Why your leisure time is your most valuable asset
As you travel through your life from infancy to childhood and into adolescence you almost certainly notice that speed appears to be speeding up, years feel like months and months feel like just yesterday. As you grow older the time you have to experience the world around you and enjoy the activities available to you shrinks, as your schedule becomes busy and the monotony of adulthood sets in. You have one final breath of life in the years between finishing studies either at university or high school before settling down into a career which you essentially sell your free time in exchange for a means to pay those bills, rent and other living expenses. It doesn’t have to be this way. Just because society has drummed into our heads that this is the only solution, the only way of life, it doesn't make it so. You can take back what is yours and reclaim your free time by doing what you truly enjoy. Many people use what little free time they have left to relax or unwind after the draining week that was. Others may be more active taking up hobbies and sports, keeping them active and healthy. But what is the true solution? The answer is relatively simple. What made all those years of childhood and adolescence seem to drag on to the point you look back thinking they were some of the best years ever lived? Experiences. Your early years is filled with hundreds of thousands of first times. Whether good or bad they literally defined you as a person. As you get older you begin to get comfortable. You know what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy and virtually build your world around the simplicity of what you know and have done before.
Does it have to be this way?
Absolutely not.
The world is filled with a countless number of first times. Both comfortable and uncomfortable either these experiences make up life, they make the memories that define you and set the course of how you develop and where life will take you next. The time you have is the most valuable asset, gift or whatever you want to call it. By heading into the office every Monday you are selling yourself short. Putting a price on something that has an essentially unlimited value. Of course your time will be worth $20 an hour if it's spent chained to a desk taking orders from someone who you accept as superior to you. It's time to reevaluate the product. Treat your time, your life left on this planet, like the priceless jewel it could be by filling it with invaluable experiences, activities and memories which can never be bought or sold for anything less than you deem its worth. I’m not suggested give your boss a piece of your mind and storm out like you won the lottery. All it takes is to start small and build value just like you would with any asset, take back your weekend. Rather than sitting on the couch scrolling through Netflix, take the time to see what's happening in your local city. There are hundreds of things you can take part of which fall into any price range. Try something you have never done before. It will make a memory which can never be taken away and will be time spent by you and not sold to pay another gas bill.