As a business consultant and life coach, I get to speak to many rich and affluent people around the country. My profession has led me to find out that joy is a far distant engagement to many rich and affluent, they are more intimate towards misery. They have everything else except the most important thing known as happiness. One of the key reasons for a person to delve in misery is because they skip the beautiful moments in life and focus and thrive hard only on building a fortune for the future. Having great dreams is indeed important.

As a responsible father, I carry a heap of dreams for my generation, yet I am vigilant in making sure not to skip the beautiful moments of the present. Ignoring the present and focusing only on the future is a highly detrimental state of mind that can lead you towards great misery upon reaching your future destination. This is exactly like possessing a golden toothbrush when you do not have any teeth. Your children, spouse and parents will never be at their current age just because you postpone being with them at this moment. You could delay living in the present, but the present moment will not delay its expiration.

Every opportunity in life comes with an expiration date, a life span. If you miss it, you will never receive it again. The childhood of your little children will never come again. Your parents may depart from this world today whilst you are busy making money. You have postponed visiting them on many occasions as creating your unseen future is more important to you. The only moment you have now is to visit them at their funeral. You may cry insanely before their coffins, but the sad reality is that they cannot hear you nor see your tears.

The reason that many children go astray in their lives is because their minds are hungry for love, acceptance, worthiness, and concern. Life moves on, you cannot take your eight-year-old daughter on a merry go round once she is thirty and you are fifty-five. Even though going on the merry go round is the wish of an eight-year-old girl it will not be the wish of her when she is a thirty-year-old mother. People work hard until their retirement, ignoring the moments that they should be living to their fullest. Similarly, children are harbouring money ignoring being with their parents.

We need to separate the borders of each and everything. There must be a border to make money and a time to be with our loved ones. We all play multiple roles in life. Yet, we act as though our only role in life is being a businessman or a professional. This mindset makes you a failure of the rest of the roles in life such as being a son, a spouse and a parent. I earn money but I have made it clear that I will not sell the laughter of my children for a few dollar notes. Many cry before the coffins of their parents as they have completely missed out on being with their parents when they needed their children the most.

People are so busy making money that they are ignoring the beautiful sentiments in life. By the time they purchase the golden toothbrush, they don’t have any teeth to brush with it. Therefore, don’t miss the beautiful moments in life. Just do it when you must do it. You cannot relive the past and correct where you went wrong. If you have missed the beautiful sentiments in life, then do not be surprised when “worries” enter your life and steal the beauty of the present. As many of you are aware I am considered the most expensive corporate trainer in the country.

Recently, I was offered the opportunity of conducting four training programmes by a large company in Sri Lanka. They requested to conduct them on Sundays. I did not have the slightest hesitation to refuse that offer as I had reserved my Sundays to be with my precious family. Living with my wife and children to the fullest is way above the few million that I could have easily earned at the cost of their happiness. I have not been this way always. There was a time I ran after money crazily, but I found that I was missing something. Even though we had good food on our table the beautiful smiles were not seen. Many think that the food we eat is all a human need.

I do not want to regret at the age of fifty-five (55) that I could not live the moments that I should have lived with my wife and children who crave my presence in their life. Yes, I may not be able to attend every school event due to my profession but I am determined to be present at every precious moment that they desire my presence. Many would not believe my way of living at home. I become a small kid inside my home even though the world considers me as a giant. I play childishly with my children, pillow fights, splashing water, humorous pranks, hide and seek and many other crazy deeds that only kids would do, as that is what the kids want.

They do not want to hear the profound life teachings that I do to the corporate world. I prefer being natural and living a happy life as tomorrow may never come again. That is the reason I named this article as “Merry Go Round @ 55”. I have seen people running crazily thinking that they have everything they need. Everything will become nothing when nothing other than money becomes everything. People must redefine the definition of success as the current definition seems like it is not taking them anywhere. Having everything except happiness is not success.

You may find a countless number of miserable people who are wealthy. If you have everything other than happiness, then I invite you to redefine the essence in life by prioritising your priorities in retrospect to the ones of your loved ones. Sometimes, we are poor in understanding their real needs. We think what makes us happy is what makes them happy as well. Once, I bought an expensive meal for my grandmother with the hope of receiving delightful feedback from her. Yet, she said she would have preferred spicy rice and curry from the shop nearby. That was an eye opener to me, it took me to a whole new realm. People require different elements of happiness during different stages of their lives. What my eight-year-old daughter Esther see and what I see as happiness are two different realms.

Wisdom is seeing the other person’s dream through your eyes. The stronger vessel must always live a sacrificial life out of the love that he bears towards the weaker vessel. During the first phase of my life, my life was all about me and my ruthlessly selfish mindset that stole the happiness of my innocent wife. Yet, the moment I tweaked my thought patterns and began to burn myself for her happiness, life became awesomely beautiful. I could have become one of the richest in the country, but I define being rich is not accumulating loads of dollars but abundance of happiness even amidst a simple meal.

To me life is awesome and we enjoy every single bit of it. Yes, we have big dreams but none of us stagnate in the past nor in the future. We occupy ourselves living the moment and its sentiments to the fullest. I shed tears at times when I need to and I smile to the maximum quite often. My tears clear my mind tank and laughter fills it with happiness. Life is Beautiful.

To purchase the book “The Art of Bouncing Back” visit Sarasavi, MD Gunasena, Expographics, Vijitha Yapa, Makeen Bookshops and Daraz Online stores. For Comments/ Training Bookings - 0774 88 5656, www.philipnehri. com