Sam Walton: Life is about Trade-Offs

Life is an inherent struggle to determine whether how you’re living is the right way Are you working the right job? Are you investing your time in meaningful pursuits? Are you prioritizing the most important activities and roles?

The answer is that there is no right answer, which makes finding the answer hard. As you grow older, you will likely spend more time reflecting on how you lived your life, the decisions you made, and the legacy you left.

You will be pleased with some, question others, and ponder a few.

In the late 1980s, Sam Walton was nearing the end of his life and working on his autobiography: Made in America. This book served as a means for him to share the story of how he built Walmart, while also a chance to reflect on how he had lived his life and whether he had spent it the "right" way.

As he wrote,

This will sound strange to people who know me, but lately I’ve wondered if I should feel bad about having been so wholly committed to Wal-Mart. Was it really worth all the time I spent away from my family? Should I have driven my partners so hard all these years? Am I really leaving behind something on this earth that I can be proud of having accomplished, or does it somehow lack meaning to me now that I’m facing the ultimate challenge?

They are the questions you may be asking yourself right now, or that you might consider in the future. So, how can you ensure that the answer to the question—Did I live my life the right way?--is made with conviction and confidence? By understanding what Walton himself understood,

Here’s how I look at it: my life has been a trade-off. If I wanted to reach the goals I set for myself, I had to get at it and stay at it every day. I had to think about it all the time…I had to get up every day with the mindset on improving something...Having now thought about this a bit, I can honestly say that if I had the choices to make all over again, I would make just about the same ones. 

Life is a trade-off. Every decision you make involves choosing one option over another, shaping the life you lead and the things you do. And the truth is, you can never live the perfect life you want, you can never do all the things and travel all the paths. The goal is to find and choose a life where the trade-offs of the lives you could be living are worth it. That's the goal.

Is what you're doing worth more than a different life or lives you could be living?

There are a lot of right ways to spend your life and a bunch of great ways you could be living, but the key is to find the one that outweighs the others. And a good way to understand if you’re making the right trade-off, is to ask yourself, if you could do it all over again, would you be doing what you’re doing right now? 

If you would trade off the life you have for a different one, then you might want to reconsider how you're living and spending your time.

---

Thank you for reading. The best way you can support is to share this with at least one person.

You can check out the Greatness Podcast, where I dive into the lives and stories of the world's greatest individuals. 

You can listen to more about the life and greatness of Sam Walton here.

You can snag some Chasing Greatness apparel here and my book here.