Something Only Costs Too Much When…

Every day we make so many choices and in each choice we’re quantifying the tradeoff. If I do this thing then I can’t do that thing, or it will make me feel this way, or it will affect this person this way, or it will interact with my values in this way. Aligning your choices around what you want holistically, and not narrowly to achieve a single end, is what I call living intentionally and it’s the North Star of my life. 

Embedded in the idea of making choices and calculating tradeoffs is the cost of something. Understanding how much money, energy, or time is needed and estimating the payoff of it. We all want the best bang for our buck, literally and metaphorically.

And that’s the crux of the question… How do we know when something is worth it? Here’s the way that I think about it: Something only costs too much when you don’t receive enough value in return.

What’s interesting about this perspective is that it makes you quantify value as a relationship between what you give and what you get. So many of us focus on how steep the price is relative to other things we’ve invested our time, money, and energy into. But what’s much more important is the proportion between what we give and what we get.

It’s a mechanism that keeps itself in check. When you have less to give and the price of doing so is high, then you assume a greater cost. This means that to justify the cost, the thing you get back must be of even greater value to you.

What’s valuable to you connects to what you want. What problems do you want support with and in what ways do you want your life to elevate? Given where you’re at, you need to determine the currency that’s most valuable to you. And not simply based on your short-term needs and impulses, but from a grander view. Do you want more peace and less stress? Do you want more adventure or more alignment? When you invest in the things that connect more closely to what you want, you experience a greater return and the cost isn’t so much to bear. 

Having said that, I believe we’re not supposed to see life completely through this transactional lens. Especially when it benefits others we should give generously. But to use the same argument, there’s an inherent value to you in being the type of person that helps others and wants to be generous.

That’s why intentionality is everything. It helps you align your choices around what genuinely matters, and helps you make choices that follow suit.

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