Mental Vitamin - Thirty-Fourth Day

 

I get these Mental Vitamins to my door weekly…they are so full of good meat to chew on! 

Read and grow.

“As a gentle reminder - or perhaps one that's a good bit more than gentle - this is now the thirty-fourth day of yet another year in your life. Now, let me pose a few questions; how many years have you been on the planet? How many of the things you once assumed you would do with your life have been achieved? Are you in one of those places in life - without knowing how you got there - in which one of the highlights of your week is Friday?

Your life and mine have a way of getting in the way of the life we once dreamed about, but never quite attained; that doesn't mean we don't have some of the treasures that makes life worthwhile, like a spouse, a family, a home and a reasonably dependable car. We have friends, we have an income and a career that provides that income, but another question is - just how tenuous are those things; how secure is that job, anyway? Is it allowing you to set aside a minimum of six months of income that will enable you to pay all of your fixed and variable expenses in case you become a victim of down-sizing at the place where you work?

How is your investment situation doing? I know we've all lost money - those who have a 401(k), an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) or some similar investment in the capitalistic system that can enable us to take advantage of the law of compounding interest, but we all have to remember that it's the nature of such investments to fluctuate in the short term, but they always have and always will grow over the longer term, IF you leave your money there and don't spend it on the unanticipated emergencies. Those who kept their money in their investments have seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase about 5,000 points in the past year; that's not quite back to where it was three years ago, but it's getting very close. And, those who kept putting a part of their income into their investments when everything was collapsing now find themselves with about 33 percent more shares of stock than they once had, so a few years from now they're going to see a significant acceleration in how much money they have because they had faith in the future of America and in themselves as a good steward of the money they earned and put away.

Remaining faithful to our carefully selected disciplines - instead of being unduly influenced by "what happens" - isn't always easy, but it is always necessary.

So, on this thirty-fourth day of what is no longer a new year, how are you doing? Are those resolutions still something that have moved from resolutions to disciplines that are nearly second nature, or have they faded along with all the other well-intended resolutions leaving you without any significant improvement.

Someone needs, I think, to keep asking these questions, because when everyone in your world stops asking them, then time will merely pass, and with the passing of time, all of your chances to do better will fade into nothingness until all that discipline, changing, and opportunity stuff just won't matter anymore. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?

Finally, please remember that I'm human like everyone else, so in writing these messages to you each day means that I read them each day, and I learn from each one, because they aren't "my" words, they're coming from somewhere else; I'm merely the "court reporter," so I'm not only "preaching to the choir," I'm learning as I read along with you. Keep it up!” Ron Reynolds

 

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