Most Important and mostly neglected

A few years back, I seriously started thinking of retirement. I started to find out about the things that I needed to focus on. I wanted to come up with an actionable plan for me to start working on. As I started to research and identify those items – I realized that the list missed one of the most important things.  I saw Savings, investment, social security, tax planning medical, etc on the list. However, there was no discussion about our internal assets – our true wealth.

Journey

Over the years, I realized that most of my activities my aspirations were shaped by what message I got from society.  I invested almost all our working hours in pursuing these external goals and daily trivialities. Things started changing slowly as I started looking inside.  I felt that it is the core from which my external life originates. My life is an expression of what is inside me.

Insight into our true assets

As I continued my inward journey, I could see that I was operating on autopilot. I could see that I had followed the script of society.  As I continued my journey, I could see that retirement is hyped up. I could see that it is merely a construct. Creating an artificial line called retirement, takes our eyes off the big picture and changes the focus. I think we want to live a meaningful life where our physical material and spiritual needs are all balanced. This is the continuous journey of life. The key thing is to constantly adapt to our physical mental and environmental change. We talk about money. We forget that it which is a construct and a tool. We need to dismantle this and focus on what we are trying to achieve – fulfilling our needs and our higher purpose.

This brings me to the point of internal assets

I felt that for me to be on this path and live this way – I will need to understand some of the fundamentals of life and develop some qualities. I felt it is important as I needed the strength to live the life, I believe to be true.

Knowledge

I felt I need to understand myself better. I need to know my inner tendencies, my biases, and my limitations. I felt knowing myself is not enough – I need to understand the nature of life, the nature of our mind. Knowing how our mind works is probably the most important thing I needed to know. Once I started understanding myself, I started understanding others.

Character

The next was to develop skills and qualities for me to operate as an individual. Some of the things I felt I needed to develop were; –

• Empathy
• Courage
• Discipline
• Self-control
• Sensitivity
• Thinking independently

As I have been on my journey to develop myself – I feel it has brought a profound change in me: – a change in the way I see myself, and others. It has helped me grow in different aspects of my life. It has helped me to feel contentment satisfaction and a sense of purpose and peace.

Conclusion

In our pursuit of progress growth and material wealth – we forgot the most fundamental and essential part of us and our lives. However, here is n this place lies our truth joy happiness.  Working to build this asset has transformed my inner world. Standing where I am today – I can say this is the most important asset we can have.