A life lived in style is also a balanced life. Make sure you pay attention to all the values and dimensions of your life. One is family. If you have someone you care about, there is nothing to match that. One person caring for another is life at its best. Protect that relationship with a vengeance. If a chair gets in the way, I (Jim Rohn) suggest you destroy the chair.
It was wisely said long ago, but is still true today: “There are many treasures, but the greatest of these is love.” It is better to have a love affair while living in a tent on the beach than to live in a mansion by yourself. Ask me, I know. Family must be cultivated like an enterprise, like a garden. Time, effort, imagination, creativity, and genius must be summoned constantly to keep your family relationships flourishing and growing.
The next dimension of life is friendship. A priceless value, friendship. Friends are those incredible people who know all about you and still like you. Friends are those people who stay by your side when everyone else is leaving. As someone once suggested, “Be sure to make the kind of friends on your way up who will take you in on your way down.” Life is a bit of both up and down, but with true friends–friends who care regardless of your circumstances–the ups are even more fantastic and the downs are less devastating.
Traveling around the world, I have made some unique friends. And I do have one particularly special friend. If I were stuck in a Mexican jail and unduly accused, I would call this friend. Why? He would come and get me. Now that is a friend: someone who would come and get you.
How much would he would spend to get me? As much as it would take. How long would he would try to get me out? As long as it would take. That is a friend.
I also have some casual friends who would probably say, “Call me when you get back.” I guess we all have some of those friends.
But friendship is so vitally important to those in search of the good life. Make sure your friendships get the attention and the effort they deserve. Properly nourished, they will give back to you that priceless treasure of both pleasure and satisfaction called “the good life.”
Remember, the good life is not measured by material wealth or possessions. The good life is an attitude, an act, an idea, a discovery, a search. The good life comes from a lifestyle that is so fully developed–regardless of your bank account–that it provides you with a constant sense of joy in living. It fuels the fires of motivation to adopt a lifestyle that makes living worthwhile. What is wealth without character, industry without art, quantity without quality, enterprise without satisfaction, possession without joy?
Become a person of culture. Become that person of unusual substance who brings an added measure of genius to life so our children will be the beneficiaries.
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn