What does your life look like now that you’ve achieved financial freedom? Where do you live? How much money do you have? Who are your friends? What do you do with your time now? Are you still working but only out of choice? What’s your day like, down to the minute? How do you serve other people? Are you donating money every year? In other words, what would your life look like years from now, when you accomplished the decision to get financial freedom?
Let’s play a fun a game. It’s 5 years from now. Look at your life as if you’re already in attainment of financial freedom. Now, you’re looking back from the future to the past, 5 years ago. You’re reflecting on all the changes you made and all the action you took in those past few years. In other words, you’re thinking back on how you got here.
This concept of future memory is a powerful one. Rather than coming from a place of I don’t know the how, you’re asking questions which can lead you to the how because you already have it. You see yourself as the person already in attainment of financial freedom. This is another reason why future memory is important: If you can see it in your mind, then one day you can hold it in your hands.
You Have to Believe You Can Get Financial Freedom Before You Can See Financial Freedom
Too many people like to say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Yet, this is much more powerful when you flip this around to, “I’ll see it when I believe it.”
It’s like saying, “When I have the money, then I’ll do what I want. I’ll finally be happy.” This doesn’t work. There isn’t a special milestone you pass such that when you finally do everything starts to magically transform for the better. It’s like lamenting, “When will this miserable existence of a life end, and my new one start? I can’t wait to be happy.”
It’s like saying when you finally change jobs or move to a new city that somehow happiness will find you.
I choose to practice happiness now. Then I do what I want to do. This leads me to the money.
Your life as you know it is happening right now, be it good or bad. Yet as humans, we are hopeful creatures, looking to the future when our present conditions are less-than-ideal. We are hopeful for that magical moment when this current bad situation ends and better ones begin.
You Attract What You Think
I was in a similar situation for a time, until I realized that I was the sole author of my unhappiness. I started to make changes and improve my overall satisfaction with life. Along the way, I gave more of myself by volunteering in club activities and serving others people. In other words, I decided to be happy.
Admittedly, this was a strange concept when I first heard about it: My life was a result of my doing? We tend to blame other people or the situation for our unhappiness. Truth is we attract what we think. If we believe we are unhappy, we will attract people and things which continue to contribute to our unhappiness. We will literally make ourselves sick in health so that we can justify our misery. We continue to seek evidence which supports our viewpoints, oftentimes to the exclusion of the solution that is staring us right in the face.
This was a big ah-ha moment for me. Though it would take me many more years to dig myself out of this hole, my happiness level would start to increase over time. I started to take better care of myself by eating better, exercising, and treating myself to better things.
Sadly, I was also using money (or rather the perceived lack of) to justify my misery. I can’t afford that was a common excuse I often used. Yet, I could afford it. My money stories were keeping me from using money to enjoy life.
Start With ‘Get Financial Freedom’ in Mind
How much is enough? Most people want more money. They want financial success and freedom. Yet, almost each and every person fails to be specific. This makes it hard to know when we’ve reached our wealth goal. This is why it’s important to ask yourself this question: How much is enough? How much is more money?
How do you want to live now that you have financial freedom? When you have this number, you can start working backwards. Think bigger. What would you really be doing if you have so much money you didn’t need to worry about working another day in your life? What would you really be doing?
This is the heart of financial freedom; rather–real freedom. Would you be pursuing your secret dreams of being an author, painter, musician, movie director, pastry chef, artisan, barista, etc. Perhaps you never pursued these things because of the “common” perception that these occupations leave you starving and broke. So, it’s better to do something you hate for the next 20 or 30 years, accrue enough wealth, then go do what you really want. What’s stopping you now that you have enough money to fulfil these secret desires?
You Do Not Need to Wait Until You Get Financial Freedom
Better yet, you do not need to wait until you have enough money to start doing these things! This is one of the biggest ah-ha moments you will realize on your journey to financial success. To some degree, you can start living the kind of life you want right now. For instance, you may want a house overlooking the ocean but financially it’s out of your reach. You can start the dream by taking a trip to the ocean to feel what it’s like to have that house. Then, keep that dream alive by taking regular trips to the ocean to remind yourself of that good feeling.
To get financial success is to realize that old notions such as “I can’t afford that” have no place in your life. You start asking yourself “how can I afford it?” Ask yourself what’s possible rather than what’s impossible. Take calculated risks, unlike 95% of the population, who would rather play it safe, tip-toeing from the cradle to the grave, hoping to make it safely in one piece.
^Shift Happens
You start to laugh at funny things people say when it comes to finances. For example, you tell someone you would prefer to make a charitable stock donation. The other person responds with this retort: “Most clubs don’t want to take stock donations because they are too volatile.” That makes sense…in your old way of thinking about money.
Your new way of thinking has now shifted: “That doesn’t make any sense. If I donate $500 in stocks and it loses 50% in value, you still have $250 you would have otherwise never had before.”
The fun thing about setting and achieving goals like financial success is you start looking every thing you want. Most people are good at looking for what they do not want. The irony is they are just as likely to get what they do not want.
So why not take a chance and go for what you really want?
The Power of Donating
As you continue to shift your money mindsets, achieve financial success, and get financial freedom, you’ll notice these three are intertwined. As you get financial success, you return to the process of working on your money mindsets to shift other beliefs. This moves you down another path towards financial success, which leads to freedom in other areas of your life.
Do your best to maintain awareness of your thoughts and question your beliefs as often as you are able to. It’s tempting to believe that what worked for me will not work for you, and to just give up as a result. Like anything in life, you’ll have to find and develop the right combination of tools which work for you.
As you reach your financial goals and get financial success, you start looking at how you might serve others. Yet, you might have a major blockage of money energy in that you just cannot get yourself to spend money. For example, you might be the kind of person who spends months on end in careful cogitation of an expenditure of money. You research to the point of paralysis. All you end up really doing is talking about what you’re going to get, in the end never spending the money.
Give and Get More Money Back in Return
One of the stranger concepts you’ll run into is giving away money and getting more back in return than you ever gave away. Granted, when I first heard this, I thought it was a bunch of nonsense. After all, I am my own favorite charity. If I give away my money, this means I have less. How then can I get more money back by giving away what little money I do have?
Money is energy. It is called currency because it works by being in constant motion. (What is money?) Yet, at times that energy is blocked because we do not practice putting money into circulation. This is where donating can help us.
Remember that money is really just a tool to keep the flow of ideas and services moving. You search on Google because you have a problem to solve. Google provides a service by (hopefully) finding a solution to your problem. Likewise, you call the plumber because you have a clogged drain. The plumber provides a service, solving your problem in just 10 minutes when it might have taken you a whole day to do it yourself. Anyone who’s ever worked on home improvement projects can certainly relate here!
Donating reminds us of one of the purposes of money, and that is to do good in the world. By putting money back into circulation, we are really doing this for ourselves. We want to keep the real value that money provides, which is to do good, going.
The Cautionary Tale of Ebenezer Scrooge
The main character of Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol didn’t start life as a miser and curmudgeon. He turned out this way because somewhere along the way he had lost himself. Through a series of negative events throughout his life, he had become disillusioned and cynical. Worst of all, he became a slave to money. He had forgotten money’s true purpose:
- Money serves you.
- Money enables you to live comfortably
- Do good for others.
- Amplify and shorten the time to do this good.
Start by determining just how much money is enough. What your criteria is for financial freedom? Everyone defines financial freedom differently. For one person, it may be to have enough saved up to cover a year’s worth of expenses should he lose his job. For another, it may only be 3 months.
The definition of financial freedom evolves as you go forward on this journey. For me, it was first to have enough in savings to cover 6 months’ worth of expenses, then 12 months. Now, my goal is to get to a point where I have enough to cover a thousand dollars of my expenses.
Freedom is what you make it out to be. Just avoid the temptation to think that once you’ve reached that magical number in your savings that somehow your life starts and happiness will find you.
Remember that you have to decide to be happy and do what you want.