Is It Worth It?

Every opportunity has costs associated with it; the question is: Is it worth it?

In order to answer that question, we must first gain clarity about what it is that we want out of life, then identify the costs associated with the opportunity. Only then can you determine whether the opportunity is worth the cost.

What we want

Here are five questions that have helped my clients gain clarity about what they want and whether or not to avail themselves of an opportunity.

1. What do I want from life…fame, fortune, a loving family and successful business or career, a job that affords me time to pursue the hobbies I enjoy?
2. Will this opportunity help me get the life I desire? If not, forgo it.
3. How will this opportunity impact my family? It’s difficult to be successful without family support.
4. How many people can I serve with this opportunity? Our value is based upon the number of  people who benefit from what we do.
5. Will this opportunity be available in the future? If it will be, there’s no urgency in choosing this opportunity now.

Now that you have greater clarity about what you want and whether this opportunity will help you get what you want, let’s examine the costs associated with various opportunities.

Costs

Costs are not just monetary. The greater the goal, the greater the costs you’ll encounter:

• Time away from family and friends.
• Time away from other endeavors we enjoy.
• Potential loss of family support.
• Health issues that result from higher levels of stress.
• Potential loss of confidence when things don’t go as planned.

All these costs are real and they vary with what you’ve decided that you want from life.

Someone who chooses a job that pays $30,000 a year so that he has more time with family and his hobbies experiences higher levels of financial insecurity. If the car breaks down or someone in the family experiences a severe medical issue, he’s at risk for financial ruin. If he has made this choice subconsciously, he may also experience doubts about his abilities and self-worth.

A person who chooses a middle management role often makes more money and is often more financially secure than the person above. On the cost side, his company make expect him to work longer hours…time away from his family and other interests. He’s also likely to suffer job insecurity in the form of the all-too-frequent layoffs that occur in corporate America. He may also be put in a position of doing something that is in conflict with his values.

Choose a senior level position and you have even less time for your family, friends or other endeavors. You experience increased levels of competition for your position, the stress of longer hours and higher expectations…all of which may contribute to health issues. Your income is well above average, yet you’re income is still at risk even if you’re the CEO.

Become a business owner and be your own boss…an appealing thought. The reality is that you’ll typically spend more hours working than you would with a job. In the first two years your primary job is marketing. You have to get the word out and demonstrate a commitment to persistent pursuit of business success before you get to enjoy doing what you love the most.

Even with success, you have to learn a lot more skills than the average person because you’re managing all aspects of the business. That’s true even after you’re able to hire people with skills greater than those you possess. Add the high risk of failure in the first years in business, and the idea of owning your own business much less attractive.

As you can see from these examples that the life you choose:

• Carries risk no matter what you choose.
• The nature of the costs you face change as your life choice changes.
• Time away from family, friends and other endeavors get higher and higher as you choose higher levels of income, and the freedom in order to have a greater say in your future, rises.
• Financial risk exists regardless of the life choice you make. At lower income levels that risk comes in the form of costly, unexpected events. At higher income levels, the risk is losing income after having created a more costly standard of living.
• The freedom that comes with becoming a business owner, or top level athlete or entertainer, comes with the highest costs of all, both in terms of financial risk and non-financial risks.

What does this mean in terms of answering the question: Is it worth it?

Takeaways

Most life choices are made more subconsciously than consciously. We make choices based upon what interests us without considering the costs associated with our choices. We know that subconscious decisions are often emotional decisions (this intrigues me so I’ll pursue it), and they’re typically the worst decisions we make.

You can mitigate this tendency by employing the five questions listed above. These questions force your mind into an objective, analytical mode and your answers are more well-reasoned, i.e. less emotional.

Once you’ve decided, with the help of the questions, that you’d like to pursue an opportunity you can then begin to identify the costs associated with your choice. The examples above are designed to help trigger thoughts about the type of costs you’ll experience depending upon your choice.

At the end of the day, the answer to “Is it worth it?” is a personal decision. Each of us gets to decide what we want from life and pursue it. The key is to make that a conscious decision, one based on objective analysis of potential rewards and costs, rather than emotion.

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If you’d like the leaders in your organization to learn how to use the numbers more effectively and dramatically improve the productivity of your workforce, contact me to learn more about these resources:

Resources

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.

Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.