Reference Points Matter | Meaningful Money

❝The lucky never realize they are lucky until it’s too late… People are never happy with what they have. They always want what they had, or what someone else has.❞
-“The Rabbi” in Lucky Number Slevin

I’m at the gym working out on a cold, 25-degree fall day. Unfortunately, the fans aren’t working in the gym, so it’s incredibly hot and humid inside. I step outside to cool off.

I step outside and can’t believe how nice it is! It’s so nice and cool!

I’m savoring the cool temps when a friend walks toward the door to start working out. He comments that it’s so cold outside.

Wait…what? It’s not cold; it’s nice!

How could this be? It’s the same temperature outside, and yet two of us relate to it very differently.

It turns out, what we use as our reference points matter…a lot!

Do you make a lot of money? Do you have a lot of money? Are you wealthy?

It’s tough to make that call in a vacuum. Compared to what, exactly?

But, it using money or wealth as a metric the right thing to even do?

Maybe time is a better metric. How much free time do you have? We run into the same problems. First, free time compared to whom? Or to what?

Second, why should time be the appropriate metric?

Maybe money or time is the best metric. Maybe it’s how many close friends you have or how active your social life is.

Sadly, we still don’t know how our social life is without knowing who we’re comparing to.

It’s a good question; who do we compare ourselves to? What reference point is the most useful?

One way, and arguably one of the best ways, is to compare ourselves to who we used to be.

If we want to feel a deep sense of awe and gratitude, we might try comparing ourselves to our ancestors – even a couple of generations ago. If they could somehow transport into our lives today, they’d think we were living a dream life.

Sometimes we can get off track when, instead of comparing ourselves to other versions of ourselves, our potential, or our past relatives, we compare ourselves to other people with different values, visions, and circumstances. This is, of course, made worse by social media.

Your position in life, no matter how you measure it, isn’t inherently good or bad.

How we choose to interpret our situations matter. Choosing to focus on what you don’t have or what someone else has that you don’t, you’re more likely to be dissatisfied.

Zooming out allows you to focus on all the things you do have and all the areas in which things are going your way.

What you focus on impacts how you feel.

You were born. Welcome to Earth.

Life will have challenging times, setbacks, obstacles, and problems. That’s the definition of what life is. That should be baked into our expectations.

It’s easy to let ourselves daydream about a life with no problems. We might set goals and resolutions to finally get to a point where we can finally live our lives without any struggles.

Except that time will never come. Expecting a life without problems is a source of misery.

Using a fictional version of life where nothing bad ever happens as the metric by which you measure your life will lead to a life of meaningless disappointment.

Instead, be realistic. There will be problems and challenges, and you can solve them. Compare yourself to yourself, not someone else’s version of who you should be.

Compare your life to your realistic vision for the future. That can be motivating. Of course, your vision can change over time as you get new information and new things happen, but by using this as your North Star and helps you be more adaptive to whatever life throws your way.

Reference points matter. Compare yourself to who you want to be, not some fictional life that can never happen. Do so, and you’ll find motivation.

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