More and more people have started to rethink the idea of retirement, realizing that it may not be the best idea to put off the good things in life until maybe it’s too late to enjoy them.
Christine and I are noticing that this shift in mindset is especially true of younger people today, like our four lovely daughters, for example. They have instead chosen to REFINE their lives in ways that that provide them and their families with a good, wholesome lifestyle.
When Christine and I were young, it was all about work, work, work. The concept of work life balance was never talked about in those days. I pretty much missed my children growing up, other than on those special occasions when I was able to spend some quality time with them, such as on our precious family holidays. My primary focus in those years had to be, I believed, on earning money to pay the bills, and trying to achieve a measure of financial stability.
There’s been a big change in this outlook. Younger people are now choosing to pursue work life balance as their priority, ahead of trying to earn big money. They want to spend time with their children and partners, and they want to pursue their passions, their happiness.
Christine and I also had this same shift in mindset, but we did so later in life. When it dawned on us that our lives were speeding by, while we concentrated largely on our business, we decided belatedly to start REFINING our lives so that we could truly enjoy the fruits of our labours.
And boy, was it a good decision to start that process when we did. Indeed, we wished we’d started it earlier. To our minds, the earlier you can start that REFINEMENT process, the better.
What does that involve? Well for us it involved taking a step back and re-evaluating our priorities and goals, and then making life changes that allowed us to achieve those goals, like pursuing hobbies, travel plans, and especially spending more precious time with our loved ones.
It didn’t mean giving up work altogether. Few people have the option to do that. But it did mean working less, and working in different ways. We tweaked our pattern of working to best suit the lifestyle we’d chosen.
When I think about this idea the old adage that comes to my mind is that we should work to LIVE, instead of LIVING to work. Christine and I came to this conclusion around the time of the 9/11 attacks on New York.
It was a time when we were working too hard on our business, doing a lot of international travel to drum-up work. Most of our corporate clients were in North America, so we spent a lot of time in the United States and Canada. We enjoyed being in that part of the world very much, so in a sense we were already beginning to tread the right track.
The horror of the 9/11 attacks brought into sharp focus the preciousness of our short time on this planet. Then in our mid-forties, we wanted to spend less time flying back and forth, and more time doing the things we LOVED to do.
We LOVED America and we LOVED sunshine, so we decided to buy a second home in SouthWest Florida. We also LOVED living in a beautiful part of central London (South Kensington) where we had our office as well as our home, but we didn’t so much love the winter weather in England.
Getting that second home in The Sunshine State was one of the biggest and best LIFE REFINEMENTS we ever made. For 12 years we spent the summers in London and our “winters” in SW Florida.
Christine and I have since then made many other refinements which you can hear all about in our podcast. Based on our experience, we strongly feel that the younger you can start making refinements to your life, the better. We have so little QUALITY TIME on this earth.
When you're young, it’s easy to think that you have unlimited time to get to the point where you can maximize your enjoyment of the things you love to do most. But that point may never arrive!
We are strong advocates for making life refinements early, instead of focusing on the day when you HOPE to retire, a day which may never reach. Think ABR- Always Be Refining!
Deciding what refinements to make and how to make them can be challenging, but the process of doing so can be fulfilling, exciting and a lot of fun.
Refining your life as you're living it can provide heaps of benefits, from continued fulfillment and purpose to even improving your financial position, which certainly was the case for us.
So, instead of thinking about retirement as the end goal, consider quitting/reducing/changing your work when and wherever you can. Take every opportunity to REFINE your life.
Learn more of our thoughts on this subject on our podcast
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