Keep it Simple
Keep it simple. Life can get complicated very quickly. Learn to keep it simple. One way to achieve it is to build guidelines/core principles/guiding principles. When things get complicated, refer back to the guidelines.
It doesn’t take a lot of time to really come up with the guidelines. In my life there were few major turning points. We sat down and built an approach, which later turned out to be guidelines.
In 2003, I wanted to open a business. It was a lot of work to open the business. I quit my job, was spending money to open the business. There was lot of running around to get the office in place and working with the government to get the proper permissions. The guideline that evolved as part of that experience was, ‘Family first’. In order to address it, we worked to take action to ensure family is not disturbed even if the business doesn’t succeed. We took a few steps to ensure the money required to take care of the family is separated from the business.
In 2007, there was a major medical scare - a life or death kind of scare. I had go through a craniotomy, a fancy word that meant cutting open my skull, going deep into my brain and fixing a blood leak right at the center of the brain! After 12 years, now I can joke about it - 'Had a plumbing problem in my head, had to get it fixed!'. Through that, again going back to the original guideline of ‘Family first’, I wanted to make sure the family is financially self sufficient as early as possible. I set a goal to be financially independent in 10 yrs. Today at the end of 12 yrs, we are financially independent!
Over time, within the family we came up with two simple but profound guidelines.
It will take some time to describe them and what they mean to the family, I will describe them in a different blog. They helped us through a lot of decisions we had to take as we went the journey I call family! It could be as simple as ‘I want a new video game’ or as complicated as ‘How do I go through the process of applying for college’, the guidelines helped us.
In 2003, I wanted to open a business. It was a lot of work to open the business. I quit my job, was spending money to open the business. There was lot of running around to get the office in place and working with the government to get the proper permissions. The guideline that evolved as part of that experience was, ‘Family first’. In order to address it, we worked to take action to ensure family is not disturbed even if the business doesn’t succeed. We took a few steps to ensure the money required to take care of the family is separated from the business.
In 2007, there was a major medical scare - a life or death kind of scare. I had go through a craniotomy, a fancy word that meant cutting open my skull, going deep into my brain and fixing a blood leak right at the center of the brain! After 12 years, now I can joke about it - 'Had a plumbing problem in my head, had to get it fixed!'. Through that, again going back to the original guideline of ‘Family first’, I wanted to make sure the family is financially self sufficient as early as possible. I set a goal to be financially independent in 10 yrs. Today at the end of 12 yrs, we are financially independent!
Over time, within the family we came up with two simple but profound guidelines.
- Big rocks first
- Don’t stop
It will take some time to describe them and what they mean to the family, I will describe them in a different blog. They helped us through a lot of decisions we had to take as we went the journey I call family! It could be as simple as ‘I want a new video game’ or as complicated as ‘How do I go through the process of applying for college’, the guidelines helped us.
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