Justin Lloyd

I have a very good friend whom we shall refer to as Mary for the sake of this article. Mary is a very capable woman in her early forties who began to lament her sorry lot in life whilst travelling back to my office with me. Recently she had lost her fairly well paid, high profile job as a director at a company. From observation I would say that the job loss has caused her a little bit of depression and has been a blow to her self-esteem. I have been witness to, and easily fallen in to the trap myself, of the delusional thinking that having a job working for someone else, and being gainfully employed is the natural state of affairs. It’s all part of the social conditioning we are subjected to. It is how I ended up with my first ever "real" job where I was not working for myself but for an actual company with set hours, a manager above me, a real payroll system and everything! I blame my parents for this sorry state of affairs. J It is often the case that we define who we are by our work, by our jobs, by the company we are employed at, as though the business name on a pay cheque can tell us who we really are.

Mary was worrying that her skill set was not sufficiently up to date; I know for a fact that it is. Her skills are in fact way beyond any level she would find necessary to do any of the jobs that she is interested in pursuing. Amongst her lamentations was also one where she was concerned her resume, now a grand total of four pages in length because of all of her experience, didn’t work for her anymore in the "new economy" with the upstart companies and employees all chasing after the hot new thing. It was really just basic fears of having to now look for a new job in a recession surfacing as age old insecurities that most of us have. A fear of the unknown, of the future, of leaving our comfort zone, of change.

All I can say is that listening to this tirade of insecurity made me think about our two differing viewpoints on the same situation. Let me just re-iterate this part, Mary is incredibly capable and intelligent; I find her to be quite intimidating in her abilities. She saw the situation as one to be feared, full of difficulty, adversity, and an almost insurmountably impossible position. I saw the situation entirely the opposite. Moreover, as I often do, I got on my soapbox – figuratively speaking, I was driving after all – and pretty much detailed her new opportunities

The change from having a full-time office job that consumed most of her life to her current situation is a huge opportunity to outright reinvent who she is. In a previous job that Mary held, the one before the one she lost, she worked almost every waking hour for an unappreciative group of bosses. She left that company to work at a small start-up and in that creative, dynamic atmosphere, she flourished. The pay was not anywhere near as good, sometimes the hours were completely insane, but she enjoyed the work, the people and the atmosphere, she became energized and driven. Now that she is looking at a new job, again she has the opportunity to go back to what she has always done or redefine who she is as a person.

Other than a small amount of balance on her credit card left over from a vacation she took recently, she has no actual debt to speak of. All of her liability is in the form of cyclical billing, e.g. cell phone, rent, utilities, etc. How many of us can honestly state that we are so free from revolving credit and extensive loans that our only financial obligations are whatever monthly services, such as internet or cell phone, we choose to purchase? How free would you be if you owed nothing? How much extra money would you have available at the end of every month?

Currently she is without a job, and other than this simple fact, she is not so badly off. She does not have anyone to answer to, she does not have to arise in the morning or retire to bed at specific times other than those she sets for herself. She can plan her day how she pleases. She can take off at a moment’s notice to visit family and friends or just sit under a tree and do nothing. She is also free to pursue whatever hobby or start-up business opportunities she chooses.

She has no obligations other than to pay her current cyclical bills on time, which she is capable of doing. In addition, note how I mentioned she has no obligations. I did not say no responsibilities. Most people mistake obligation, i.e. having to go to work to pay for your revolving credit financial debts or ensuring your children have a college fund, with responsibility. Her obligations are practically nil, zero, zip, nada. Her real responsibilities revolve around herself with no obligations to anybody else at this time. So few of us are so free that we can make a decision based on what we want without consideration of our obligations to others.

She has no children in her life and she is currently single. She has no deep relationships other than with a handful of friends scattered across the world and no familial ties that root her to one geographic location. Without the financial burden and obligation of childcare or supporting teenage children through their last, highly expensive years of high school, she is free to direct any of her financial resources wherever she chooses. She is also free to direct her energies and creativity to any endeavour she decides on for that day. Her concerns and worries, which I am sure to her are quite huge, are actually minor. She has been given a completely new beginning for her life with the freedom to do what she wants with care or worry.

I had to remind her whilst I was on this tirade that she has opportunity to do anything she wants. I said it as clearly and as plainly as I could to her: “You’re no longer bounded and defined by the job you recently held. You are no longer corralled in your thinking of what is possible. You are no longer cowed in your thinking of what you can do. You can do and be anything you want.”

When you have that sort of independence, you are completely free to go anywhere you want. You can spend your time sat in your apt, you can take to the open road and travel anywhere, you can take a job just down the road or on the other side of the world and there is literally nothing to stop you. The whole world has been opened to you as an opportunity. If you are willing to live cheaply, and few of us are unfortunately, you can take any job that interests you without concern of how much it pays or how long it will take you to get good at it. You have been given an enormous opportunity to start all over with knowledge, skills, and experience that you never had when first starting out.

I liken the autonomy that Mary is currently undergoing to the same sort of situation that the suddenly wealthy are placed in. People that win the lottery or inherit a great deal of money from their dead rich Uncle suddenly find they are going in one of two directions. They either continue completely with their ingrained daily life because they do not know any other way of existing or they completely stop following their old routine and begin a new life of excess and waste. Neither choice is really acceptable or satisfactory to the person’s long-term happiness, health and lifestyle.

A few years back when I first began my software company I took rented office space in a high rise building in Los Angeles. In the office next door resided a financial advisor who in addition to doing basic financial work for very wealthy individuals also gave advice to people who became instantly wealthy, such as an inheritance recipient or lottery winner. These are people that became wealthy overnight, going from an average Joe or Jane, to having so much money they do not know what to do with it. Part of his job entailed being a lifestyle counsellor for those that would never have to work another day in their entire life.

Acquiring sudden wealth if you have never been privy to it in the past can come as a shock to the system for many people. The average person is not educated or equipped with the skills to handle large quantities of money, worry about investment vehicles, or concern themselves with excessive spending or racking up insane amounts of personal liability through recurring expenses. A person who overnight finds themselves rich has not had the wisdom of time. The skills necessary to handle this change in your life are trivial to learn and applied with a little discipline can insulate the suddenly wealthy individual from what can be a traumatic period of their life before they finally self-destruct.

There are training courses and various programmes available, though they are few and far between and sorely lacking, for people who are returning to work after a long absence or have to retrain due to redundancy. In addition, I am beginning to think that maybe there ought to be counsellors available that can help people who suddenly find themselves with complete liberty from all obligations. While we are playing the “fantasy life game” maybe we can have some real counsellors that can teach people how to find work and retrain for a new career, not just the asinine "back to work" programmes that usually pervade the landscape of the job seeker.

But let us get back to Mary for a minute. Mary has at this time an amazing amount of freedom that so very few people, once they leave school and get on the career treadmill, will ever have in their entire life. Mary is free to pursue whatever she wants and go wherever she chooses.

Many people I have spoken to over the years are utterly petrified of freedom in all its forms. Freedom from their finances, freedom from obligation, freedom from responsibility, freedom from work, freedom from oversight, freedom from management. Most people, if not all, when pressed will say such things as "Oh, that would be nice" or "Yeah, I’d like to do exactly as I please" which is then quickly followed by "but…" or, if you are from the UK, "People like us were never meant to have that sort of thing." I almost want to weep and cry out in frustration when I hear people say that. They have become so institutionalized in the social dogma that their thinking and will has been so absolutely suppressed by "their betters" that the average person have no concept of a better way of living nor any desire to live it when shown.

When someone is set free from obligation or concern through whatever means such as being newly retired they have no clue of how to behave or how to go on with their day. The education they have is insufficient to handle the situation and the social doctrine they live by prevents most people from attempting to do something different when there is no longer anyone telling them what to do or when to do it.

If you suddenly found yourself with freedom today, how would you behave? What would you do? Where would you go? It is often worthwhile brainstorming various scenarios and journaling your thoughts because if you apply yourself to personal development and self-improvement one day you will find yourself in precisely this situation.

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