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What does it mean to live a meaningful life? In this part five of the Todd Langford series, Todd and Patrick Donohoe converse how meaning is relative to the person’s current state of affairs. What could be meaningful to you today may no longer be meaningful to you 10 years from now. The key is to ride the winds of change. You can’t lock yourself up in a box of the present moment. Instead, it’s best to leave the door open in case the meaning of your life changes. What are you waiting for? Open yourself up to this episode and dive in!
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What Does It Mean To Live A Meaningful Life? With Todd Langford
Time is what limits our experience of life. Money is a solution that can improve the quality of that time. Money at a certain level is storage of time. People spend money to create or maintain the quality of their time. People exchange part of their time for money. Some people live to work. Others work to live. Money spent now is cash. Money spent later is savings. Inflation takes 2% to 3% compounded from the spending power of money over time. Financial experts conditioned people to invest for the long run instead of spending money. Financial experts conditioned people to believe that compound interest outpaces inflation and their fees. Financial experts conditioned people to believe that you must take risks to earn a reward. If you lose, you took too much risk.
For anything to be effective, it has to be intentional at some level. Click To TweetMost financial experts trade their time for money. Their advice earns them money. The average human being lives for 25,915 days. 8,580 of those days are sleeping, 3,790 working and 1,769 with the people we love most. Let me ask you a question. Are you living to work or working to live? Are you investing by sacrificing now for an imaginary tomorrow? I spoke about the first principles, the fundamental core reasons. What are your first principles for investing and living? I hope you enjoy this segment of my interview with Todd Langford.
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Can people live a meaningful life without logic and math? I would say a condition of logic which are mathematical proofs.
I think so. Like with anything, the question would be, do people win the lottery? Some do but the majority doesn’t. That’s probably true here. You could be lucky. I don’t like the word lucky. I like the idea of having some influence on what’s going to come out versus being left to luck. It can happen for some that they get lucky or get taken care of by somebody else, all these things. For anything to be effective, it has to be intentional at some level.
Meaning is relative to the person.
It depends on what your standard is. We use the word successful. We throw that around a lot. I don’t know that there’s a better word for it but it’s a tough word. What successful means to me is not something that I should look down on somebody else for having a different level of success. Successful may be having all the time in the world barely working but having enough to eat and having a much lesser lifestyle. For me to do that for myself, I would not consider myself successful but that doesn’t mean that I don’t consider somebody else successful because they have a different level of what success is. For them, that’s fine at whatever level it is. My argument at some level would be if that’s your level of success and that’s the amount of effort you’re willing to put there, that’s fine. Don’t cry that you don’t have the same success or stuff that somebody else has who was willing to do the work for it. That’s where the breakdown is in society. You’ve got a lot of people that have chosen the road of minimalist but they want what everybody else has. They feel like they’re entitled to that because other people have it even though they didn’t do the work to get there.
It goes to this concept of meaning. Success seems like an absolute. The intrigue of success is that it gives a person meaning. What people are seeking is meaning. Meaning isn’t constant. Meaning is a way of being. It’s a moving target. What gives somebody meaning is oftentimes evolves out of their sphere of influence, children. I find lots of meaning with my kids. It evolved to the point where two of them became teenagers. It wasn’t as meaningful. I took on a different meaning. They’re going to ultimately leave home and kids. My meaning is not going to be based on the same tenets that I achieve meaning with. The same thing with business.
With business, the environment, employees, taxes and interest rates are changing. The way in which you do business, marketing, operation and old structure is changing. You have all these people, clients and customers associated with it. They’re always changing. It’s one of those things where meaning is a moving target. It’s constantly seeking ways in which you can get closer with the knowledge that once you get there, it’s not going to last forever. It’s this recognition. The truth is that what you want is that sense of making a difference, influencing, helping and experiencing. For me, at least, it’s been coming to the definition of what it is I’m truly after, which is a logical process. Taking another step logically, which is reverse engineering.
What is it going to take for me to do that and do more of that? Once I achieve it then it’s even more. What I concluded is not an absolute conclusion. I’m still doing this show. It’s a desire to discover more about what life, business, money and people are seeking is about. I’ve concluded that there are these rules. Rules are not intentional. They’re built based on the positive and negative experiences that we have. When we experience something positive, we come up with a rule that says, “In order for me to experience something positive again, this thing has to happen.“ The same thing with negative where it’s like, “I didn’t like that. Therefore, if I do this again,“ which could be the reason for why something happened or not, “I’m not going to do it again.“
Meaningful Life: Change is not just a change that impacts us from the outside. It’s a change from the inside too.
You continue to stack these rules on top of one another. You have all these rules for what life can’t be about. “This is what has to happen in order for me to be happy.“ I concluded that I don’t have to have very many rules. If I wake up in the morning and I’m alive, it’s sweet. It’s going to be an awesome life. Also, on the contrary, where you have rules for the feelings and the things that you don’t want to experience, unpacking that, doing discovery, finding out what happened and realizing that some people have a different perspective of life and treat you a certain way. This happens or that happens. It wasn’t the reasons you thought it was that caused the bad outcome that you experienced. It’s a constant work in progress. What it ultimately boils down to is your ability to logically understand what it is you’re trying to achieve and realizing that that achievement isn’t this one-time event. It’s an ongoing process. Making it as easy as possible to achieve those end results that you want to experience has become a key. Not the key or the only key but a key that has served me.
A lot of what you’re describing is that element of time. The thing is we know time is going to occur. We have things that we think. With time comes change. Change is not just a change that impacts us from the outside but it is internal too. It’s our different value for things. One of the prime examples around life insurance is this idea many times when we talk to advisors. I’ve seen this happen over and over again. You talk to clients early on in the process. You take a young client. Their main concern is about themselves and their ability to provide for their family. Their idea, from the standpoint of legacy, is not anywhere close to being important. That same person, that same 30–year–old who didn’t have the idea of the legacy of wanting to benefit future generations changes at some point in time.
We need to look at our future and not lock ourselves in a box. Click To TweetThat goal shifts our perspective on life changes all of a sudden. Maybe it’s not the kids that we want the legacy to go to but maybe it’s the grandkids. If we know that that’s going to happen to us, if we can get to a place of discipline, a belief from people that have experienced that, that those kinds of changes are going to occur then maybe we need to look at our future and not lock ourselves in a box. Put ourselves in a position of options where if those shifts occur we can shift with them. We want to find things that we can do that with that don’t change what we think we want to be on. In other words, not something to negatively impact what we’re doing, what our desires are or our look for the future is. What we want to do is find something that will meet that and leave the door open in case that changes.
About Todd Langford
Todd Langford is the Founder & CEO of Truth Concepts, Partners 4 Prosperity, and Prosperity Economics Advisors.
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