My wife and I spent last week in the mountains of Colorado. It was beautiful and, more importantly, very cool and dry, especially compared to the Kansas air. But this blog isn't about how great a week it was, but about how it made me think about my life and my chosen vocation. My job as a Life Centered Financial Planner is to guide people to find the best "return on life" with their money. We often go through life like it is just a rehearsal, as if we will be able to do it again at some point. Suddenly, we find ourselves rapidly getting older and not able to do the things that we love to do, which we used to take for granted. I did a lot of hiking and fishing during this week, and I noticed a couple of things that reminded me that I wasn't as young as I used to be.  

On one of the hikes, which was labeled as "hard" by the hiking app on my phone, my wife and I used our hiking poles to help make the ascent and descent easier. I noticed that not a lot of the other hikers had poles. I thought back to my younger days and realized that I would have looked at hikers with poles and wondered, "why do they hassle with carrying hiking poles." I am not sure that I could have done this hike without them.

The second reminder was the extra equipment that I carry with me when I fly fish that I didn't use to need. I have a wading stick to keep me from falling in the water, magnifiers to see the fly that I am tying on, and a tool that clips on to the fly that assists me with tying on small flies. These are all things that I didn't need when I was younger. When did this happen!  

One of my mentors, Paul Armson, says,

"Life is NOT a rehearsal; precious time IS slipping away." So the question I am asking is, What do you want to do with the limited time you have left before it is too late?

I am not talking about making a bucket list, although you can if you want. What do you want to do with your life before you are too old to do those things? When I was younger, I loved all of the active sports, like basketball, tennis, running, etc. Now I can't do any of those things, but I can golf, fish, hike, bike, walk, etc. Soon, I won't be able to do any of those either. I want to make sure that I am using the time I have now. That is why I am a Life Centered Financial Planner. To help myself and to help others. The long hike up the mountain in Colorado reminded me of that. By the way, the beautiful upper fish creek falls were worth it.

Postscript: I crashed and burned on my bike today, so you can scratch biking off the list :<[.