The P&L Of Life
March 19, 2020
Here’s an interesting premise.
The health of a business is seen in its Profit & Loss statement that comprises income and expense. For the business to remain solvent, it has to be profitable. For that to happen the revenue has to be greater than the cost of running the business.
Our life is similar to a business.
We are going through an experience every living moment of our life. We ascribe meaning to our experience through emotions. We say the experience is either positive or negative.
The positive experiences are like the revenue for a business while the negative experiences are like the cost. The intensity of the positive and negative experiences is akin to the quantum of income earned or the costs incurred.
In Business, we can say Profit= Income-Cost
In Life, we can say Happiness= Positive experiences-Negative experiences
Just like the motive of a business is to increase its profits, the motive of our life would be to increase our happiness and overall state of well being.
How do we do that?
The clue is in the way a good business looks at improving its Profits.
A good business does not operate randomly. It has a vision, mission, a strategic 5-year plan, an annual plan which is then executed. It creates value that is rewarded by the market place as revenue. A good business then tracks its own progress.
The objective of a business is to be a running entity for as long as it can delivering on its mission and creating value for the marketplace.
So it is with our life.
We can have a purpose to our life similar to the mission of a business entity.
We can have specific long term and short term goals and we can work towards those goals. In pursuit of our goals, we will experience lots of positive experiences while there will also be a few negative experiences. We will achieve many of our goals set. We will also miss many of the goals. We will be happy most times, but we will also experience pain and suffering once in a while.
The objective of our life is to be emotionally solvent and be a happy human being for as long as we are alive.
As a final thought, just like a business does not miss counting any revenue items when drawing out its Profit and Loss statement, we should not miss keeping track of and reporting even the smallest of positive experiences. The more we are able to recognize and report our positive experiences, the more profitable our life will be in terms of our state of happiness.
