Skill Set vs. Materialism

I have had a lot of change occur recently and certainly lots of uncertainty ahead of me as a result of my actions. I took my last piece of advice about time rather seriously and decided to act accordingly. So I resigned from my job. At that point in the conversation when the ‘I Quit!’ moment came out of my mouth I immediately felt the unease that comes without the security, certainty and comfort to which I am now accustomed. Immediately following that I felt the energy come back into my skin, the true feeling of being relieved and the realization that in all that uncertainly lay infinite options.

One of the exercises I have been meaning to blog about is something I, and probably others who have an entrepreneurial bug, struggle with constantly. The question of resources or more specifically the scarcity of those resources, do I have enough in order to make things work? More often than not the word resources can be replaced with money. So I decided it would be wise to take on the opposite question of what if I did have the resources. What if I had the following amounts $50K, $100K, $1 Million or even $10 Million?

The answer to the last one is quite simple as it’s high enough a number to justify not having to work anymore and simply live off principal and interest. But the other three amounts result in a similar answer. They differentiate in varying degrees corresponding with each amount. With a million most people would save some spend some and do any number of things with the rest but in this day it’s unlikely that it will last you the rest of your life especially if you’re young. With the other two amounts its pretty much guaranteed that production and income is still required. All of this is relative to the individual depending on spending habits, and decision making but in absolute terms it simply isn’t enough to survive on.

The original point of the exercise, as I believe was intended by the person it was given by, was to discover that money in itself is really not a valuable resource. The more valuable thing is having the experience to make the money work effectively and of course to make it multiply. I on the other hand take a slightly different lesson from this. I fully agree with the latter portion about multiplication, but I have and probably always will have a difficult time accepting that experience is the best teacher, perhaps due to my youth and comparative inexperience. I believe that the real insight is that to a point it is almost irrelevant how much money you have to start pursuing the next steps in life, but that the most valuable resource is the ability to think beyond the obstacles that present themselves and just take that step and the associated risk anyway and push beyond any perceived limitations in resources; whether this be money, lack of faith, or in my case the fear of success.

Song of the Day: Bah Samba-Calma