8. Your Most Important Life Experiences

What's going to make you happier? More time inside work or more free time outside work? A very simple question for you. If you were to write down the 20 most impactful or powerful or life changing, life transforming, enjoyable moments in your life, whatever category you want to use, the most important moments in your life, where did they happen? Did they happen at work or did they happen outside of work? Now, this is not an attack on work. I love work. I love creating and helping people and creating value and doing things that make the world a better place and making money and all that good stuff. But when I recently made a list, I looked back at the number of things that were my most important life events. First, I thought I was going to make a list of 10. I ended up with a list of 20. As I went down that list, I was just making the list, just thinking about, Okay, what are the most important things that happened? Then I thought, Well, funny, where did these things happen? What type of life experiences were they? Were they achievement in sports? Were they work related?

Was it romance? Was it friendship? What was it? As I went down the list, I found that as I categorized them, because I do these things, that I found that over 80 % of my most treasured or most important or most impactful life experiences happened outside of work. And so, again, I say that not as an attack on work or an indictment against work, but as a concept to say, if you're really looking for meaningful experiences, you're going to find some at work. But there's an immense breath, or there's a broad experience of things going on in the world. Many of those things don't happen on your laptop or in your cubicle or wherever you are that you're working. They're happening in the outside world as well. I like to joke sometimes, some of my friends who really love their work will say, Well, wait, maybe you don't love your work. See, Wade, I love my work. And so I like to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week. And I just say, You know, gosh, there's just so many different things going on. And I happen to believe there's a God.

You might not. But I almost think if God's being or whatnot is looking down saying, Wow, you really got that one thing down, that work thing, and you're really putting a lot of time in there. But did you realize, created the rest of the world and there's all this other cool stuff going on. And yet you're looking for greater fulfillment in this one area, and you're pushing harder, and you're trying to get more things to happen just in this one little area, and there's all these things going on. And some of them have to do with work, and some of them have to do with friendship, and some of them have to do with love, and some of them have to do with helping other people or mentoring people or just doing what you like or doing nothing or relaxing. There's so many different experiences in life. So I'm going to suggest to you that if you're looking for more out of life, and this is a huge part of those people that want to work and create a four day work week lifestyle, if you're looking for more, if you're looking to experience more, if you're looking to teach your children and show your children that there's more to life than just money and work, it's going to involve you getting involved in different things.

What I'm going to suggest you do. There's a tool that will help with this, it's either below this post or if it's not, you can find it at 4dayworkweek. Com tools. That's the number 4dayworkweek. Com tools. It's called the Most Important Life Experience Tracker. Or maybe I call it something different, but it's most important life experiences. What you're going to do with this is just write down or type out if you prefer, the most impactful life experiences you've had and then indicate what part of your life are those part of. Are they inside work, outside of work? And then in addition to that, another categorisation or just a sense of did they happen in your friendship area, in your romance area, in your achievement, sports, socializing, whatever it might be, to really get a sense of what is it that you might be looking for more of in the future. So rather than just blindly going about the world hoping that whatever you're going to go after is going to provide you with more fulfillment and satisfaction, looking to the past, although we don't always look to the past for fulfillment, being able to look back to the past and say, What was it that I did over here that was fulfilling or happy for me in the past?

And can I bring that to the future? This was something that I reconnected with for so many years when we first had children. I had this sense that I needed to be a good father and I needed to stay at home, and I shouldn't be playing my volleyball because a good father provides and focuses on his family and his kids all the time, like that helicopter parent thing, which is not really the most productive thing. And so for so many years, I gave up. One of the activities I love most and keeps me in the best shape, the beach volleyball for me. And in addition to the fact that I gained 25 to 30 pounds, I was not as happy. So much so that when I started back playing volleyball a few years back, I'd been doing it for a couple of months and it was working the four day work week. I had told my wife, well, I was going to maybe try something different, she said, No, Wade, please go do your volleyball. It makes you happy. You're also grumpier when you don't do it. And she didn't use the word grumpier, but she was on target.

You're a little bit of a jerk when you're not as good in your exercise and your different things, you're not getting your needs met. I want to encourage you to think about what is it that you have enjoyed in the past and think about that. And what areas of your life did you find that most fulfillment and see how we can bring that to the future. Again, you can write that down yourself, or you can go to 4dayworkweek. Com tools to get that most important life experience tracker. What it's going to do is, first of all, it's going to allow you to list the things. It's also going to allow you, if you put the categories to give you a percentage that goes with it. Again, some people like percentages. I love percentages. I'm an Excel and a numbers junky. But just overall to get a sense of where you might be able to find more fulfillment and happiness in the future as well. Now, you could also do the written version of it if you prefer. But just something to keep you focused on, what is the main thing? Because again, it might be that you're not supposed to work a four day work week.

Maybe you'll just have an awesome time continuing to work 40 hours a week, five days a week, but you just want more time doing the things you love. I'm not sure. But all of this, even though I put under the umbrella of four day work week, it's really about doing the things you most enjoy, creating a more abundant lifestyle, and part of that is generating more income and creating a more abundant lifestyle of time freedom. I hope you find this helpful. Go to get the tool now if you'd like. Again, 4dayworkweek. Com tools. If you find this helpful, please make sure to share it with your friends. It's always helpful when you have people who are working towards the same objectives as you are. You'll find that many people at first will be skittish about it, like, I'm not so sure I want to do that. Just share them and say, Hey, check out this video. If you like, if you like. If not, no big deal. You'll eventually find that as you're moving towards a goal, having some people that are moving towards that in that direction with you is going to help you, whether it is that you meet those people in some of the communities that we have when related to our work, or if you see their comments in the online site or whatever it might be, that you get to connect with people who are going for something that you are, not just the people you've known from your past, but the people that are also moving towards a future that you're looking to create.

Of course, if you haven't already, if you like this video, also make sure, or this audio, if you're listening to it, to subscribe so you can get future episodes of this. As always, I look forward to helping you make more money in less time. Do you know what you do best? Thanks for listening.