Should v Fancy: Your Key Life Choice

The life you are experiencing right now, is the result of thousands of free choices you have made in the past.

Your salary, your job, your working hours are the consequence of the choices you have made in the past.

The quality of your relationships? Those are the consequence of the choices you have made in the past.

Your weight and fitness? Yep, the consequence of your past choices.

If you're not happy with your job, your salary, your weight or your relationships, then you must learn to make better choices.
Most choices boil down to a simple question. Will you do as you SHOULD do, or will you do as you FANCY?

For example, will you blow all your income each month, as you fancy, or forgo and delay expenditure - saving money, as you should?

Will you study and put in overtime to further your career? Or will you spend your time on unproductive but enjoyable activities - as you fancy?

Will you choose the tasty meal you fancy, or the healthy that one you should eat?

Examine those areas of your life with which you are dissatisfied. You will find you have failed to do what you should have done, and instead you have done as you fancied.

At the time, you rationalized your poor choices, saying to yourself "it's only temporary" and that you would do the right thing 'soon'. Only you didn't.

You told yourself that the decision was small, and didn't matter. What you fancied was harmless, and the outcome of what you should have done would have provided but a minor benefit. Yet those benefits mount up, and the harm of 'what I fancy' soon mounts up also.

It soon mounts up to a job that does not interest or stretch you, a salary far below the one you could be earning, obesity and in retirement - poverty.

The benefits of those poor choice are short-term, but their adverse affects in the long term are huge.

'It's a bad time for me to make this stressful change in behavior' people say to themselves. But for them, there will never be a good time.

If you're to become the outrageously successful, talented, and rich person you could be, you have to grow the balls to do as you SHOULD, not as you FANCY. Sure it's tough, but after a short while you start to get the pay-off

In an ideal world you would fancy doing what you should be doing.

Back to the real world, life doesn't work like that. We all have things we would LIKE to do, that are at odds with what we SHOULD do. And vica versa.

A key trait of the successful is they do what they SHOULD, not what they FANCY, even though short-term this is not in their interests. They study or work, rather than socialize with friends. They save, rather than spend all their salary each month. They go to the gym, rather than watch TV.

Now some of the successful actually like the good activities. What they ought to do, and what they fancy doing are in close alignment. However most successful people don't like their successful actions anymore than you would.

Those thin toned gym-goers? Most dislike the hassle of going to the gym.

The committed workers who are on top of their game - and still in the office at 8pm? They don't want to be there.

The academically successful? They would rather be out drinking and socializing with their friends than studying and doing boring assignments.

Most MBAs, CPAs, ACCAs loathed their studying to get that qualification. I have yet to meet an ACCA who doesn't hate with a passion the study they had to do to pass their ACCA exams.

The point is that the successful hate doing as they ought almost as much as you would. But they knuckle down and do it, despite all that.

For a long time now you have, like most of the population, picked what you fancied, over what you should do. And you are suffering the consequences right now.

Looking forward, you're not where you want to be.

You know where you want to get to.

You know what you should do.

Learn from your past mistakes. From now on, choose to do more of what you should, and less of what you fancy. It will get you where you want to be. Wealth, enjoyment, health and freedom are worth their price.

So what choice will you make - SHOULD or FANCY?