Are You Only Living a Transactional Life

5 signs of living a transactional life, and its disadvantages

Writing about life always surprises me. Every time I come up with different perspectives.

This time I am asking if you are only living a transactional life or really living your life?

In transactional life, you take action to elicit a favorable reaction from others.

If we look within, most of our activities, actions, and relationships are transactional. In them, we seek to succeed, satisfy our egos, maintain our status, feel less lonely, earn money, give a good life to our families, and so forth.

Five Signs You are Living a Transactional Life

1) You are continuing your marriage only because

• You can’t pay alimony
• Your children will be at a loss. You don’t want them to suffer.
• You are afraid who else will marry you.
• You think that the ultimate truth of married life — it will remain the same whoever your partner is going to be.

2) You take care of your kids because

• You want to maintain your social status, as society demands you to take care of your kids, raise them and make them better human beings.
• They are going to pay off your loans
• They will take care of your medical bills and health when you grow old.

3) You are a yes-man in your friend circle

• You always agree with your friends
• You don’t put across your thoughts as you want them to be happy and so they share a cordial relationship with you.

In return, you ask them favors from time to time.

4) You go out with your colleagues because

You have to maintain the contact and network, develop trust so that you continue to be an integral part of the team.

5) You talk to your neighbors because

Who else will help you in need? Your family doesn’t live close to you.

Is It Bad to Live a Transactional Life?

Well, it is a tricky question.

Life is all about our connection with people. In every relationship, we expect other people to behave well, to give respect, to be kind and generous. However, calling every relationship as transactional is not right, because relationships are the basis of life. They depend on the gives and takes with people. But then there are different aspects to it.

To better understand, let us look at the actions which will not come under transactional way of living-

1. You go out with your friends for fun and happiness

You don’t ask them for favors, but just call them on a weekend to know how their life is going, because you love talking with them.

2. You help someone expecting nothing in return

You meet this young kid begging on the road, and your heart goes for him. You give him some money and feel happy about it.

3. Your love for kids, and your kids love for you

Until the age of 6–7 years, the love of both parents and kids is unconditional.

You feel happy looking at your kids, feeding them, cleaning them, playing with them. Their one touch and a smile take away all your fatigue of the day.

Mostly it continues till 6–7 years, because after that kids get their own perspective on the surrounding things.

4. Your passion for achieving something

You are living your life when you do something out of passion, not for the sake of money, but for learning and achieving, for proving to oneself, and for bringing the change.

It doesn’t matter to you even if they don’t give you increment, or whether you make a profit from the product, but you want to complete it for the sake of completing it. That’s when you are living your life.

You would say, I wish if I would not have to live a transactional life.

However, our society depends on transactions. It relies on that same old barter system. Just that they value everything on a common scale, which we know as currency.

This means that some transactions of life are not selfish, but you need it for survival, and to achieve certain goals of life.

With the above examples, it is also clear that if one is only living and engaging in transactional action, then happiness might elude them. All rich people know that money doesn’t make them happy. It is the inner satisfaction that makes them happy and lets them feel that — they are living their life.

Let us Look at the Disadvantages of only Living a Transactional Life

You keep on waiting for the transaction to complete. Be it the transaction of emotion, money, love, or care, you wait, wait and wait. When one completes, another starts, your expectations rise with time. You feel like your life is a stock market, and you keep on swinging with the bullish and bearish nature of transactions. You lose yourself, and rather focus only on this barter exchange in your daily life.

You lose the ability to live your life without trade. You make money; it looks happiness to you, but meeting needs for living is not happiness. For example, an internet connection decades ago was luxury, and that access has given you happiness, but were you happy with it every time.

You should not avoid transactional life, but you can’t ignore living an altruistic one. Your life has to be a mix of both ways of living a life.

What You Can Do From Here-

No, don’t make notes and write what you do in your life. We never do that. This is good for projects in the office. Here, mental notes will be ok.

1) Reflect on yourself, your actions, and your intentions from time to time. The one step of doing that is spending time with yourself even if you are an extrovert, and even if for 15 mins now and then.

2) Divide your relationships with colleagues, neighbors, friends, family, strangers, shopkeepers, security guards, housekeeping people if it is for maintaining the status in a society, for money, to satisfy your ego, or just because you like it.

I wouldn’t say you need to eliminate transactional relationships, because you need them, but I’d say to increase the. of meaningful altruistic relationships.

3) The relationships that go away faster are the ones you made only because you liked a person. Do not let go of such relationships. Even if they do not give back anything, but they help you be happy in your own space.

A transactional relationship is a force majeure from life, and other types depend on your choice. You can’t avoid the former actions, but you can increase the latter actions in your life to make it more meaningful and livable.

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