St. Patrick’s Day has always held a special place in my life. First, I am Irish. I’m not talking the everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day kind of Irish. For as long as I can remember, my parents celebrated the Luck of the Irish. Understanding that most years, like this year, falls during the Catholic season of Lent.
Second, in my younger and more irresponsible years, St. Patrick’s Day took on indulgent behavior of a sort that I am not proud of. It is only by the Grace of God that nothing terribly stupid happened that ruined my life.
Third, ultimately two of my greatest blessings are linked to St. Patrick’s Day, one related to one of my children and the other related to my own health.
Fourth, St. Patrick’s Day typically precedes or is during two of the greatest non-holiday, but the secular holiday days known as the beginning of March Madness.
Once in grade school, I won a St. Patrick’s Day costume contest, which allowed me to get out of 60 minutes worth of homework for the rest of the year. Interestingly, this golden ticket, allowed you to selectively skip homework in increments. Being the strategic person that I am that likes to maximize benefits, I utilized delayed gratification. Carefully, selecting only the parts of homework assignments that I truly dreaded as too difficult or time consuming based upon my schedule. I milked that 60 minute homework pass for about eight assignments. The entire episode is a distinct memory of fourth grade. It also created an opportunity to hone my delayed gratification craft.
Grateful for More Than Luck
I’ve been lucky and blessed throughout my life. I do not know the exact circumstance, but I do know that I am lucky to be alive. In fact, statistically speaking, it’s extraordinary that any human being is born.
“The statement that the probability of an individual being born is about 1 in 400 trillion serves as a way to express the extraordinary uniqueness of each person’s existence. While it captures the imagination, this figure is not a scientifically precise calculation but rather an illustrative estimate.” – brainly.com
Everyone on Earth beat the odds to get to the moment of conception. You can do impossible things. In my case, I acknowledge more than beating statistical odds. Throughout my life, I have been cognizant of and recognizing the role of Divine Intervention. Some may call it getting lucky. Some calling it blessings. To me all of this is just another way of acknowledging Divine Intervention in our lives.
You may be asking yourself, HouFIni, I get delayed gratification impacting your financial independence (FI) journey. However, what does being lucky and grateful have to FI?
Gratitude and Money
Having a grateful heart promotes my acting with gratitude. My blessings include not only an amazing life, family, beautiful home, work that I enjoy, people that I enjoy in my life and so much more.
For me deeply reconnecting with my spirituality and regarding a Higher Power helps to provide clarity in my financial life. I know when I am “operating like an FI idiot.” Typically, acting like an FI idiot is financially lazy, unintentional, and undisciplined. Rarely, is “operating like an FI idiot” an intentional behavior, though their are times that my generosity pushes these limits.
For us, spreading gratitude involves being an active member of our community. Keeping your eyes and ears open by being aware of the needs in my community has been a first step. You do not need to be giving away large sums of money. Simply acting to assist in little ways either anonymously or directly has allowed me to pay it forward.
Many a priest has reminded me that offering a prayer for someone else, a loved one, a family member, friend or foe is an important action. Saying a prayer as an ambulance speeds to meet a crisis or is taking someone to the hospital does not cost me anything but a few minutes of time. Further, the acting a praying for others reminds me of my own blessings.
Making Your Own Luck
In addition to being lucky and blessed, I have made my own luck. Often making your own luck involves taking the road less traveled. Pure and simple, one of the ways I’ve made my own luck is by working hard. Hard work alone is not the only factor.
For my spouse and I, we have found that having the ability to incorporate our faith into our work provides maximum blessings. I have also found that seeing things as opportunities rather than a challenge. Life offers plenty of curve balls. Knowing how to hit the curve ball or at least turn it into a foul ball and get another swing has been key.
On a more recent St. Patrick’s Day, I was able to hit the curve ball. No doubt, my Divine Intervention blessings made this possible. This experience is allowing me to see more possibilities and be focusing my energies on the bigger picture.
Counting down the months to make “paid work optional” is partially because we know that we have more important work ahead of us that does not involve money. Serving our communities and family, both directly and in a broader sense, is part of our genetic makeup.
Understanding Our Calling
One thing we have tried not to do during our careers is solely focus on money. HouFIni, what can you possibly mean by this, money is important for financial independence? Focusing on our calling in life, has been a beneficial life strategy life strategy. HouFIni, this sounds like FI blasphemy? However, rather than focusing on the best way to maximize the amount of money we earn, we are prioritizing our calling. There are certainly multiple ways, and various financial levels to acting on your calling. A life calling need not be a money losing strategy. Indeed, living and working your calling can actually be quite profitable.
During the short periods of our careers where we did focusing on money over calling, we found despair and unhappiness. Indeed, working solely for money if you cannot see any other alignment with your life, makes getting out of bed difficult. There have been periods where we made more money through are employment, but it was joyless. Kind of like Mr. 1500’s describing his death march to FI as he describes in a post or over at the Mile High FI podcast.
In our case, understanding that most of our pleasures are free or little money costs has allowed us to enhance our blessed life.
Wishing You St. Patrick’s Day Blessings
HouFIni is prioritizing spending time with people and immersing in experiences rather than on material items. In HouFIni’s life, these areas bring the most joy. Each St. Patrick’s Day is a reminder that lasering in on the true important aspects of life cannot be ignored. Time passes too quickly and we do not know how long we will be blessed to participate in this play we call life.
Accordingly, St. Patrick was captured as a slave in his youth. St Patrick is said to have proclaimed during his captivity:
“The love of God and his fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was roused, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same.” – St. Patrick
I know I’m counting my blessings the St. Patrick’s Day. I’m hoping you are finding the mindset to do likewise.
St. Patrick’s Day is a significant day in our lives and evaluating our blessed life.
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