In every issue of my Cashflownaire Letter, I include the operating principles I try and live by.
My overriding goal – above all others – is peace of mind and happiness.
In Brian Tracy’s book, “Maximum Achievement”, he shared what he believes are the seven ingredients for success in life. His first ingredient was PEACE OF MIND.
He wrote:
“The first of these ingredients of success, and easily the most important, is peace of mind. It is the highest human good. Without it, nothing much has value. Because of this, you strive for it all of your life. You can evaluate
how well you are doing at any given time by how much inner peace you enjoy.”
I had actually read this years ago and didn’t seriously consider his advice to make peace of mind a priority. At the time, my priority was to become wealthy. 🙁
This overriding goal to build wealth led me into multiple partnerships, joint ventures, businesses, highly leveraged real estate investments and aggressive marketing strategies.
I didn’t have the wisdom to understand how important peace of mind really is and ended up creating one big ugly mess in my life. This mess included many financial challenges, failed partnerships and the loss of a few close friends.
Brian Tracy continued…
“If, for any reason, you compromise your values, or go against your inner guidance, your peace of mind is the first thing to suffer.”
And suffer we will.
Many of my Cashflownaire principles are there because of my suffering. I do not want to make these mistakes again. I’ve paid my price and, hopefully, have learned the lessons I needed to learn.
“Achieving inner peace must be a central organizing principle of your life. It must become the overarching goal to which all your other goals are subservient. In fact, you are only successful as a person to the degree to which you can achieve your own happiness, your own contentment, your own sense of personal well-being – in short, your own peace of mind.”
Now, depending on where you are in your life, this advice may not seem to be a big deal to you. It is a BIG deal! I’m hoping you consider making peace of mind your #1 priority.
Peace of mind is more valuable than money.
The reason why is because you can’t buy peace of mind. You have to earn it through your actions.
Anything that can’t be bought with money IS more valuable than money.
One final thought from Mr. Tracy:
“In the simplest terms, you experience happiness and peace of mind whenever you are completely free from the destructive emotions of fear, anger, doubt, guilt, resentment and worry. In the absence of negative emotions, you enjoy peace of mind naturally, effortlessly. The key to happiness is to systematically eliminate, or at least minimize, the parts of your life that cause you negativity or stress of any kind.”
Thankfully, we do not have to sacrifice our peace of mind to achieve our goals. We do have to live by a certain set of operating principles. Principles that guide us to the correct actions.
Actions that lead to peace of mind.
