Written by On today’s Wisdom Wednesday, we discuss the parable: “It’s better to have a diamond with a flaw than pebble without one.” Let’s start by thinking about what could represent a pebble and what could represent a diamond in each of our lives. When you are discussing value, I find that nothing is more valuable than your time.
A diamond with a flaw is still valuable
When I meet with people and we discuss ways to build wealth, the goal is to give them more time. We don’t want to build wealth in a way that takes away your time. Wealth is supposed to give you more time. More time with your family and friends. Time to travel, start a business, and support causes you believe in.
I would argue the pebble is the least value ways to spend your time and the diamond is the most valuable ways to spend your time. We don’t want to be filled with regret later in life. Jim Rohn use to say, you don’t want to major in minor things. You want to major in major things. If you were going to prepare for a test, you want to spend the majority of your time studying the material that will make up the majority of the test. You don’t want to spend half of your time studying material that only makes up 5% of your test.
How do you spend your time?
In life, we have the same choice of how we want to spend our time. You are trying to decide what is going to impact your life in the best way. What is going to you the best opportunity to achieve happiness. Happiness is a life journey tied to how you spend your time. Don’t be distracted by short-term satisfaction that has you feeling good for a few days.
For me, there are three things that bring me happiness. That is my family, the work I do, and volunteering to improve my community. As long as the majority of my time each day is spent on these three things, I feel pretty good at the end of the week.
Plans change and that’s okay
You have to spend most of your time positively impacting people, causes and experiences you care about. These are the diamonds in your life. Another way to think about your diamonds is as your life goals. Things don’t always go according to plan. You want to grow your family, but things are going as planned. There are trips you wanted to take, but it’s hard to find a time that works for everyone. Even though your diamonds have flaws, it doesn’t mean you should give up on them. Even if you have to change the plans in some way, you’ll still be happier than giving up completely.
Your life goals are supposed to help you stay on track. Help you prioritize your time and know what things are worth sacrificing. We cover the importance of goal-setting within the Wisdometric Framework, within the Design Your Life module. It is good to remember why we are building wealth. Since we are not collecting money for the sake of collecting money.
Final thoughts
You don’t want to find yourself sacrificing your life goals and opportunity for happiness… for money and short-term satisfaction. As scripture says, “What benefit is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul?” It doesn’t matter how good short-term pebbles look. Nor does it matter how bad a diamond with a flaw looks. You don’t want to give away something irreplaceable for something you can easily replace.