"Lifeonaire" by Steve Cook

[Mike Russo]

Hi all,

I just heard an interview with the Steve Cook, the author of "Lifeonaire", a very successful real estate investor that realized that we can become a prisoner to our success. He discusses the importance of defining the life we want first and then building our real estate investment business around it. I was impressed by his thoughtfulness and life perspectives.

Mike

[Michael Wagner]

I too read Lifeonaire and agree that it was a bit corny.  It was also life changing for my wife and I.  The simple truth is that most of America (myself included up until recently) are living as victims of the world around us.  Without realizing it, we strive for "success" without having ever defined success for ourselves.  We unconsciously pursue society's version of success because its easy to do.  Money and Things are easy to measure so they serve as a good thermometer and tell us how we are "doing" relative to others. The downside being that those things never bring the feelings we hope they will.  Even when our ship comes in and we "make it big", our happiness is short lived and soon replaced by discontent.  We are stuck waiting for our next and bigger "ship to come in".  This isn't to say we are making bad decisions, we are just not aware that there is a better way to live.  

This book helped me shift gears from an "its never good enough" mindset to a much better one.  Now that I have a VISION (which my wife and I formulated at a Lifeonaire event), I could not be happier.  My wife and I live a very comfortable life on a combined 10-15 hours per week of "work" and spend the rest of the time with our two young children.  While we could certainly make more money if we spent more time at it, we have chosen a different path. We used the Lifeonaire message to consciously plan what we want our life to look like and make decisions that create that life for us.  

Boiled down, one of the many valuable messages in this book is that regardless of what we say, our priorities are evident in how we spend out time.  Many folks will list Family ahead of Career on their ordered list of priorities, yet when we look at their weekly schedule, we see that they spend 40, 50, or 60 hours per week at work and 5-10 hours with family). That was me before Lifeonaire.  The opposite is now true and for that I am forever grateful!  This book helped us realize that we had the power to change and that "i work so much to support my family who I love" is a backwards way of thinking.