How She Did It

People often ask me how I managed to go from living paycheck to paycheck to be retired early within just 10 years. Actually, they used to ask me about it before I even retired, when I was simply living a very comfortable life in one of the most expensive places in the world while working from home and being a happy, peaceful person. That alone seemed a mysterious feat to accomplish to many.

That's because people get conditioned to believe in tradeoffs. They believe that nonsense they were taught as children being indoctrinated to serve the corporate, religious and governmental interests.

"No pain, no gain."
"The Devil makes work for idle hands."
"Earn your keep."
"Who do you think you are?"

And so on. Can you see why a slave master might want to train his slaves to believe these things? And how important it would be to indoctrinate them while they're young? In fact, to make sure you put their parents to work training them in these ideas, plus send them to schools that also train them to be hard working and obedient and never speak unless spoken to. Definitely don't demand creative freedom or "unearned" rewards. (The children of the rich aren't taught these things, by the way. Funny that.)

I can say without a doubt that within just 2 years of trying the opposite approach I could clearly see that the opposite was true. Specifically, the more I stressed myself with long hours of hard effort, the less money I made. Yet the more I gave myself ample free time and only did the work I felt inspired to do (unless I had a deadline I'd been foolish enough to accept) the more money came pouring in.

I recall sitting on a beach in Kauai and realizing that during the hour I'd been sitting there watching the waves roll in and out, I'd made about $1,000. Back when I had to work for every dollar I earned, because someone else was deciding what to pay me based on effort, the most I'd ever made was $75/hr and I'd counted myself fortunate to make even that!

Indeed, all the workers who were earning me that $1,000 per hour were incredibly satisfied with the $60/hr I was paying them. It was so much more than they had ever earned before, and they were doing the work from home, working their own schedule. And the clients they were working for were happy too. They were paying half what they had previously been quoted, and getting a task done that they had felt needed doing for years, for which their business was feeling the pain.

Everyone was happy. No one felt they were being taken advantage of. No one felt they needed to punish themselves before they deserved the reward of happiness. And this I believe is the secret to transforming a life of struggle into one of abundance and ease: Create win-win situations for as many people as possible with everything you do, particularly for yourself, and the good times will in fact roll.

Steps in the Transition

I don't want this to be a book, so I won't go into all the details, but I do want to share with you a few key pivot points as I was creating this.

First, it started with making a move at the request of Spirit, where I set these impossible conditions before I would go, and within 3 days every condition was met. It was clearly "meant to be" and so I complied despite not really wanting to leave where I was (in Hawaii).

That decision forced me to scramble for new ideas for supporting myself, and there were a number of choices I made in response to that which turned out to be crucial.

At the time it just seemed like doing the thing that was right in front of me needing to be done, while always demanding that a situation make me happy. If I went to apply even for a temp job, I talked up the salary at the interview. And once on the job I demanded vacation pay, sick pay, health care, even had the company rent me a car for a month and buy me a plane ticket back to Hawaii to pack up my stuff. I had positions created for me, and I had them invest in expensive training for me.

How I did all this really came down to my knowing the value I brought, and making sure that I did in fact have the ability to contribute that value. I was "earning my keep" but not by suffering, just by being creative and as happy as I could make myself there.

But I wasn't leaving it to someone else to see that value. I was my own best advocate, and was always calm and reasonable, because I knew exactly why I deserved everything I asked for. For one thing, I was so precise in everything I did that I reduced their error rate by 30% in my first month on the job!

I was able to do that because I was so calm and focused, rather than stressed and harried like most of the people around me. People don't realize how much worse their work output is when they're trying too hard. Work less hard and more joyfully (include lots of breaks to take walks outside) and you'll actually be more productive. But everyone is thinking backwards, and even employers have to be educated as to why you take so many breaks. Or why they sometimes find you sitting at your desk with your eyes closed.

I tell them flat out that it's all so that I can do a better job with the time I am working. And the evidence bears me out to be telling the truth, so they don't mess with me.

That was back then, of course. I've not had a boss in a long time. Which brings me to the next transition point.

Pivot Point Two

Even with an employer giving me so much freedom and reward (having increased my salary by 50% within just 6 months of my being hired as a temp), I still wasn't satisfied. I knew I wanted to work from home and wanted to earn more money. So I left that job for one that allowed me to do exactly that, working from home for double the salary.

But even that wasn't enough! After a couple years working from home as an independent contractor, so having complete control over my schedule and how I worked, I still wanted more. As I mentioned in my article yesterday, my life was pleasant, but still too small for who I really am.

Then the economy collapsed and my primary client/employer decided to leave my state.

I responded to that by creating a website and going into business doing the exact same work for myself that I had been doing as a contractor. (I didn't know how to make a website and had no creative software, nor even a laptop of my own. So I signed up for a free month of Lynda.com to learn how and got the laptop and software at 90% off student prices by paying $120 to become a half-time student at a nearby community college).

Two months later I got my first new client and two years later I made my first million dollar deal.

And get this, that major project that really made my business's finances was almost entirely delivered by other people.

For the first time I stopped doing the work and started setting up projects that other people would deliver. Instead of being a service provider, I became a "win-win creator." That was my job. I created the conditions for everyone involved to feel like they were as happy as they could be, and I was richly rewarded for creating all that happiness.

Applying This Yourself

Obviously there is a lot more that can be said about this. There were many little things I had to be doing each day to make it all work, most notably work on my inner state. I had to train myself to become someone who knew how to let happiness in, after having been raised in a society that teaches everyone they were born in original sin. I had to believe in my intrinsic right to happiness, regardless of whether anyone else was giving me permission to be happy or not. A lot went into that retraining.

But I also had to take the kind of external steps I've outlined above. So I would encourage you to look at both in your life too.

I call it the Inner Game and the Outer Game. Inner Game, you've got to retrain yourself to believe that good things can come to you without your needing to suffer or sacrifice first to deserve them. You deserve happiness just because you were born deserving happiness.

The Outer Game is learning how to do the things you need to make yourself the most effective worker you can be while you still need to work for others to learn and earn, and then learning the new skill set once you are able to work for yourself. Within that second skill-set must be the ability to create situations that benefit many others, and then manage the situation.

I must confess that I never really did successfully learn to manage it all, which is why my business ran its course in a little under 10 years. But that was okay, because that and the financial decisions I made with the money put me in a position where I could retire from work in that amount of time anyway.

Someday I may learn to manage with some big creative project. But I'm actually quite content to someday die with many imperfections left in me. That may wind up being one of them. 😎

If you were going to revise one thing in your mindset to increase your abundance and satisfaction in life, what do you think it would be useful for you to change?

If you were going to create win-win situations to bring well-being/abundance to others, what might you enjoy doing?

What would you need to learn to be able to do that?

Don't think it a waste of time to answer these challenging questions. Answering them with your creative mind may just be the first step in answering them with the actual living of your ecstatically fulfilling life.

(Photo Source: Pixabay)

Resteems always appreciated!

P.S. Have you heard about Guaranteed Basic Income currently be provided by Mannabase? If enough of us can reprogram ourselves to be comfortable with abundance without sacrifice, I believe more and more such programs will successfully come into the world and achieve their desired effect. If you haven't already signed up, please use my referral link to do so, creating a win-win for us both.