5 Fingers of Life

Well, I did not ask you to stumble into this section of my site, but since you did…. let me share with you some of my personal beliefs. This section has nothing to do with my ability to be your healthcare insurance broker or financial advisor. This is personal; not professional. Philosophical, if you will.

I belief our lives have five (5) key components and the key to success in life is getting these areas to all work together. They include;

Five Fingers of Life; Our Five Lives

• Our Family Life – We have our family life. This is that portion of our life that involves the people we love the most. Sometimes, our family life is our parents or spouse or other love interest, sometimes our kids, sometimes our sibs and cousins; or, our family life can be our friends, drinking-golf-fishing buddies, or the people we see every day that brings us our breakfast at McDonalds. Some people we encounter in that way over a long period of time can become like family to us. For the purpose of this discussion, I will mostly focus on our spouses and children.

• Our Spiritual Life – God; whomever and whatever God is to you, I believe is important. Our relationship with God matters as much as anything else in our life. I do not believe we can ever find peace and happiness in life without having a strong connection to our Father in Heaven.

• Our Physical Life – Our bodies. This is our physical self. For me, I have to always work to be of the best health possible. For most of us, this is a challenge. For many of us, including myself, life finds me mostly taking care of others, and not myself. My physical life has to be one of the most neglected parts of our life. Staying strong; living a healthy lifestyle… do you do it? I know I do not as I should… although, I am doing better in this regard. Aging has such a profound impact on every other aspect of our life; so for sure it does on our physical side as well. I know for me, “I walk or I die”. These are the words I live by. I try to every day walk 3-5 miles.

• Emotional Lives – Are we strong inside? Do we have courage to face another day? Do we expect only the best out of the people around us, or are we willing to accept them at their worst? Do we let people abuse and take advantage of us? Do we have hope or have we lost our dreams? How do we feel about ourselves? To me, this is our emotional life. How strong am I?!?!?!?

• Our Professional Lives – This is our job. This is what we do. Are we happy and content in our career? I know for men especially, we really identify with our work. Our work is largely who we are. I think we really cannot be happy with our professional life if we wake up every day, dreading work… you know? If that is your case, you just have to find something different; something better. Something that makes us jump out of our bed in the mornings.

  On the other hand, our professional life should never take over our whole life. Sometimes, especially when we DO love our work, we let everything else fall apart by over focusing on our careers. Gotta have balance in our lives.

Ok, so why do I call this section the “Five Fingers of Life”? Because to me, each of these five areas are like the fingers on our hand. Let’s presume for a moment that you wanted to put a glove on that hand. Well, for sure, you would have to have all those fingers pointing in the same direction, if you wanted to get that glove on. It just will not work otherwise.

So, for me, I am always trying to get my hand in that “glove of peace and happiness” (LOL)… and therefore I am always trying (and never succeeding) with the task. For, I think… it’s just impossible to get all these fingers pointed in the same direction at the same time. Sure, we can get 2-3 going well… but the other two are always falling apart. Aren’t they?

Look at your own life right now? How many of your fingers are pointing up? 1, 2, 3… and how many are pointing down?

More coming when i have time.