Recently I sent an email to my friends pontificating about life and and my lofty goal of finding the Holy Grail of IEFF (Intellectual, Emotional and Financial Fulfillment) in the next chapter of my life. At the end of that email I asked a rhetorical question: What is your IEFF? Relatively few individuals have a clear answer, several friends wrote back "my children" (my heart melted when I read that), and many were in the same predicament as I am, still searching.
Rare is the occasion that one finds even one out of the three in one's life time, blessed are those who achieved all three. Is it possible to NOT sacrifice something in the I & E categories while one toils away pursuing F? My personal experience is that when one is singularly focused on one arena, something has to give in other areas. Intellectually I morphed into a finance specialist; I gave up reading anything outside of the Wall Street Journal and research reports because I had few spare hours outside of work. I allowed one exception - People magazine, where I luxuriated in living vicariously thru the lives of celebrities by day dreaming about what it would be like to become rich and famous one day while doing exactly what one wants! Emotionally I learned to shut out the world as I aspired to be a bigger rat in the corporate rat race; I got fatter along the way! I think I spent more time in the past two years bonding and reconnecting with loved ones than I did in the 15 years combined. It is not as if I didn't know that somewhere along the way I was devoid of intellectual or emotional fulfillment, but I thought one day they will find me when I make enough money (and that is always relative). Alas it didn't work like that. It is equally hard work to find I & E as it is to find F, none of them are easy. And there is never enough F if one starts comparing myself to the Jones or if one can not extricate oneself from the game, for it is very difficult to leave a well paying job no matter how miserable the working environment becomes, people tend to stick it out and loses the enjoyment from what they earned.
I am an optimist and I believe there is an IEFF out there for everyone; we just need to take a step back to realize what is important to us. I invite all the readers to share with each other any advice on finding your IEFF, inspirational stories and tools that will enrich our mind, soul and bank accounts!
Rare is the occasion that one finds even one out of the three in one's life time, blessed are those who achieved all three. Is it possible to NOT sacrifice something in the I & E categories while one toils away pursuing F? My personal experience is that when one is singularly focused on one arena, something has to give in other areas. Intellectually I morphed into a finance specialist; I gave up reading anything outside of the Wall Street Journal and research reports because I had few spare hours outside of work. I allowed one exception - People magazine, where I luxuriated in living vicariously thru the lives of celebrities by day dreaming about what it would be like to become rich and famous one day while doing exactly what one wants! Emotionally I learned to shut out the world as I aspired to be a bigger rat in the corporate rat race; I got fatter along the way! I think I spent more time in the past two years bonding and reconnecting with loved ones than I did in the 15 years combined. It is not as if I didn't know that somewhere along the way I was devoid of intellectual or emotional fulfillment, but I thought one day they will find me when I make enough money (and that is always relative). Alas it didn't work like that. It is equally hard work to find I & E as it is to find F, none of them are easy. And there is never enough F if one starts comparing myself to the Jones or if one can not extricate oneself from the game, for it is very difficult to leave a well paying job no matter how miserable the working environment becomes, people tend to stick it out and loses the enjoyment from what they earned.
I am an optimist and I believe there is an IEFF out there for everyone; we just need to take a step back to realize what is important to us. I invite all the readers to share with each other any advice on finding your IEFF, inspirational stories and tools that will enrich our mind, soul and bank accounts!
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