Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘lifestyle design’ Category

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!!

So you’re stuck in a pretty bad sit­u­a­tion huh? Seems like things couldn’t get any worse, and then they did.  How do we cope with when we’re in these hor­ri­ble situations?

To be hon­est, when I was talk­ing to moth­ers that were sin­gle, barely mak­ing ends meet, I felt awful.  I wanted so badly to alle­vi­ate their pain, to make them instantly suc­cess­ful, to end their wor­ries.  But I knew if I did this, it would only pro­vide tem­po­rary relief.  Much like those that win the lot­tery, they find tem­po­rary finan­cial relief, only to blow all of their money on friv­o­lous spending.

The best way I have found to help peo­ple swamped in Stress, in Debt, stuck in Life, is to show them the way, let them fig­ure it out with help and assistance.

If I were to do all the walk­ing for my kids when they were grow­ing up, they would not have a rea­son to learn to walk on their own.  Same is true for any­one stuck in a mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion.  I could hand you a life pre­server, and res­cue you, but it is bet­ter if I teach you how to swim so the next time you fall over­board, you can make it to shore on your own.

With this being said, when you’re stuck in a hor­ri­bly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, “SEE” your way out of it.  What I mean by this is you have the capa­bil­ity of visu­al­iz­ing your way out of debt, out of stress and out of fear.  The three most debil­i­tat­ing human feel­ings are those I just listed.  But, peo­ple find their way out all of the time, why can’t you?

If you’re say­ing that it’s impos­si­ble, you’ve defeated your­self before you began.  All per­sonal devel­op­ment experts will tell you that the num­ber one way to get­ting what you want is to Visu­al­ize your Desire.

So then, let me ask you, if you are stuck in this mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion, WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?

• Do you really want to become debt free? – ask for it
• Do you really want to find a bet­ter pay­ing job? – see your­self work­ing in one
• Do you want a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your kids? – believe every day that it is happening.

Doing this exer­cise may seem what I call “woo-woo” or just plainly stu­pid and eso­teric.  But ask any of the super suc­cess­ful, the wealthy, the happy, the bal­ance peo­ple in this world, and they will admit, they had a vision of how their lives would be.

This Vision puts into play sev­eral prac­ti­cal steps:

• -          You declare that you desire some­thing to hap­pen, you openly admit it to your­self, and it goes beyond wish­ing, it is a request.  You believe this will hap­pen and you get past the fear of actu­ally ask­ing for it.
• -          Your Retic­u­lar Acti­vat­ing Sys­tem (RAS) acts as a “ful­fill­ment request cen­ter”.  It is given a demand to ful­fill a desire, and then seeks to accom­plish that request.  It is a very black and white issue, and does not deal with the com­pli­cated emo­tions that are involved, it doesn’t have to.
• -          So now that the RAS has its request, it starts shoot­ing out images and ideas to your sub­con­scious in attempts to ful­fill that request.  Some­times you may start see­ing more images, TV ads, signs or other “coin­ci­dences” that will poten­tially fill your desire.
• -          Lastly, as we declare a desire, and we see it vividly in our mind’s eye, we start doing the emo­tional work nec­es­sary to com­plete the goal.  Emo­tions like to get in the way of goal com­ple­tion, but hav­ing a clear and accu­rate vision will allow us to do the work nec­es­sary to make it hap­pen.  The ques­tion is, how badly do you want it?

It’s no won­der that gurus such as Tony Rob­bins and Joe Vitale sug­gest using tools such as Vision Boards.  It allows us to take our men­tal pic­ture and put it into phys­i­cal real­ity.  Sure, the phys­i­cal real­ity is only 2 dimen­sional when you’re mak­ing your vision board, but it is still a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of your desire, and is the first step in see­ing what the desire feels like.

This vision board also allows you to rein­force your desires.  If you look at the board once or even twice a day, it is that daily con­sis­tency that acti­vates the RAS, the sub­con­scious and the con­scious mind to work together to bring forth your desire.

So I know this is a lot of infor­ma­tion about a pretty sim­ple idea: Visu­al­iza­tion. Yet, believ­ing that you will not be STUCK in your mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion is so impor­tant to your men­tal health and to your abil­ity to dig your way out!

Think about this:

In all things it is bet­ter to hope than to despair. “ Johann Von Goethe

When things are bad, we take com­fort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Let me know what you think…have you had suc­cess with Vision Boards, have you been able to SEE your way out of bad sit­u­a­tions?  Leave a com­ment below, I love feedback!

Many Adven­tures!

Maken­zie

Part 1 of 3 of the Stressed Mom­mies to Suc­cess­ful Mom­mies Series

I recently read mul­ti­ple post­ings by moth­ers that are so stressed out, that they would likely sell off one or both kid­neys to be able to cre­ate more time and have more money to devote to them­selves and their family.

These were just a hand­ful of the situations:

“I’m a sin­gle mother, I work full time, I have a 7 and 4 year old, I’m exhausted when I get home, but then I have to do school work, laun­dry, make din­ner, clean the house and then get ready to do it all over again!  I have no time for myself!”

“I have three kids, I work full time, go to Grad school and still feel like I can never get ahead!”

“My hus­band is in the mil­i­tary and gone half the year, my son has lost all abil­ity to potty train, and my daugh­ter does exactly oppo­site of what I tell her to do!”

My heart just ached when I read all of these stressed out Mom’s post­ings.  They were scream­ing for help onto a ran­dom forum post­ing, not know­ing where to go, just hop­ing that some­one would lis­ten to their cries for help!

Are you this mom?  Are you burn­ing the can­dle at both ends?  Are you cry­ing for help and think­ing that no one can help you?

1. Lis­ten to the flight atten­dant:

The first rule here is just to be aware that if you are at this point in your life where you are hang­ing on by a thread, do what every good flight atten­dant sug­gests in the event of cabin pres­sure fail­ure: “Put the Oxy­gen Mask on your­self first before you put them on small chil­dren.”  Eas­ier said than done?

If you con­sider the rea­sons, you are like the HUB of the WHEEL of your fam­ily. You are what keeps the fam­ily together, ungreased, the wheel doesn’t turn well, it’s squeaky and sticky.  With a well greased HUB, the wheel turns smoothly, effort­lessly and can do more rota­tions than an ungreased hub.  Con­sider your goal to be as smooth as a greased hub.

Tak­ing care of your­self means doing what you need to do to stay healthy. Eat well, take time for your­self, exer­cise, med­i­tate etc…  Imag­ine what your fam­ily would do with­out you? If you are not tak­ing care of your­self, you may con­tinue down the road to sick­ness due to stress.  So first things first –You are first!

2. Slow down to ½ speed!

It is easy to feel that because we have more to do, we need to do it faster, more hur­ried, and feel rushed.  Yet, when we delib­er­ately slow down the speed of our life, we are able to think more clearly and specif­i­cally about the task at hand.  It really is a funny para­dox! You may not actu­ally be doing less tasks when you slow your reac­tion speed down, it just feels like it!  What hap­pens often is you feel more delib­er­ate, your aware­ness comes into the present, and you can con­cen­trate on the NOW task and not the FUTURE task.

3.Notice How Your Vibra­tions are Felt Through your House­hold Like ShockWaves:

Do you notice that when you have a bad day, and you are stressed, the moment you walk in the house, all of a sud­den the kids are fight­ing and argu­ing, the dog is bark­ing, there is chaos spread­ing like wild­fire? Believe it or not, our energy lev­els have cer­tain vibra­tional fre­quen­cies.  Chil­dren are very sen­si­tive to these fre­quen­cies and react in strange and curi­ous ways, and usu­ally ways that tend to sound like nails screech­ing across the chalk boards.  Notice when you walk into your house calm, cen­tered and peace­ful?  The house can sense your “cen­tered­ness”, and mim­ics this energy level.  Its one of those mys­te­ri­ous uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples.

4.Use your tran­si­tional Times and Take Men­tal Health Minutes:

When time is a pre­cious com­mod­ity for you at this time in your life, it is imper­a­tive that you use small por­tions of time to re-center, recharge and reju­ve­nate.  You prob­a­bly know this, but don’t mind­fully prac­tice this.  So, now I chal­lenge you to mind­fully prac­tice this.  When you are dri­ving home from work, put in peace­ful calm­ing music (I like to call it yoga music, eas­ily down­load­able from i-Tunes).  When you take a bath­room break, take 5 min­utes, close your eyes and do some deep breath­ing exer­cises and pos­i­tive think­ing.

5. Design Your Day:

This was a new con­cept recently intro­duced to me.   At the begin­ning of the day, spend 2 min­utes, grab your jour­nal and decide con­sciously HOW you want the day to go, and HOW you want to feel.  For exam­ple, “I choose to hap­pily drive to work, I will use the free time in the car to relax.  I choose to have joy­ous inter­ac­tions with my cowork­ers.  My meet­ings will go eas­ily and I will have easy res­o­lu­tions to my chal­lenges today. When I leave work, I will hap­pily use that time to tran­si­tion and be pre­pared and cen­tered for my fam­ily.  I con­sciously choose to be present with my fam­ily in the evening, turn­ing off my email and my phones.”  This only takes a cou­ple of min­utes, but you can see the impact that this has on your con­scious and sub­con­scious mind.  One of the beau­ties of this exer­cise is that you will not script your day to say “I wish work is dif­fi­cult, I wish the kids will be bad, and I want to be angry and stressed!”  It just doesn’t work like that!

Do not expect that you will imme­di­ately prac­tice all five steps right away.  Take one step a day and prac­tice.  A mommy’s job is so impor­tant and vital to the health of the fam­ily.  So mind your thoughts, mind your health and have fun!

Stay tuned to Part 2 Tips for Stress Man­age­ment – Mov­ing into Action to Reduce Your Stress

“How do you do it all Maken­zie?  You must be so busy!!”

I hear this all the time when I encounter peo­ple.  Work­ing on two busi­nesses from home, tak­ing care of my hus­band (whom I might add is recov­er­ing quite nicely and doing a great job at this point of tak­ing care of him­self!), and shut­tling the kids to and from school.  Home­work, base­ball, play dates, lunches, din­ner etc…!

It doesn’t really seem that over­whelm­ing when I am going through my day–well most days.

A LifeHacker’s Views on Time Management

It all starts with my morn­ing, I am not a morn­ing per­son typ­i­cally, so I “roll” out of bed around 0730, pray­ing that my hus­band has been able to make his way to the kitchen before me to put on my morn­ing “heaven” (aka cof­fee.)  Morn­ing really sets the tone for the rest of the day for me.  This is the part of the day that I have to really be present, to focus my ener­gies, to align with the stars, to regain my Chi.…and ALL of it!  Because if I ALLOW my morn­ing to go bad, then quite fre­quently I have a hard time get­ting in front of my day.

The con­cept of Time is a funny one to me, because some days just seem to go by so quickly and some are a mean­ing­less mess and drag out for­ever!  Yet, Time always Feels in my favor, when I have a chance to get my energy AHEAD of TIME.  Makes sense or no?  If I can be present in the NOW, slow down my “reac­tion speeds” and work on my “proac­tion” speed, then it seems like Time is on my side.  ProAc­tiv­ity vs. ReActivity

Of course part of this proac­tion speed is defin­ing my day! I define my day on sev­eral levels.

1. How do I want to FEEL today? What do I want my energy to be like?  Do I want to be a pissed off, angry mom?  Or do I want to be a happy, joy­ful, peace­ful, fun mom?  (I choose the lat­ter because it is more fun!)
2. What do I want to DO today? And for some this seems like a ridicu­lous ques­tion because you HAVE to do so many things.  So let me point you back to the idea of Proac­tion…  When you choose to do some­thing, you allow your­self to feel proac­tive, it’s your choice, it’s your deci­sion! Yay!  When you feel that you HAVE to do some­thing, you’re react­ing to out­side influence…and well 99.999% of the time you’re the only one that can make the choice for YOU!!  So are you being respon­si­ble for your choice, or are you giv­ing up your power of choice?  Think on this for a lit­tle while.…
3. What do I want to BE? This can be such a broad state­ment, but often I chose to be inspired, to be fun, to be happy!!  I also chose to BE a MOM, to be an Entre­pre­neur, to be a Run­ner.…  I get to choose these things every­day!  What do you choose?

A few sim­ple steps to align your Mind with Clar­ity and good energy will allow you to get ahead of TIME!

(PS — I also do this trick, that was rec­om­mended by Zig Ziglar that on days when I roll out of bed and feel just cruddy, I jump up and down 10 times, laugh and say “This is the best day of my life!” “This is the best day of my life!”.…then I look in the mir­ror and say “I’m talk­ing to you–turn that frown upside down!”  It is so ridicu­lous, but it’s a fan­tas­tic pat­tern inter­rupt!  Works!!)

I don’t know if you rec­og­nize that a lot of my posts are about get­ting your MIND and your ENERGY in the right spot.  Lit­tle of it has to do with how much time or effort I put into cer­tain tasks.  I used to be that very task focused-driven person.…but it didn’t work for me, I was a mis­er­able mess!  So I had to try some­thing dif­fer­ent.  Focus­ing on my thoughts before focus­ing on my actions was the BIGGEST dif­fer­ence.  IT works…no bull­shit here!

Two more “No Bull­shit” Life­Hacker Tips:

The best Wheat Bread on this Side of the Mississippi:

This is the EASIEST bread recipe I have found.  You have to do it 2 or 3 times until you find the rou­tine, and you will be ask­ing why you spend so much on bread at the store!!

1. 1 cup warm water
2. 1 Table­spoon Milk
3. 2 Table­spoons oil
4. 3 Table­spoons Honey (I usu­ally add more!)
5. 2 Table­spoons Brown Sugar ( I some­times sub­sti­tute Molasses)
6. 1 tea­spoon Salt
7. 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
8. 1–1/2 cups whole wheat flour
9. 2 tea­spoons instant active dry yeast.

1. Com­bine Ingre­di­ents #1-#6 in a large mix­ing bowl, stir.

2. Add flours and yeast, and knead (turn on the kitchenaid mixer) for 10–15 min­utes.  Dough should be smooth and elas­tic.  Place dough in a greased bowl, turn­ing once to grease top.  Cover with plas­tic wrap, let rise in warm area (usu­ally above the refridger­a­tor or oven works well.)

3. Punch down dough; knead for a few min­utes until smooth then form into a loaf.  Place in a greased loaf pan and cover.  Let rise again until dou­bled, about 30 min.

4. Bake at 350 for 30–25 min­utes.  Remove when done and allow to rest in pan just for a few min­utes (any longer and it starts to sweat!)  Easy peasy!  Enjoy!

HOMEWORK!!

I don’t know about you, but my biggest bat­tle with home­work is try­ing to just get it done!!  How many times have I asked him?  Is it done yet?  Finally I was exas­per­ated by my attempts to fin­ish it the night before it was due (for us, it’s a Wednes­day!) and I thought, well, I will do what many com­pa­nies do when they want the job done ahead of schedule…factor in BONUSES!!

So his home­work sched­ule looks like this:

Home­work comes home on Fri­day due on Thursday.

If it’s com­plete by Mon­day — $3 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Tues­day — $2 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Wednes­day $0!!!

Why $0 on Wednes­day? The goal was to get him to com­plete his home­work before crunch time, so now he’s self-motivated to com­plete his home­work on Mon­day or Tues­day.  He doesn’t have to do it over the week­end, and he gets to choose when he wants to do it.  Either choice has an impact, but it’s ulti­mately his choice!!

Thanks to all of my read­ers who so gra­ciously fol­low along with my posts!  You inspire me every­day to make great posts!  Feel free to drop me a line and make com­ments!!  Many Adven­tures to You! ~Makenzie

My first video blog! Thanks for stop­ping by to check out my video. I am still prac­tic­ing the edit­ing (you’ll see..!) But this was fun, and I talk frankly about my for­mer busi­ness, my deci­sion to retire and other great things!

Thanks for stop­ping by, I really enjoy read­ing everyone’s com­ments and feedback!

Many Adven­tures to you!

Maken­zie

Adven­tur­ous Mom Talks About Retire­ment from Maken­zie Kelly on Vimeo.

In a pre­vi­ous post, I dis­cussed my fer­vent pas­sion about pro­tect­ing my time after I real­ized that our time here is so lim­ited.  And as we go into the New Year, I plan to fur­ther empha­size how impor­tant I really feel like this idea is.

I first wanted to share a life les­son that I encoun­tered early.  I know that most peo­ple have expe­ri­enced friends or fam­ily mem­bers that have passed away at some point in their life and I have too.  But one per­son that affected me greatly, was a per­son that I didn’t even know.

A Hard Les­son at 21

I was 21, and it was Thanksgiving-eve.  It was another shift on my para­medic intern­ship, and I was respond­ing to a call for a “man down”.  We got these calls occa­sion­ally, and usu­ally it was a tran­sient passed out on the cor­ner.  This call was about 11:30 in the evening and it was rain­ing and cold out­side.  The call was for a man down in the street.  We drove around in cir­cles for close to 15 min­utes at the loca­tion of the described area.  We couldn’t find him.  Then we saw a bystander wav­ing us down.

In the mid­dle of the street there was a young man, face down, he appeared have been skate­board­ing and fell.  He didn’t appear injured except that he was not respond­ing and his breath­ing was very irreg­u­lar, he also was lay­ing in a pool of vomit.  We had to put a breath­ing tube into this throat to help him breathe bet­ter, bystanders said he had a dog with him and was walk­ing his dog.

We did what we could med­ically to help him and trans­ported him to the near­est trauma room.  He died later of a mas­sive brain injury.  He was 25.  My fiance (soon to be hus­band) at the time was 25 too…they looked the same. That really both­ered me.  I don’t even remem­ber the man’s name.

You don’t expect at first to be asked to try save some­one your age when you are that young (and fail).  For me, still in my early for­ma­tive years, it was a hard and fast les­son:  LIFE IS SHORT.

Up to then, I had only seen old faces pass away. Since then, I have seen faces of all ages leave.

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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?

I may get an ear­ful about this post from my par­ents, but I have been doing a lot of think­ing about this sub­ject lately.  Maybe I am an anti-conformist.  Maybe I just really don’t like rules (okay I don’t like rules).  But for some rea­son, I have a really hard time send­ing my kid to school every­day when I know that he may be wast­ing his time. 

Gasp!  I know.  I can’t believe I am say­ing this.  I really do believe that my son is smart, and at the same time, he does need guid­ance and a good “edu­ca­tion”.  Some­times I ask myself what type of edu­ca­tion he is get­ting in school. 

The pub­lic schools of Cal­i­for­nia rank 47th among the nation in spend­ing and get a respec­tive “D” for aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment.  Wow, he may learn more if I just drop him off at the local McDon­alds everyday. 

But it is not just the Cal­i­for­nia schools that aren’t teach­ing our kids.  I think as par­ents we get trapped into think­ing that our chil­dren learn every­thing they need to at school.  But in, fact they do not. 

How are we to teach our kids about the love of adven­ture, about finan­cial inde­pen­dence, about being cre­ative and cre­at­ing a liv­ing for them­selves?  School will not teach that.  In fact, I never learned a thing about finance until I was well into college. 

Finan­cial inde­pen­dence and how to cre­ate money is def­i­nitely not taught in school.  In fact one of my friends keyed it well when he said, “The only thing school teaches our kids, is how to be good workers.” 

Well, there is a much val­ued need for good work­ers.  But shall I doom my chil­dren to the rat race before they even have a chance?  Send them to school from 8 to 3, fill out the forms, get good grades, only to find out that they didn’t learn all the other needed skills? 

It is no won­der why there are more than 1 Mil home­schooled chil­dren in Amer­ica.  And as more and more are study­ing the impact of home­schooled chil­dren, they are find­ing that home­school­ers are more moti­vated, smarter and grad­u­ate ear­lier than their respec­tive peers. 

I had the oppor­tu­nity to meet one such home­schooled woman the other day.  She fin­ished high school at 16!  She gained an aver­age of 2 years to live her life and do what she wanted by tak­ing this route.

When time is such a pre­cious com­modi­tiy, as I believe it is, is it pos­si­ble school, the way it is now,  is just a waste of time?

This sum­mer has been quite an adven­ture! I have to admit, for the first time in almost five years, I actu­ally was able to spend almost two weeks straight with my fam­ily!! This was very unusual because we have been grow­ing our busi­ness for the last four years and we have had lit­tle fam­ily time. The work-life bal­ance is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge for me, and I rou­tinely feel like I fail at one or the other.

But as we embarked on our 11 day adven­ture to Yel­low­stone, I was excited and anx­ious at the same time. I did not know what would hap­pen over the next eleven days.…I love and live for adven­ture, but I knew that this trip would be dif­fer­ent. I must have had a pre­mo­ni­tion about what was to occur.

The adven­ture was filled with an Emer­gency Room visit, Travel Trailer fail­ures, Thun­der­storms, Vom­it­ing, Diar­rhea, Mos­qui­toes the size of birds, Truck fail­ures, and on and on.…! How did we man­age? For those that were for­tu­nate enough to fol­low my vaca­tion on my Face­book, you were able to see the daily strug­gles that we encoun­tered on our vaca­tion. Many peo­ple com­mented that they would have quit by this time! But NOT us! We were deter­mined to have fun irre­gard­less of the dif­fi­cul­ties that were fac­ing us.

It had been a long time since we were able to be together as a fam­ily like this and to come through this tri­umph the way that we did. The kids were Fan­tas­tic! They were such troop­ers and flex­i­ble and strong! We were all deter­mined to be adven­tur­ous and have fun! We had such a dif­fi­cult time in the last two years with the strug­gles of a grow­ing busi­ness and a hurt daddy. This trip had more mean­ing than any other fam­ily trip I can remember.

Yel­low­stone was amaz­ing, truly a won­der of the world and per­haps one of the most beau­ti­ful places I have seen. The rivers were wide, the grasses were green, and the sky was def­i­nitely the most blue that I have seen. It was so refresh­ing. On day 9 we were on our way out of the park, dri­ving through Wyoming, on our way to Pow­ell, WY to visit friends. My busi­ness part­ner called.… I was anx­ious to find out the news of a meet­ing that he attended in my absence. Sud­denly my fun stopped. The news was not what I was expect­ing and I became anx­ious. So anx­ious, I felt that my vaca­tion needed to stop and I needed to be back at work today. I became so anx­ious, I didn’t stop wor­ry­ing for a day and a half.

The next day was spent at our very good friend’s house in Wyoming, which I must say is absolutely God’s coun­try! Rolling fields of wheat are con­trasted with fields of corn and painted hills of red, orange and burnt umber. The sky is like sap­phires in the evening and the clouds are beau­ti­ful. The neigh­bors are friendly and every­one waves at a pass­ing vehi­cle. The atmos­phere is relaxed, and fam­ily is more impor­tant than the dol­lar here. Imag­ine that.… They are out-riding the “reces­sion” because peo­ple in Wyoming just make it work. They are in it for the long haul, not work­ing for the money, but work­ing to cre­ate a pur­pose for them­selves and their families.

The Fourth of July parade in Cody WY was a cel­e­bra­tion of a cul­ture that I do not rou­tinely see in the hus­tle and bus­tle of the SF Bay Area. It was a cel­e­bra­tion of com­mu­nity and a cel­e­bra­tion of true free­dom. It was the first day that I real­ized I was not liv­ing my life truly free. I was trapped in my work and also in my fear.

The last five years of my life have been a strug­gle for riches and glory. I felt that if I strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed that I would be able to work less and have more time with my fam­ily. Boy, I really did not know how much I was miss­ing my kids! I had the par­a­digm shift that over this quest for finan­cial free­dom, I may have been going about it all wrong! Oh no! Has it all been wrong? All of a sud­den the money did not mat­ter to me so much. I would have given every­thing up just to have more time with them. I was liv­ing in such fear and felt so shack­led to the busi­ness that my time and my emo­tions were trapped. I was a caged bird.

But that day in Cody and the three days we spent dri­ving home, I did some seri­ous search­ing. How could I be free from worry? How could I get more time with my kids? And I was not going to accept “I can’t” for an answer. My mom…and bless her for teach­ing us this.…taught us that “Can’t NEVER could!” There is a pos­si­bil­ity for everything.

Often as I do, I pick up books in stores, or just out of curios­ity and some­times hang onto them for a time before I start read­ing. I picked up a book called “The Secret of the Ages” by Robert Col­lier. Not really know­ing what it was going to say, it really looked inter­est­ing, or at least inter­est­ing enough to buy it on sale for ten bucks! I don’t always nec­es­sar­ily feel that one book is bet­ter than another. I really feel that a lot of them have mes­sages that are very impor­tant. This book was really able to speak to me in a time where I really needed to receive the mes­sage. A cou­ple of notable quotes from Collier:

“Begin to free your­self at once by doing all that is pos­si­ble with the means you have, and as you pro­ceed in this spirit the way will open for you to do more. ” “Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself every­thing needed for its fulfillment. ”

The tim­ing was right for me to free myself from the inter­nal fear that I was expe­ri­enc­ing and real­ize that there was an option for me to change my sit­u­a­tion. Not only my sit­u­a­tion of fear, but my sit­u­a­tion of miss­ing my children.

So as I am mov­ing for­ward with this inten­tion, I am work­ing on find­ing ways to work on my Lifestyle Design. Work­ing less.… Mak­ing more. Evolv­ing from my exist­ing place in my life into a more sat­is­fy­ing and rich lifestyle. Stay tuned! The adven­ture is just beginning!