Untelling stories is not as easy as we think. It’s not like your parents or teachers sat down on the floor in criss cross applesauce and said, “now boys and girls, once upon a time…”
These stories get told by actions and beliefs, and not only by parents and teachers. Sometimes we don’t even recognize them as stories, they often show up as little disorganized vignettes that shape how we move through our lives.
These stories can be about relationships, physical health, social situations, beauty, body image, academics, self worth, character, spirituality, life vision, career/financial, etc. The ideas and beliefs that come through these stories create powerful limitations or liberation to choose the directions of our lives. Everybody has one or more areas that have been derailed from the path of happiness as a direct result of the beliefs from the stories we have been told and continue to tell ourselves.
The biggest story I had to untell myself is that money is too hard to come by, so just settle for whatever. Never veer too far off the beaten path or there could be disaster. Just finish school, get a good job, work hard and climb the ladders, then retire. I began to see some cracks in this prescription from my early 20s. Fortunately, I’ve been somewhat of a nonconformist but I didn’t veer too far off that shaky path until now, at age 56.
I was made to believe that being rich meant having lots of excess money to throw around and purchase material status things with. And, that it was damn near impossible to achieve such a goal, and to look at every way of making my life better with debilitating suspicion. First, I had to redefine the meaning of rich, and then stop being afraid to move toward that.
My ideas about money were shaped by people very close to me.
My mother would always say “I don’t have any money!”, when I remember it, it sounds like a song. She would say it when we wanted to go to McDonalds on a random Saturday when we were kids. But she “didn’t have any money” because all the family income was tied up in paying back loans. Like the JCPenney credit card they charged furniture on. Like the car note for the conversion van my dad had to have. Not a penny was left for frivolous french fries.
She also said this when I was a young adult, and found myself pregnant before completing my undergrad degree. I was living in a studio apartment, making waaaay too little money full time at a nonprofit while working part time as a waitress. I already had my mind made up that I was not going to become a statistic, and I was not going to willingly place more obstacles in the way of my financial security. But when I told her what is the first thing she said? “I don’t have any money”… I can’t help you with this baby.
I’ll never forget when I was cooking up business ideas for myself and my mother told me, “if it were that easy, everybody would be doing it already”, which meant, don’t bother trying. Now, I have an awesome mother. In general, she shaped my belief that I could generally do whatever I set my mind to. But this thing about money was from stories she told herself and others told her. See how that works?
Then there’s my ex husband of 30 years. He had a very old school manly work ethic and upbringing and worked loads of overtime throughout our entire marriage. There were several times when we came close to implementing some other source of income, but while he never outright said this, I know he felt like the only reliable source of more funds was more physical work. This is despite the fact that overtime work pay gets ravished by taxes. Despite him knowing that his body wouldn’t stay 20 years old forever. He’d always say, “I ain’t got no choice”. But he did, but didn’t know it. He still is the epitome of hard working manly man and I respect him deeply but can’t help but to wonder if things could have been easier.
I’m still working on rewriting these stories to myself, but am making great progress. I now find myself only a month or two away from moving abroad, to a beach bungalow and a culture that closely fits my idea of the good life. It all began with an honest reassessment of what it means to me to be rich.
All my life I wanted to live a high quality of life, or in now terms, a soft life. I was ashamed because I thought I was lazy. But maybe my thinking was way ahead of my time. I just didn’t want to trade a lot of time for a lil money. So, I went to law school. While my classmates were planning to save the world or buy mansions and fancy cars, I just wanted a career that paid more per hour, so theoretically I could work fewer hours and live well.
I realized that working less and living more isn’t ONLY achieved by earning more. Every year I recognized more and more different ways that living well didn’t always require more money. I knew that I didn’t care about living in a huge house. The little townhouse I spent most of my adult life in (that was cheap when we bought but is worth over a million now) was all I really wanted as far as the material things. I knew that if I won the lottery, I’d keep this house to live in, maybe buy a few little vacation cottages but this home was what I really wanted.
But I did want to live at the beach. I often fantasized about lifting my house onto a truck and driving it to the Outer Banks and placing it right on the ocean front. (Which would have been bad, since those houses are now falling into the ocean due to severe erosion). I felt like the beach life dream might never come true.
I recently crossed the 100k salary mark, woohoo!. But not so fast! Although I lived fine while married, my husband still worked mad overtime and when we decided to split, I would probably exist at the lower end of middle income. DC is an expensive place to live so while I SHOULD have been celebrating by other people’s measurements,, in reality it came way too late in my so-called career, my reality was not much better than before. And, there would be no end to it, I am such a late bloomer in my career that I’d just have to work in the cubicle under fluorescent lighting, breathing recycled air until I die.
I’ve decided to leave that behind. Everybody thought I’d be crazy to want to give up the big 100k job, which wasn’t all that stressful but was unfulfilling, to settle for something far less. But, what they didn’t know is that I can live richly, by my standards while earning way less and being very happy doing it.
I lamented that the 40 hour workweek was some fabricated bullshit designed exactly to paralyze my quality of life. Using time rather than output as a metric for pay is the ultimate way to extract labor without fair reciprocity. We are held hostage at the workplace, no matter how efficient and productive we are, and for what?
After Covid, when we had to go back to the office 4 days a week, and I really felt like that was a slap in the face for us, who kept the machine running smoothly when nobody could go outside.
But what about this salary level that I just achieved that everybody seems to aspire to? Why is it not bringing me joy? It’s because of my idea of being rich. Not only did I not need fancy clothing and accessories, I didn’t WANT them. I don’t want to wear those expensive shoes that hurt my feet, I want to wear flip flops. If I were a millionaire, I (still) wouldn’t give af about dress codes, and would have the power to wear my flip flops wherever and whenever the hell I want.
The house, the car, none of this matters because what I really want is freedom (time). Over the years I have searched high and low for work that would fit in with my idea of rich, work that I don’t spend every waking moment running away from. I even made up my own dream job announcement based on what I like to do and my skillset. These are the bare basics:
Content creator/community leader
Work from anywhere in the world and set your own hours.
Duties:
Create and publish valuable, inspiring and engaging content (blog, newsletter and video) to attract and grow a paid community group of members around any topic you choose, that provides the answer to a problem or cluster of problems the members are facing.
The content serves to highlight the benefits of group membership, encouragement and accountability support, prompts to encourage collaboration between members and weekly workshops to facilitate members’ development towards their goal.
[content schedule]
Requirements:
Excellent writing skills
Demonstrated expert level subject matter knowledge
Organization skills
The desire to help others
Ability to produce high quality work on a consistent basis
So that’s it, I’m untelling my money stories and quitting my 9-5, becoming a solopreneur, and moving to my favorite country. I’ll either be a smashing succes or I’ll crash and burn, then get up and try again until I’m a smashing success.
Are you on a midlife journey to rewrite your stories and live your best life of joy and liberation? Take this LifeBliss quiz to assess what you need to make this thing happen. (No email required)
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