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Diversifying gets better with time similar to Dwayne Johnson. Along with being supported by the scientific community, it leeches into other areas that don’t require a summary paragraph.
For this sometimes sapien, I was introduced to financial diversification years ago. After attaching that insight to my finances, I’ve realized that diversity is as far-reaching as sunlight, and everything the light touches is its kingdom.
Diversity is the best wellness university.
If there’s a choice in such things, I prefer self-care before healthcare. I prefer cheaper and less time-consuming ways of self-care. Whereas, healthcare is always a burden with its harsh debt and excessive time spent in a waiting room.
Diversifying self-care and enhancing wellness is what the industry professionals (doctors) have been spouting for years.
I diversify health by:
- Getting 8+ hours of sleep
- Eating fruits, veggies, and lean meat more often than dairy and carbs
- Exercising deliberately and accidentally
- Visiting friends
- Including water and excluding alcohol
- Meditating
- Feeling emotions but not ruminating on them
- Keeping company with positive people
I include the full spectrum of wellness, from food to fun. Food occurs with intensity and frequency, so it tends to get the most popularity. Plus, it’s expensive. Whereas sleep is a once-a-day event that has less intensity.
Way out on the far end is fun. Though participating in the social sphere can increase life expectancy, rarely does it have the same focus as food, sleep, and exercise.
A holistic approach, where care and concern are diversified across all layers of health, can buffer against issues that compound with time.
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” Said the sage, Jim Rohn.
Diversifying wealth is good financial health.
In the money mayhem realm, diversity means not investing all your finances in one category. Usually, this means with stocks in the stock market.
Don’t invest all your brokerage accounts into one company or one aspect of the market or ominous music will play in the background.
Modern-day marvels include DIY investing that is cheap and available to all. Long before I had a brokerage account, I was an investor though I would have vehemently denied it.
Having a retirement account is an investment account. Even though I let the bots or managers dictate my funds, I was investing and, by technicality alone, was an investor.
As it goes, when you know just enough to get you in trouble, that’s what I did for years.
Eventually, financial trouble caused angry, ugly tears.
I knew enough that I needed a retirement account. Instead of researching and figuring out what I should do with a pot of money, I let someone else decide. Not just anyone, but the folks who worked at a bank.
They knew how to invest money – into their bank accounts.
Not directly but indirectly through bloated fees.
That was my expensive price for learning the hard way. A lesson that took years to figure out, and once I did, I turned from a cheering bystander to a gladiator wielding a financial battle axe ready to cut down fees and poor performing funds.
Today, my finances are different and I’m DIY investing my financial funds. I diversify my brokerage and retirement accounts with index funds. I like Bogle’s quote about buying the whole haystack instead trying to find the needle within. Especially when the stock market average has better returns than most brokers.
I diversify everything else too including my income. I have an 8 to 5 weekly gig, side hustles, and passive income. Currently, my regularly scheduled work routine is the most lucrative. However, someday that could change and a side hustle could become the main hustle. I also diversify my wealth with home ownership through equity.
A few ways to diversify wealth so that it continues to compound with time just like any fine wine.
Diversification is a foundation for happiness.
Just like health and wealth, happiness deserves diversification too.
Of the 168 hours in a week, 40 of those hours are at work. A quarter of the week is at a place that actively pays me to be there. Cram in food, sleep, and hygiene, and there’s precious time left for fun, yet it gets all the mental bandwidth.
Weekends become stacked with the adult things to-do and whatever’s left is where fun is squeezed in.
Ironically, what’s yearned the most (the weekend) is what’s achieved the least (still the weekend).
To maximize time and energy, it’s best to diversify happiness too.
I diversity by having a range of fun. Some fun is active which requires energy and clothes that aren’t sweatpants like hiking and camping. Other fun is passive because all I need is consciousness like reading, taking a bath, or watching a movie.
Sometimes, I have time and energy for active fun. Other times, I don’t and default to passive fun. Having a range of activities ensures that I find fun no matter what my energy level is. No matter how I feel, I can increase my happiness like the one time I found out the struggle bus has a loyalty rewards program.
Health, wealth, and happiness require diversification too.
Similar to healthy businesses, ecosystems, and potlucks, diversity is more than a buzzword. Diversification is how to ensure that if the world goes to pot *cough* 2020 *cough* that there will be some vestiges of good things afterward.
In the before times, I put my entire identity into being a park ranger. When I fell face-first into actuality, I was cast adrift because my identity didn’t matching up with reality. I struggled to figure out who I was if I wasn’t a park ranger.
Years later, when I tumbled back into the ranger world, I was different. I had diversified my identity and wasn’t tied to a single ship that would sink faster than the Titanic.
Instead, I was a resilient human capable of bouncing back from blows and finding happiness in unexpected places.
Diversity isn’t just the spice of life, it is life.
