I’m a bit weird in that I decided to be free before I could afford it and it has occurred to me over the years since I began my quest for freedom that money is always the proverbial elephant in the room for anyone who desires true freedom from the hamster wheel of doom.
That’s why, once again this year, I’m shamelessly locking on to the inevitable tsunami of desire for real freedom that comes along every January and that is the object and subject of many millions of New Year Resolutions.
The only difference is that I’m going to focus the entirety of the fictional entity we call 2017 on exploring, helping and teaching on the subject of money:
Why you never seem to have enough money…and…
Why you will never be free to be free if you wait for the money to arrive first
How your relationship with money was formed and why this is holding you back from freedom
How to get people to give you money instead of you constantly giving it to others
How to need less money
How to rethink work
How to be free and support yourself financially forever
Staring tomorrow with my money freedom manifesto
Photo Credit: Jeff Belmonte Flickr via Compfight cc
Attitudes to work are firmly lodged at the centre of any discussion about freedom.
I was recently involved in such a discussion with some friends and the overwhelming feeling was one of stuckness. I know that’s not a word but it describes what was being communicated very well.
It started with just one person raising a point that she felt that she had failed to achieve her goals and dreams. These dreams were long held and it seemed that the reason she hadn’t achieved them was based around the fact that life had caught up with her, she got married, then the kids came along and so on.
The conversation then spread around the room as person after person admitted in a kind of AA type fashion that they weren’t living the dream and that in most cases they were doing work they didn’t like or enjoy (in some cases they had given up work that they considered their identity) just to make sure that the money came in to perpetuate the life that they weren’t enjoying.
Then the subject of financial security came up. In some cases people actually hated the work they were doing and/or the job they were in, but they felt compelled to keep on at it for reasons of financial security.
Then the reasons for needing this financial security started to come out and in many cases this was related to making sure they didn’t default on the mortgage.
So here we had a group of people who I previously assumed were working at things they loved and enjoying the work they did, only to discover that many of them had made massive compromises in their happiness (and by extension the happiness of those they held dearest), driven in large part by the self/society created pressure to be on the property ladder and to own a house.
This raised questions for me: » More »
I mentioned in a previous post that “the getting of money” a phrase borrowed from Chris McCully, was the single most quoted problem for people seeking freedom in their lives.
Freedom in this sense means the freedom to decide what you do at any given moment in time, so it generally means not working for someone else.
It stands to reason that just about everybody in the world would like to be free; free from the capitalist creation that is work as we know it today.
Of course work has arisen in our lives due to us becoming more “civilised”. The pay that we receive for work is a direct replacement for the time that we would have spent in pre-history staying away from predators and catching or foraging for food. It this sense, we probably have never been free to just laze around.
So being free isn’t necessarily to do with » More »
I’m re-reading Chris McCully’s excellent “Outside” at the moment
This is actually a collection of essay type pieces which use fishing as a catalyst to discuss issues of loneliness and the feeling of being “outside”.
One of Chris’s thoughts that struck home with me was a fleeting reference to “the getting of money”. He only touches on this briefly but in that short phrase he conveyed so much frustration. The same frustration that is felt by many I am sure. If only they didn’t have to concentrate so much bloody time on “the getting of money” they would be able to get on with what they really want to do, create their art and reflect on the meaning of existence.
However, in pursuing writing as a career, Chris McCully has probably nailed this equation already. Even although he obviously still feels that some of what he does isn’t exactly on target, he has decided that the only way to achieve freedom was to get started. Of course he probably had to make a lot of sacrifices along the way and he touches on past troubles throughout the book.
In setting up restless-peasant I » More »