Living a Full Life

What does living a full life mean to me? A full life consists of not only the great times in your life, but also the bad times. In my opinion, family, friends, and money are the most important factors in determining a complete life, but you need all three. Some of the richest people in the world, have no friends or no family that they speak to, and I think if you asked them honestly if they were having a good life, they would say no. My idea of a full life today, could be a different idea tomorrow. Being twenty three years old, my idea of living a full life is, that when I am ready to die, I am staring at the ocean, surrounded by the people who I love the most in the world. Today it would be parents siblings, hopefully wife, children, and grandchildren in the future. Living a full life means that at the end of it, I can say I enjoyed the good and the bad that life has to offer, and I succeeded.  

Living through this recession the last couple of years, has taught me a lot. Making better decisions on how to use my money wisely in the future, is one of them. Another, is to never be comfortable or satisfied. When you get comfortable at a certain job, that’s when they can take it away. It happened to my father, he was with the same company for fifteen years and in 2008 when everyone around him seemed to be getting fired, he did as well. He thought his job was safe, he mentioned loyalty, when I asked why he thought his job was fine. I want to be able to say that when the going got tough, I didn’t back down and I succeeded. I was never really bad with money before, but in the past couple years I have really cut back and began to save for the future. My ideal life would be owning and operating a sports bar near the ocean. Working in restaurant now and for the last five years of my life, and taking business classes at Reynolds to finish my Associates Degree in Business Management, will help point me in the right direction, but a lot of work still needs to be done to make it. After I’m done at Reynolds, furthering my education onto a four year University is in my best interest. Making a business plan and and forming a LLC is definitely a start as well. Location and marketing is huge, you can have one of the best restaurants in the world, but if people don’t know about it, or it’s not located in a good area, you will be closed soon.

I think one of the successes in having a full life is making the lives of the people around you better also.  One day to not have to worry about money, would be amazing, because it would give me the opportunity to do what I’m most passionate about, helping people and animals. I would be volunteering every day at local shelters or food drives. I think the greatest feeling that you could have, is by making someone else feel great. Help building or donating money for parks for kids and dogs would be a dream. Overall a full complete life is being successful in family, friends, wealth, and helping the less fortunate.