A retreat is simply a block of time set aside to focus solely on you. The goal of a retreat is to get your life as on track as you can possibly get it.
Usually, this means focusing in on a particular area of your life that feels out of whack, determining what exactly you can do in your own life to fix it, and coming up with a specific plan for achieving that. It also means refreshing and renewing yourself so that you can actually attack that specific plan that you’ve developed.
A weekend works really well for this. The time spent between Friday afternoon and Monday morning includes two full days and three full nights of sleep, which provides plenty of time to think about goals, refresh yourself, and move on from there. A three day weekend is a great time for this because the third day of the weekend is perfectly left for the first steps towards implementing your new goals.
If you measure the success of your life by what other people think of you, you will never get ahead and never be happy. There will always be someone else to impress or some other tool to win their fleeting awe. It all passes.
When you realize that the fleeting awe that others give you really doesn’t matter much at all and that what really matters is you and becoming the best possible person you can be, personal finance often snaps right in place in this kind of complete life.
Take control of your life. Figure out what you want, set your own goals, and use your money as a tool to put you where you want to be. Stop wasting time and money on what other people think.
The things you’re passionate about are the things that you can dump tons of time into while still deeply enjoying yourself. If you can channel that into earning income in some way, you’re far ahead of the career game.
Frugality is not about giving up the things that bring you joy in life. It’s about figuring out what actually does bring you joy in life and accentuating that, then cutting back sharply on the things that don’t matter as much to you.
For example, if you don’t watch much television, a frugal decision would be to get rid of your cable box and just use the over-the-air signals – or, perhaps, selling your television off entirely.
A key part of that statement – perhaps the key part – is the if you don’t watch much television part. If you do enjoy television and you watch it multiple hours per day, then you shouldn’t cut back on it. You might, however, find that you don’t watch your premium channels much, so you might get a cheaper package – or you might not.