Life Coaching and Career Coaching

Why is a life cycle approach a powerful tool for evaluating and planning your life experience?

A recent news story ,  “Recession might make young investors gun-shy”, reports on studies that show people who start their investing or continue to invest in their retirement plans today in the depressed stock market stand to gain in the long term while those who invested at the height of the markets stand to loss if they withdraw today.

I can relate to this. Years ago I had the opportunity to be employed in an organization that offered a retirement program. I contributed to it regularly and stayed there long enough to become vested in the program. The small personal investment I made through my contributions were doubled when I became vested.

Over the next 30 years this initial investment grew. And while I have not contributed to the plan since leaving the organization — today that plan has accumulated enough value to provide me with a cushion in my retirement.  Had I started investing 5 years ago, or even 10 years ago, I would not have weathered the recent economic meltdown.

Just as investing at the right time can make a big difference in later retirement or family plans, any decision we make will have a differential playoff depending when we start or stop some action or activity.

Taking up golf when you are in high school or college will open opportunities that starting at 50 will be closed to you. Waiting to have children until your late 30’s or early 40’s will produce a different experience and challenge than having your children at 15, 25, or 30.

The choices you make, and when you make them, strongly impact your life course and your chances for success and failure.

Sometimes it seems like we are in control.  Other times, it seems like fate is in control. We exploit our opportunities. We withdraw or defend ourselves against threats. Our hopes and  fears are made real by what, when and where we exercise our choices.

We are always making choices in our daily lives. More often than not, these are made in the spur of the moment and with not much thought about the longer term consequences. This is our habituated behavior. This is not only natural, but it has had survival value for our Homo sapiens ancestors as well as the modern shopper.

But not today, not in the emerging global economy and cybernetically networked virtual world of  human/machine interface.

An event that once traveled slowly over relatively short distances, now travels instantaneously globally. Choices made in a moment of passion or despair and soon forgotten, now become sealed in the global memory forever, or at least until someone pulls the plug.

The life you want to lead and the life you live are determined by how you use your time and when you use it.

I speak from personal experience. If we are not aware of the natural cycle our life is following — we risk losing out on many of the joys and challenges that life offers.

When we say that YOUR LIFE IS YOUR BUSINESS, this what we mean. Your life up until this moment is a record of what you have done — it is your balance sheet in the game of life.  Do you know your score?

Have you taken the time to check your balance sheet?

Janus says

Maybe it is TIME that you did.