You Wanna Know the Secret?

One thing I came to realize was that getting control over the family finances was important. It was more important than just saving a few bucks more each paycheck. It was about taking control of our lives and giving ourselves more options as time marched on. I speak from experience when I say that cutting expenses and putting money away, building that nest-egg over time turned into a life changing process. As it grows, the stress of the job shrinks. The worry of losing the job drops off, allowing you to pursue what you love rather than pursuing what pays the bills. And it can eventually get to a point where the job becomes optional, and that is a feeling that's really hard to describe. That's freedom right there.

In an interesting twist, taking a new job as a high-tech product development manager made a huge difference in my own life. It had nothing to do with the (slightly) higher salary, or the feeling that I was more "in the know" on how the business was being run. It had everything to do with the fact that I recognized, and told Deb before I took the job, that as a leader I needed to be a more positive person. All the good managers I knew were positive people. Even in the face of big problems, in the middle of the storm, they'd come in and convince everyone it was a bright sunny day. Even when I knew the clouds were forming, the thunder was booming, and the hail was about to fall, I liked and appreciated the bosses who were trying to lead us with a positive vision. I also knew that I'd never follow an Eeyore-type person anywhere, so to be effective in my new role, I tried to emulate the positive ones.

The result was that I became a more positive person at work and at home, and much happier. The stresses were the same, and in fact some were made worse. I went from worrying about some technical problem to worrying about telling a good engineer we had to lay them off. Or making a business decision that, if I was wrong, could affect many people in bad ways. So the stress remained, but catching the positivity bug was a great blessing for me, and one I didn't expect. The attitude you bring to the task very definitely affects the outcome. If you believe you can do it, you're halfway to winning. And if you believe you can't do it, you have certainly already lost.

I urge you to try it - to be the person that looks for the good and not the bad. To look for the positive outcome, something to strive for, rather than the negative one that you "just know" is going to happen. Look, I know, I get it, bad things happen. There are negative experiences in everyone's life. But if you look for the positives and try to identify two positives for every negative, you'd be surprised how that works in your favor over the long term. It may not feel natural at first, but fake it 'til you make it.

Every time Deb and I are challenged by life, knocked around, and made to face reality and our own mortality, we try to grow from it. One of the most important motivators for our early retirement path was the passing of several dear, close friends, siblings, and also parents. At our age, we expect our parents' generation to start passing away, statistics will prove that out every time. But when your friends and siblings start to go when you're 50-something, it's a shock to the system. Our response to that shock was to do something different with our lives, to make sure we get to really live. Deb said, "we're not trees, we can move", and so we did. We quit the job, pulled up those roots, and moved to Florida as a launching point for exploring the Caribbean. We tried to make something positive from all those huge negatives. And you know, we did that and we are proud of that.