Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘fear of change’

Ulti­mate Lifestyle Design: How Are You Wast­ing Spend­ing Your Time?

Read Time: 6 minutes

As an avid Lifestyle Design fanatic, I have to admit, I have been bug­ging all of my Face­book and twit­ter friends about this topic.  I ask them, Which would you rather have? Time or Money? To which 99% reply, they’d rather have more TIME.

So my fol­low up ques­tion is, What is stand­ing in the way of your abil­ity to get more TIME? To which they all respond: Money or My Job.  So it seems to me that most peo­ple draw the con­clu­sion that inevitably TIME = MONEY.  But is this really true?

Retir­ing

As I write this post, my won­der­ful father will be retir­ing in less than a week after hav­ing “served” the phone com­pany for most of his adult life, 39 years to be exact.  Started as a line­man and worked his way up into impor­tant man­age­ment posi­tions.  I am so proud of my dad for mak­ing the deci­sion to retire.  They are finan­cially secure and will have their house paid off in less than 2 months! A mon­u­men­tal undertaking!

I said to him, “You know, you’re the last of a dying breed.”  He acknowl­edged and said that not many who retire after him will be receiv­ing a pen­sion and excel­lent ben­e­fits.  This rep­re­sented a major turn in our country’s work his­tory going from Defined Ben­e­fits (Pen­sions) to Deferred Con­tri­bu­tions (401Ks and the like).  I guess my dad was one of the lucky ones, but he cer­tainly did sac­ri­fice a lot to get to this reward.  But I do also know that part of him is ter­ri­fied, not because of the money, but NOW, what does he do with his TIME??

What will be my rea­son to wake up in the morning?

“Kenz, [my dad’s nick­name for me] I just don’t know what my rea­son for wak­ing up in the morn­ing will be if I don’t go to work.”  Ugh! Just pulls at my heart strings, and of course, I men­tion 101 things he could do aside from he and my mother try­ing to kill each other for spend­ing too much time together.

Retire­ment depres­sion is so com­mon among new retirees, that AARP addresses this issue on their web­site.  Part of me is fear­ful that my dad will end up one of these sta­tis­tics.  These are some of the things that they men­tion that can curb retire­ment depression:

• What do I want to do? (Go back to school? Be a gourmet cook or mas­ter gar­dener? Start your own business?)
• Who do I want to do it with?
• What resources do I have?
• What resources would be avail­able in a new com­mu­nity if I choose to relocate?
• How can I make this happen?

Now hold on a sec­ond… When I read this list, I was flab­ber­gasted!!  Why are we not doing this NOW? Why don’t we ask our­selves these very reflec­tive ques­tions today?  Do we have to wait until we retire old to ask our­selves these questions…especially this one:  How can I make it happen?

Oppor­tu­nity Cost

I recently read a great book by a won­der­ful Author, Tisa L. Sil­ver, MBA enti­tled The Time Value of Life.  Tisa was an esteemed finance pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware’s Alfred E. Lerner Col­lege of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics, and unlike many pro­fes­sors, takes a dif­fer­ent (read: refresh­ing) approach in her view on money.  In her book, she looks at sev­eral fac­tors that play into the time value of money and then also explains why our time is so precious.

I obvi­ously agree with her argu­ment that, money is a renew­able resource and time is not, “Time can be spent but only money can be replaced” (Sil­ver).  And one inter­est­ing con­cept that relates to both time and money is “Oppor­tu­nity Cost.”  In money terms, if you invest in a bond or other invest­ment, you’re giv­ing up your money for a cer­tain period of time for some­one to use it, and you for­feit any other ben­e­fit that you may have received by using that money in other invest­ments (or to spend on yourself).

Time works the same way. There is an oppor­tu­nity cost to time.  When we spend our time being angry we are for­feit­ing our time that we could be using being joy­ous, happy, silly, or even indif­fer­ent.  Even more delib­er­ate than that, when we choose to spend our time doing what we feel is an oblig­a­tion rather than a choice; we for­feit our time to do what we choose.

So there are choices with how you spend your time, every minute you spend holds an oppor­tu­nity cost.  Where and how are you spend­ing your oppor­tu­nity minutes?

If Only’s and Once I’s

Do you do this?  Do you wish for some­thing so badly and then once you get it, the result did not make you feel the way you thought it would?

Sil­ver calls these fal­lacy state­ments, I call them “If Only’s and Once I’s”.  We have all been vic­tim of these state­ments.  I remem­ber my hus­band early in our mar­riage would say, “Once I become a police offi­cer then every­thing will be alright, and I’ll be happy…finally.”  Take a guess at what hap­pened.  Yep, he was the same per­son, no more or less happy!

Do you say this to yourself?

• Once I get that really nice sports car, then I’ll feel good about myself.
• If only I had more money then I’d be happier.
• Once the kids get older, then I’ll have more free time.

Fal­lacy state­ments do not allow us to spring into action, instead we wait for the “per­fect tim­ing” of an occur­rence, or we wait for the occur­rence to hap­pen to us rather than go after it.  We give up our power to be present in the NOW when we use fal­lacy state­ments.  We would rather focus on wish­ful future events, rather than appre­ci­ate what we have in front of us.

How DO you Trade your Time?

I know what is true for me that I make a hor­ri­ble employee, and pre­fer entre­pre­neur­ship.  But I know a lot of peo­ple that LOVE their jobs and they make great employ­ees, this is how they choose to trade their time, for money, and I think that is won­der­ful!  I am not in the busi­ness to tell peo­ple to quit their jobs.

For these, the oppor­tu­nity cost is a fair trade.  They love what they’re spend­ing their time doing at work, and gladly col­lect money for doing it. In fact, time seems to breeze by, they feel free in their life, and they don’t nec­es­sar­ily feel their time is being sucked dry.

There are, how­ever, far more peo­ple that are mis­er­able, hate their jobs and the oppor­tu­nity trade off does not seem fair in their book.  So then what?

The Tim­ing is Never Right

You have options about how to spend your time, good and bad.  If you’re spend­ing it in a way that is not con­sis­tent with a fair oppor­tu­nity trade, then you have a choice to change it.  Some­times it seems impos­si­ble, but you do have choices.

One of my favorite reads, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim­o­thy Fer­riss, tack­les this very issue of decid­ing when the time is right.  He describes the time he asked his mother about how she timed when she would have a baby, to which his mother responded, “We fig­ured we would do it at some point, the tim­ing is never per­fect to have a baby”.

I can cer­tainly attest to this one…and not just one baby, two!  My older son was a sur­prise pack­age when we least expected him, and our younger son came right before I was start­ing our mega ven­ture busi­ness.  The tim­ing was so wrong for both of them, but if I waited until it was right, I likely would have no kids!!  Yet I sur­vived and real­ized that my worst case sce­nar­ios never usu­ally manifest.

So with this in mind, are you wait­ing for per­fect con­di­tions to change?  Are you wait­ing for some­one else to tell you what to do you get your act in gear?  You can do it the Band-Aid method, make it fast, and let it hurt for a few min­utes until the sting­ing stops.  Or like jump­ing into a cold pool, it is numb­ingly shock­ing, but then you warm up to it.

Every Day Opportunities

While my dad was one of the “lucky” ones to retire with a pen­sion, he sac­ri­ficed a lot of time to get him to where he is at today. In fact my mom will argue that he was a work-a-holic.  He did not know any dif­fer­ent, it was in his pro­gram­ming.  He is now faced with a totally for­eign chal­lenge, and that is to learn to have, do or be what he loves!  Yet, what he did not real­ize all a long, is that he could have cho­sen that path every day!!

Which path are you on? One that mis­uses your oppor­tu­nity cost?  Or one to HAVE, DO and BE what­ever you desire?

Leave a com­ment below and let me know!!

Many adven­tures to you!!

It started the Thurs­day before New Years, a last minute trip to take the kids to the snow.  We promised them we would do a snow trip dur­ing Win­ter break, and so I found a cheap Hotel (not cheap as in dive…but cheap as in $49!) in Reno, and we set sail to the biggest lit­tle city in the world.  Luck­ily, there is a Cir­cus Cir­cus there for the kids to immerse them­selves in what I call “gam­bling for kids” or the arcade.  To be hon­est, it was my hus­band that was the big roller here.  You should have seen the streams of tick­ets that guy won!

Reno was fan­tas­tic and the kids had a blast…  here is “Fluffy the snowman”:

we decided to make our snow day a snowman-challenge mak­ing day.  I just hope that the Snow­man doesn’t real­ize the kids were call­ing him Fluffy, I am sure he would have pre­ferred to be called “Ice­Man” or some­thing like that.

On our way home from Reno,  I get the con­fir­ma­tion that we will be need­ing to drive to Los Ange­les the next day.  I was get­ting rid of my Range Rover, and the buyer was in LA.  The Range Rover was a casu­alty of my deci­sion to retire.  Not being active in the busi­ness any­more did not neces­si­tate the need for the  vehi­cle  and the tax issues would get sticky, so it had to go.  Plus, I was unwill­ing to drop $925/mo on a car pay­ment from my per­sonal funds ugh! Cer­tain logic ruled in this instance.

We spent one night in our own beds, and the next morn­ing, on the road again for five hours to LA.  The accom­mo­da­tions were not as nice, the hotel was 2xs the cost and there were no blink­ing lights or danc­ing clowns.  Yet, as always, we man­aged to have fun, and made our way to Her­mosa Beach the next day to bask in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sun.  70 degrees, warm sand, surfers in the water, it was a typ­i­cal SoCal win­ter.  Ahhh, I love the sun.

The hand-off of the Range Rover occurred seam­lessly, the new owner, a late 20’s some­thing New Yorker-turned-LAer-turned-High-Roller was now in proud pos­ses­sion of the beau­ti­ful sil­ver SUV.  I showed him the bells and whis­tles, he signed the papers, and that was the last that I saw of my lux­ury vehicle.

We then got on “the” 405 free­way to “the” 710 and were on our way to the Long Beach aquar­ium, when it hit me…the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.  I tried to cough, no.  I tried to gag, no.  It wouldn’t go away, then I got short of breath. Was this a panic attack?  The tears started to roll down my face, I was dri­ving a car that I was unfa­mil­iar with, on a busy LA freeway…oh no. Snif­fle, cough, gag, sniffle.

I just gave up my prized pos­ses­sion, handed the keys over to a per­fect stranger! I loved that car.…people loved that car.  If I had a dol­lar for every time a man said to me, “My wife so badly wants a car like that…!”

My dar­ling hus­band was speech­less because I had been so “matter-of-fact” about need­ing to get rid of the car for the last two months.  “But my Satel­lite radio, and my seat heaters…I don’t have those in the Explorer!!”, I con­tin­ued to snif­fle and cough and gag.  It just won’t be the same.

I parked the rental car, and dried off my eyes, and heard a deep-down voice say to me:

“No Maken­zie, this is not what you want, that is your Ego talk­ing and not your true self.  Your true self wants to spend those pre­cious moments with your kids.  If you keep that car, you will need to get a job instead of spend­ing time with your kids. Your true self wants to design the life that you want.  Your ego wants things and approval.  Your ego has failed you count­less times.  Now is the time to lis­ten to your true self.”

That car wasn’t who I was, it didn’t mat­ter to my kids what kind of car I drove.  It was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make log­i­cally, or financially…but the ego and emo­tional play was far big­ger than I anticipated.

I think this is what hap­pens often when peo­ple get “stuck” in a sit­u­a­tion.  They fear that dia­logue with their ego…the one that asks them, “What will peo­ple think?” or tells them “You are not smart enough to try some­thing new, you will surely fail…and then…what will peo­ple say?” They are so afraid that their Ego, rather than their True Self, is right, that they stall and say things like, “It’s just not that easy” or “Life is complicated.”

Well, life is not com­pli­cated, as I am here to tell you.  Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to over­come adver­sity with phys­i­cal injuries, career changes, fledg­ling finan­cial mar­kets.  But really, our life is simple:

We Love each other, We spend time together, We enjoy adventure.

That’s it.

Many adven­tures to you!

Maken­zie

Okay, so I am giv­ing away my age with this post, but that’s okay.  I already told every­one I was about 12 pounds over­weight in the prior post!

I really wanted to share with every­one how excep­tion­ally excited I am to have Retired!  I guess I like to use the term Retire because it really epit­o­mizes the mind­set that I have taken regard­ing my new life transition.

Some define retire as:

To with­draw from one’s occu­pa­tion, busi­ness, or office

To fall back or retreat, as from battle

To move back or away; recede.

I have def­i­nitely withdrawn.…

I moved back or almost like the tide, I’ve receded.    Yet, I really enjoy the sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion, as I’ve fallen back or retreated as from bat­tle! Wow!  I def­i­nitely felt like I was in a los­ing TIME bat­tle, and with the deci­sion to fall back, I have regained my Life! Decid­ing not to con­tinue to fight the bat­tle doesn’t always mean you lose.  Some­times you find out that you’re only bat­tling your­self, you are your worst enemy in some situations.

Retir­ing young DOES NOT mean:

Well what the heck do I mean then?

This type of retire­ment stinks

How DID I retire at 33?

Every­day and every week, I keep expect­ing life to get “eas­ier” but some­how it never really gets eas­ier, but there are days that I work really hard and feel accom­plished and there are days that I barely feel like I am keep­ing my head above water! Up and down…up and down…up and down. What I find that with each expe­ri­ence I learn more and my tol­er­ances for dif­fi­cult things improves. What I am also find­ing is that the world around me isn’t nec­es­sar­ily chang­ing, but I am chang­ing and my responses are chang­ing.
I am a self-proclaimed over-achiever. This is a bless­ing and a curse at the same time. It has cer­tainly served me well in my career. On the reverse side of the coin, I real­ize that I some­times expect too much of myself. I expect to have a fan­tas­tic and per­fect day every­day! I think I will always expect that, but there are forces that are out of my con­trol that occur in this world that inten­tion­ally or unin­ten­tion­ally seek to ruin my day. I acknowl­edge those occur­rences.… and what I’ve learned to do now is be curi­ous about my response! Instead of get­ting angry, sad, mad or depressed, instead of dwelling on the issues for days and day and los­ing a lot of sleep, I become curi­ous about the prob­lem and my response to the prob­lem. This is a really dif­fi­cult task because I just want to react. I wanted to be Mamma Bear and go after the prob­lem that was con­fronting my first grader, I wanted to dig my claws into the prob­lem and tear it up!! But that response would not have been ben­e­fi­cial to me, or to the teacher for that mat­ter. I look back and ask myself, “Did I respond well to that sit­u­a­tion?” How could I have bet­ter han­dled it? That was very stress­ful, and I think I did okay. I would give myself a 6/10. (Here I go judg­ing myself.) But a 6 is far bet­ter than would have been my response level of a 2 last year! I’m improv­ing, I’m becom­ing aware, I’m learn­ing how to self cor­rect.
My point in talk­ing about my responses is that I am learn­ing it is okay to make mis­takes. But the real mea­sure of matu­rity is how do you respond to those mis­takes, and how do you respond when life throws you a curve ball? Are you the bat­ter that adjusts her swing? Or are you the bat­ter that swings expect­ing every ball to be a fast­ball, then get mad at the pitcher for throw­ing a curve? Real­ize that life hap­pens, it hap­pens up and down…up and down. How do you respond to the ups and downs? Adjust your­self, your response, and be curious!