Episode 65: How Do Mondays Feel Compared to Fridays?

How do you feel in your gut when you know the next day is Monday versus when it’s Friday? 

If we’re not careful, we’ll spend 5 days of our lives looking forward to 2, and 40 plus years looking forward to however many years we can live in retirement. We’re taught from an early age that’s the norm. For me, I learned it from family, friends, T.V. shows, that I was supposed to dread Monday and LOVE Friday.  That I needed to work hard to get a job that paid money so that I could have enough to quit it one day. 

Love what you do 

Because I’m a problem solver, I dove into a finance in college and as a career because I was determined to understand this puzzle. If figuring out freedom was the goal, I was “supposed to” strive towards, why not go right to the rule book? So I did, and I was lucky enough to go to work for a company who specialized in working with small, closely held businesses.  I was trained to help them with many things, and retirement was one of them. What I learned from them was invaluable.  

I was shocked how many times I’d ask the business owner I met about their retirement goals.  Lots of times they told me that they had no intention of retiring.  They loved what they did! Now, it’s easy to imagine someone doing something glamourous like being a artist, writer, or actor saying such a thing, but an owner of a concrete company, a restaurant, or a machine shop?! 20 something year old Carlo was surprised and curious.  I asked them why, and they told me! 

Most often people in this situation had spent a lifetime building something and they were proud of it.  They loved their customers and employees. The derived a sense of purpose from continuing to do this thing they had devoted their life to and a sense of satisfaction from how this business impacted the families of their team, as well as their own. 

So, if you are lucky enough to find something you are really good at, that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning, and ultimately you feel you have nothing to retire From, then you’ve hit the jackpot!  

Know Your Why 

Another way to find more meaning in the days of your life, is to have a really clear understanding of why you are doing it and then align your life, habits, and behavior around that why. 

I consider myself lucky to have found a career that allowed me to build a business that aligned with my skills and passion. It was because of that alignment and my decision to start a business) that I was good enough at it (and lucky) to have the success I wanted. But, in my heart of hearts I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever.  I knew it was something I had to do for money and I didn’t see a path that allowed me to immediately change what I was doing without putting my family in a bad financial situation.  

In AfterLIFE, Waking Up from My American Dream, I walked through the changes I made with my business to bring it into alignment with my higher purpose and clearer vision, and these are the actions that ultimately brought me the financial freedom I had been looking for. 

Bonus 

A key point though is that even if you absolutely love what you do, you should do your planning for your financial freedom in case you don’t get to decide when your done. Your health, the economy, your company, or any number of things could take away your ability to keep doing what you do...or you could find yourself burned out one day. I’ve even seen people’s desire to work change when grandkids come along.  

A friend once told me that the best decision in life is the one that gives us the most options...and building your financial freedom does just that. 

Good luck to you!