What does it mean to be rich? In the novel, what if it were true?Marc Levy, the writer proposes a curious situation linked, at first, to time: imagine that you have a bank account and that every day, when you wake up, you have a positive balance of R $ 86,400. There are only two rules you must follow to receive this opportunity:
You think you’d spend this money every day?I have no doubt that we will all seize this wonderful opportunity.
- We all have this account.
- We are all customers of it and we are registered from the moment we are born.
- This bank is called life.
- And the investment account is called time.
In the first second of each day, 86,400 seconds are credited to our account, which can be spent in 24 hours. Every night, what’s left in your account will be reset to zero.
It is not allowed to accrue the account balance for the next day. Every morning, your account will be reset and every night what’s left will be deleted. There’s no turning back.
Everyone can invest this amount in whatever they want and what makes them happier: family, success, friends, hobbies, but remember, you only have one life (there’s no sign of another life except faith), what matters is not the time you have, but what you do with it.
What choice would you choose: have a shorter workday, allowing you to spend more time with your family, personal activities, partner, etc. , or receive more money for the workday even if it prevents you from spending time on what we mentioned?Earlier?
This question was investigated and the results were published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. Nearly 4,500 Americans responded if they gave more importance to money or time to happiness.
64% of those who participated in the study said they would rather have more money, however, research has also shown that those who value time the most are the ones who have the most satisfaction in life, which translates into a higher level of happiness.
Spending our free time enjoying what we love gives us much more long-term satisfaction. There is evidence that investing in experiences gives us a higher level of happiness than when we do it with material things.
We are social beings who live and feed on relationships, social life, laughter with friends, time as a couple, family and doing what we love most.
But we forgot this time is over. Someday it will disappear and, unfortunately, we are not in a position to know when it will end.
We continue to convince ourselves that we are eternal beings and miss the opportunity to invest for a few seconds. Time passes, life passes, so let’s live it!
“We are the time we have left”. -José Manuel Caballero Bonald-
A survey conducted by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, showed that valuing time more than money is associated with higher levels of happiness, especially when you have to deal with long hours of work to get that money.
Therefore, the older we age, the higher the temporary position on the priority scale.
Over time, we become more aware of its value and, on the contrary, the value of money decreases. At the end of the day, being rich really means having time.
Time is something we can’t get back, it belongs to us and we own it to decide how we want to invest it, don’t let others decide your time in the background, don’t let time slip away from your fingers
Don’t let the day come when you regret not taking advantage of this moment.