3 Things You Need to Do To Become More Independent and Free

hey everybody welcome back to the cabin if you have a beautiful morning here it was actually kind of sunny this morning but it's starting to cloud over and we're actually supposed to get some really heavy rains tonight but we did get some rain yesterday last night too you can hear the stream and the waterfall flowing over which is it's nice like when um decided to build a cabin right here almost a year ago it was late september and uh the stream was flowing pretty much like this but i wasn't sure if this was a year-round stream or not it hadn't really seen it in the height of the summer so this past summer when it got down to its very lowest point it was still flowing which is in contrast to the old cabin where it was um the stream that went around the cabin site was pretty close to the headwater pond that collected the water that created the stream so it didn't uh like if we didn't get a lot of rain it actually would dry up almost completely and just turned completely stagnant wasn't moving kelly what are you doing so this is different in that first of all further downstream from where the ponds collect and i know i have at least one small spring that comes in behind the greenhouse and feeds into it and that keeps it keeps it flowing at least a little bit in the heat of the summer but we ended up after having a pretty dry spell in the summer we ended up getting quite a lot of rain at one point i think that was would have been july i think june was really dry and then july we got a fair bit of rain anyway i'm happy to see that it's uh my drinking water my cleaning water and bathing water for cali especially anyway that's going to make my job a lot easier this year or forever i wanted to answer a question that i get a lot of ques a lot of people sending me over you know various uh ways including just comments on videos but a lot of direct messages on um email um instagram and facebook and the qu you know the basic question essentially is how do i become more self-reliant and start a lifestyle like what what you're doing there and then they tell stories of sometimes hardship but a lot of times just you know leading a fairly successful life but still want to escape and get away from all the stuff that's going on in society not that there hasn't always been something going on that's worth escaping but it seems more relevant than ever anyway it's not a simple answer obviously there's a lot of factors that play into whether somebody can can leave the uh norms of current modern society but i think the very basic thing and it's the last thing people want to hear is that it's going to take an immense amount of hard work um the very first place you need to start well i don't want to say that it's hard to come up with a hierarchy of of factors or steps that need to be taken in order to become more self-reliant but very high up in that hierarchy would be hard work and health lots of things contributing behind that like financial resources and family and so on but if you don't have health you're going to be incapable of doing good health i mean you're not going to be capable of doing most of the tests required in order to to live like this or to get into a position where you can live like this um but the primary thing you need to do with that good hell is to work extremely hard work harder than anybody else it's really the answer now people don't want to hear that you know they want to hear the five steps to self-reliance so the five-step steps to financial independence and you know what's the easiest way i can accomplish my goals or to make my life easier and the reality of it reality is that an easy life is probably not a very interesting fulfilling life to begin with um and there's just no way around hard work as far as i can tell i'm 51 and i have had a varied career right from in a little bit of very little bit of woodworking in my teens to a career down in the city of toronto for a year and a half the driving courier um you know experiencing that hell um a sheet metal mech apprentice and then journeyman for that i think it was yeah eight years it did that and i went into an office and became a construction manager and then i opened my own business in construction commercial roofing and sheet metal and now this career if you can call it that i think i'll check this off and wait for that plane to leave [Music] that's better it's actually moose season and sort of the end of open water fishing season so got a few more float planes than normal going over uh whereas i so basically uh hard work so through those that varied career what i was always looking for was the uh quick quick get rich sweet scheme essentially so i had a few small businesses and dabbled in real estate all with the intent that i would be able to make enough money quickly in order to essentially retire and do what i wanted to do and any of the any time that i didn't put the maximum amount of effort and work time into it it ultimately either failed or wasn't very wasn't worthwhile wasn't very productive and that includes what i'm doing today when i realized that i could do what i love to do spend as much time out here doing what i love to do and film it and i learned that very slowly after well after starting this brand my self-reliance and doing and and uh capturing and sharing my story i had no idea when i started that i could actually turn that into an income source so and i did decide to do it and do that full-time focus on really creating the sustainable life that i've always wanted and also be able to share that and monetize it just enough to be able to pay for the lifestyle and to protect my future i put the maximum amount of effort into it and the result is it's you know this has been fairly successful this youtube career if you can call it that now people other youtubers and people wanting to start making uh videos and and creating a youtube channel trying to monetize that so they can quit their their rat race job to focus on doing what they want to do and then capture share it and create some value that way i mean it's it's definitely possible but you have to look at two things whether first of all you're what you're embarking on is interesting enough that people want to watch it but probably more well not more than anything but as much so the amount of work involved needs to be you know you need to put a real commitment into it if you look at my two channels i've got well over 600 videos so far and i currently uploading two three four videos a week and uh i don't find that burdensome because i love doing it i love doing what i'm doing i love the the video and photography aspect that's actually become one of my passions not just living the outdoor lifestyle but actually capturing it as well and the editing is sort of my down time where i get to relax a little bit in front of a computer and create these videos now i've gotten pretty good at at condensing that workflow um becoming more efficient in that workflow by just filming what i know i'm going to want to show so i don't um capture like 10 hours of video anymore to get um you know half an hour finished edited video so but bottom line is i'm essentially working you know 16 18 hours 16 hours a day i sleep seven hours a night let's see so essentially there's no difference between my professional life if you can call it in my my personal way and just that's just the way i like it so i guess the bottom line is if you're asking how you become more self-reliant um there's no way around it it's going to be a lot of hard work and the hard work starts well before you get to this point your life where you can actually spend time every day doing what you want to do or doing what needs to be done in order to in order to satisfy your basic survival needs so the shelter and the food and all that kind of stuff that's primary for the this particular lifestyle but regardless what you're trying to accomplish whether it's a you know the idea of early retirement or whatever you need to get into a financial position to be able to do that to begin with and there's no way to do it that i can see without eliminating debt first um that is what we did what i did the path that i had to go down was to pay off that massive debt that i incurred and focus 100 on rebuilding enough resources that i could um not have to go back to true a traditional job that i could focus on doing setting up the life that i wanted and ironically setting up a life that needs so minimal amount of money that um if most of my revenue was to disappear i could still survive we could still have a good life my family and i so that is um ironic but it's it takes a long time to get to that point i had to work really really hard to pay off that debt first and to start stockpiling a little bit of savings in order to embark on this full time and so my point is if um you don't make enough money to pay off your debt quickly and quickly gets a relative term i always say it takes 10 years to get into a position to be able to do this full-time to essentially retire early or whatever term you want to use paying off that debt as quickly as possible is essential especially with the inflation that's happening now and they're coming and increase inflation um if you don't make enough money at your current job you need to find another job or you need to work harder and longer at either that job or multiple jobs you know right now there's this huge labor shortage worldwide and everywhere at least in my area i've found that to be true like you can't go anywhere without seeing literally almost literally every business has a help wanted sign or help wanted posting and they can't fill the positions and when they do a lot of times the people are somewhat entitled asking for higher wages without putting in the work required to or earn those higher wages so it's creating a an inflationary or some inflationary pressure just on the labor front alone so second jobs for example right now with that labor shortage are you could almost do anything and find work that can make you an extra bit of money in my area i mean you can almost just work at tim hortons or mcdonald's to make twenty dollars an hour so to make some extra money at a second job even if all that money went directly toward paying down debt that's the kind of effort i'm talking about that you'd have to to put in to get into that position so i'm going to continue doing talks like this sort of a series i called it a couple times over the last year and i'll continue doing it now i'm doing more often you have 52 weeks to self-reliance and it's really step-by-step process in order to get into that position where you are more self-reliant as an individual family community and again it starts with your good health so eating properly avoiding drugs and alcohol and all the things like that that exercising all the things that provide the health to give you a foundation to work on or work from and then becoming debt free um i would 100 again can't get into hierarchies of of needs but focus on those things first and once you get those under control start thinking more seriously about the rest of the steps that i'll continue to lay out and just be as helpful as i possibly can i could turn this into a course and charge money for it but um first of all it's a lot of time and effort in addition to what i'm already doing but i just don't think the value is there yet um i'd rather just share the share these tips with you here acknowledging that i'm not an expert i just have a path that worked for me and i can share that with you anyway that being said i gotta get back to hard work and get this thing built or get this thing uh putting a window in that in the basement with ventilation so i continue to vent that space so it completely dries out get it back filled and then start building up the walls so anyway i appreciate you everybody following along uh thanks for your patience on this and my other channel and look forward to seeing you back at the cabin next time take care [Music] you

Channel: Shawn James

Views: 94,672

Keywords: self reliance, my self reliance, log cabin, off grid, ontario, canada, bushcraft, survival, dog, golden retriever, cali

Id: 0XNvRrszpC8

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021