Most of us define Financial Freedom as follows…
“Financial freedom is when you have more money coming in each month passively (i.e., you’re not trading much of your time and energy for it) than you have going out in expenses each month.”
Makes sense, huh? I bought into this definition for a long time. Until…
I started thinking deeper about my financial beliefs. Even though I’ve been teaching financial literacy to kids, teens and adults for years, I constantly examine my own financial thoughts, beliefs and attitudes about the green stuff we use each day.
My subconscious has hinted several times that there was a separate, deeper meaning to the phrase but it hadn’t quite gelled yet…until this morning…and I’m not even sure what sparked the re-evaluation of it.
Financial Zen
The contemplation of financial freedom went something like this…
What if the ‘freedom’ part is really about freeing ourselves from the the grip we allow money to have on our lives?
What if financial freedom is really a state we can choose at any time…regardless of our current financial situation?
I’ve contemplated this before…called it Financial Yoga.
I now truly believe that ‘financial freedom’ is a place where we can choose to live, regardless of what is happening in our lives financially. And I’ve visited this place quite often over the past several months because I have had to ‘let go’ (in so many ways) of all of my real estate investments. Thankfully, visiting this place has enabled me to be peaceful during this process.
I simply chose to NOT make ‘the situation’ about ME. And now that I’ve graduated from this expensive real estate course, I’m grateful to have been able to find ‘freedom’ during the process.
No, it’s not as easy as it sounds AND yet it IS. You just have to decide what’s more important to you: the peace of mind you can have from reframing the meaning of money in your life or the stress you choose to feel because of whatever financial situation you’ve put yourself in in the first place.
If you have children, you can begin to insert this new paradigm of financial freedom into their little sponge-like psyches at an early age. First, by setting the example of living in this paradigm yourself (always the first step) and, second, by having conversations about the concept of ‘freedom’ with your children, even before you think they are able to understand it. (It’s never too early.)
Wouldn’t it be great if we all grew up with a sense of peace and calm about The Money Game so that, as adults, money didn’t define who we are? We could just learn the rules and win the game. I can only imagine what a different society we’d live in.
Just something to think about…