Live Life for Yourself

By Robert Wiedemer

When I say that, I’m not saying be selfish. I’m saying don’t live life to impress others. So many people really live their lives for other people. They focus very hard on succeeding at goals that will impress others. They could be monetary goals, sports performance goals and even intellectual goals.

There can be societal benefits to that mentality. It encourages people to try harder and do more to succeed. That can be a big plus for society, but it isn’t always a winning strategy for an individual.

Few individuals have tried harder and done more to succeed than Olympic gold medalist gymnast Simone Biles. Having essentially been abandoned by her father at an early age and raised by a drug addicted mom, she was fortunate to have been rescued by her uncle and raised in a suburb of Houston, not that far from where I grew up. And her earlier adversity helped drive her to succeed when she was growing up in a much better environment.

And succeed she did. She was the best in her sport – ever.

But at her third Olympics in Tokyo this summer, something broke down in her incredible drive. She said she had wanted this Olympics to be for herself. Instead, she said she was still doing it for other people, just as she had in the two previous Olympics.

Effectively, in the past she was trying to impress or please other people. Which is fine, up to a point. But, this time, doing it for others wasn’t enough to propel her to the peak of her sport for a third time.

That’s an important lesson that was lost in the arguments over whether she simply wimped out or made the right decision to avoid a dangerous fall that might cripple her for the rest of her life.

Most of us don’t have to decide whether to risk breaking our neck or our back because we lack the focus on a given day to compete at the highest levels in the world.

But many of us have to decide how much of our lives we live to impress other people. To achieve a level of status to impress others instead of enjoying our lives.

Many people who say they are enjoying their lives by making and spending more money really aren’t enjoying their lives. Same for sports medals. Same for intellectual medals of achievement. They’re enjoying impressing others.

Simone Biles was doing the same for many years. And one day this summer, she started to realize it wasn’t all that important. She certainly wasn’t enjoying it. Time to stop.

Why am I writing about this? Because I focus on money and investments so much. And no surprise, money and investments can be source of status. It is also a source of survival and a more enjoyable life.

The key is to know the difference between making money for an enjoyable life and making money to impress others.

It’s not always easy to make that decision. Where is the demarcation line? I don’t know.

What I do know is that Simone Biles just taught us that working hard to impress others may not be worth the work.

Enjoy the rest of your summer. And the rest of your life.