What keeps you motivated?

It seems I'm definitely not a local, no idea where this is

 

What motivates us to keep going.... an interesting question.

Getting started, the key motivator was the very clear understanding that 9% super (as it was then) was not going to be sufficient to ensure a comfortable old age. There was therefore an economic imprimatur to pull our fingers out and solve that problem, as nobody was volunteering to solve it for us!

In terms of motivation now, some 8 years after starting - really, it's just keeping things going. Tenant changeovers, managing defaults, property repairs, and the odd major drama - it's all just part of life now.

 

Good fun.
Do you have a plan to transition to not doing that (or working time) or will you keep doing after you stop working?

 

It's important to do something meaningful in life. I love Steve Jobs' saying, but I modify it slightly. If your life suddenly ended tonight, do you think you spent today in a meaningful way? If almost every day is a no for you, something's got to change.

 

Love it. Couldn't agree more.

 

ah.. its only like the most expensive street in Australia. It's in an Eastern suburb called Point Piper. The price tag is because the views of the water, harbor bridge and actually the entire city are uninterrupted. The new years eve parties there are shocking! Trust me on that

 

I know the suburb.
Sounds like a bogan street name though

 

Simple. Freedom.

The people who say "money" don't really mean money, they mean the things they can get with that money. To see their kids grow up, to stop trading time for money at a job they aren't passionate about while spending hours in traffic for the privilege, to buy all the toys, go on holidays or travel whenever they want, to live in their dream home. The list goes on but boils down to...

The freedom to decide how to live your life.

 

I just don't want to live an average life
I recall when I was about five, I was waiting for the Simpson's the begin at 6pm. I was a bit early so the channel 10 news was on at the time so I just sat down eagerly waiting for my favourite TV show to begin. The last "news" story for the night from channel ten that night was actually about an old woman who turned 100, can't really remember much else about it.

Anyways, I guess that sort of made the five year old me to believe that everyone lives to 100 and then dies sometime during their 100th year. After a few moments of fantasising about how tall I would be at the age of 100. (I also thought you keep getting taller, lol). I began crying at the thought that my parents would die before me and how I would deal with that cause they would reach 100 before me. Looking back now, it looks like an extremely depressing thing for a five year old to cry about. But from then, I began thinking about how I would like to live a happy stress free life.

At about the age 7, my stuttering really kicked in and the part that really got me was that when I spoke to other kids and people, they automatically felt they were better than me. I don't know, this probably has shaped a few parts of me today. It's probably at the around the same time that I knew I wasn't normal or average in as well as my mindset.

To put it honestly, my real goal is to enjoy my whole life. I don't want to live the normal way. Where I'm dreading Monday's and breathlessly waiting for the weekend. I can't live that way. Where I hate five days of the week, because I hate my life and job so much that the only relief and solace I receive is Saturday and half of Sunday before I begin dreading the week again. I want each day to mean something to me, there has to be more to life than working till I die. I just want to like my whole life and not just Saturday and half of Sunday. I don't want to live an average life.

Maybe I'm crazy for thinking all of that, in a time when this is the norm, probably clinically insane a little. If I am though, at least half of you all are too. So sorry about the wall of text.

 

WORD

 

Goal to be financially independent within 11 years and travelling 3 months each year.

 

Being able to retire at a young age, being able to look back and appreciate what i have achieved. Seeing my mother who retired at the age of 47 through not only working very hard because she had no choice but most importantly working very smart her whole life. Being a single mother to me and my younger brother since i was 5 years old and still managing to create the wealth and opportunity she did in those circumstances to be able to get where she was, amazes me! Moving countries for me and my younger brothers sake not only once, but twice where she had to always start from square one. All of it, just to be able to provide us with the opportunities in life to get to where we want.

That keeps me motivated every day, to be able to create that for myself so that i too, can spend more time doing what life is all about. Spending it with my loved ones, hopefully a couple of little ones running around by then who knows, and be the father or husband that my biological father never was to his family.

I know it might sound cliche, and maybe even stupid to some. But my motivation to keep going and to reach the goals i have set for myself, is always right in-front of me, and that's my mother.

To live the life i want, to be a future good father, a good husband and most importantly being a good son and repaying the faith and hard work my mother put in me and my younger brother to grant us this life, these opportunities.

I came across something @Leo2413 said in a thread somewhere, something in the lines about his dad having said "If you cant make money in Australia, you're an idiot boy" my apologies if that's misquoted Leo. But i actually remember when i came across that post, after reading it, i had a massive fat grin on my face because it reminded me of something my mother had said to me a long, long time ago when i was younger. Simply because i personally interpreted that quote differently, for me it was more like "Create the life you want, you have every opportunity to decide how you live your life in the future".

Anyways, that's what keeps me motivated and i actually thoroughly enjoy the process and look forward to the journey of actually achieving it.

 

I don't believe in motivation. If your living life according to your highest values then you don't need to be motivated because you just live and do what inspires you.

Inspiration is stronger than motivaton

 

I believe the opposite.

I've been inspired by many, but without motivation, I would not have taken any steps in their direction.

Clips, songs, movies, books, podcasts. All inspiring. I did a leadership course which inspired the **** out of me. But I wasn't motivated enough to make it daily rigeur. So... nothing.

I can also be exceptionally motivated without inspiration.

 

I meant inspiration from within. Don't look at others lives for inspiration, live your own life according to your highest values, set goals that inspire you ... If they truly inspire you, you'll do them regardless of results and won't need motivation to stay on track.

Say for example (and this is a bad example) you wanted to make $1 million.

Seeing your bank balance increase would motivate you ... But if it dropped to zero you may be disheartened and give up altogether. Motivaton is good, but not as powerful as inspiration.

If making $1 mill really inspired you, you'd keep working towards the mill and wouldn't be disheartened by external results. The inspiration would keep you going regardless of results and challenges.

 

Sorry Azazel, only saw your post tonight!
Yeah, no plan as such. At some point we'll have to give it away I'm guessing. However, retirement is unfortunately not a short or even medium term proposition, so we have a few years yet to decide how we'll handle it.

 

What motivates me is enjoying what I can when I can, and creating as many opportunities for enjoyment as I can. Sometimes it's the long play and I'll create more opportunities for enjoyment by delaying gratification and having some hard years.

Right now I'm motivated to drop as many shifts from my grown up job as possible. I'm currently down to working 7 days a fortnight (at the normal job) and the wife doesn't have a job at all (by choice). I'm motivated to finish my house so I can relax in my swim spa, then play some table tennis and pool and pour myself a homebrew beer on tap from my own proper bar at my house. Have my golden retrievers run into the house all crazy after enjoying our big back yard, then playing some call of duty on my 75 inch monster of a TV, have some mates around for some poker nights, learn to sail on my days off which will be more than half the time, get a jet ski and a 4 wheel drive. All while getting snot loads of money from rents and paying down mortgages and then clearing even more profits and retiring before I'm 40 years old. And to top it all off sharing all those awesome experiences with my amazing wife.

The cool thing is, that's not a pipe dream, I'm well on track for that. I'm a very lucky miserable *******

So what motivates me is really just creating an enjoyable kick ass life for myself and my wife.

 

If you want results, you need to put in the effort to make it happen. I suppose that's what keeps me motivated even though I see it as consequences of choices. I want to enough money to live comfortably, do what l like and set up projects to give back to community. And not "just go on the pension", which seems to be most people's default answer about retirement plans. Not interested in having a mediocre life with only a frugal retirement to show for it.

I also like learning new skills and finding new opportunities. I've mostly focused on investing in my career because it's the easiest way to increase income and get transferrable skills that are valued in the job market. Now it's time to invest in other things - property, shares, maybe side business - to build wealth. Educating myself about these has opened up many possibilities to try that I wouldn't have known about.

 

Motivation?

Knowing that one day day I'll write my first ebook. It will be called "Apathy"

 

Aww man, I've been driving down Wolseley Street the whole time. Gotta start setting those goals a little bit higher!