Growing Up in Survival Mode Makes It Hard to See Choices

when you grew up poor and I did people sometimes give you this great advice like you should go to college and you want to do that but nobody tells you how having the life you want isn't just a destination it's a series of decisions and steps you take and things you learn things that happen and you're weighing one choice against the other and for a lot of people who grew up emotionally neglected or materially uh neglected really have getting that wisdom that you need can be almost impossible it leaves you with no choice but to figure things out for yourself luckily this is possible my letter today is from a woman I'll call Samantha and she writes dear Anna despite an array of childhood issues I'd like to focus on the one that affects my inability to achieve my financial goals I grew up poor she said got the fairy pencil I'm going to circle things I want to come back to on a second reading but let's go through Samantha's letter and see what's happening here she says I grew up poor at times without electricity or water for months at a time so I was grateful to have a few family members that took me in as much as possible during the school week I stayed with my grandparents who were already retired and humbly secure financially they provided security and took care of my basic financial needs on the other side of my family I had a hardworking Aunt with a farm I spent as much time as possible there as it was the most joyous part of my childhood I learned the value of hard work had my own horse and even took riding lessons for a short period this life was shortlived when my aunt was hurt at work and and she was prescribed pain pills within a year the farm was gone due to addiction oh boy my family was full of promises my Dad tried to patent inventions that he promised would make us rich and I remember something about a lawsuit with workers comp that failed lottery tickets were purchased among many other Big Empty dreams throughout middle and high school my mom supported our family on a measly secretary's income because my dad claimed to have a debilitating back injury although he stayed up all night playing video games and often did war reenactments standing for hours a day I recently realized I had no guidance on life goals and how to achieve them yeah our generation was taught to go to college if you want to be anything but I didn't know what to be since my parents said I could never be a veterinarian due to my poor grades I entered into psychology changed Majors a few times ultimately failing my first year and losing all financial aid because I had no motivation I then worked retail had a few kids got married and decided to go back to be a teacher only because many people told me how good I would be no one said go ask teachers how much they make if it's worth it and if it is what they imagined I worked my tail off in college getting um president's permission to take more courses than allowed each semester to finish early and I raised my GPA from a point7 woo to a 3.6 amazing when I graduated my husband was supposed to go to college then our lives would be in order well he changed his mind and rarely made more than my teaching salary himself we divorced after nine years partly due to how content he was with being stagnant because we agreed on 50/50 custody I didn't ask for child support I started bartending along with teaching to pay the bills but was never making enough to save or stay caught up I tried real estate it was too expensive to keep up with and I couldn't gain enough security to quit teaching in my 10 years of teaching I tried five different grades at three different schools it was all the same I love teaching the kids but the PO politics were not for me I guess you mean internal politics it did not pay the bills or the loans I still owe and I had to get out in my last few years of teaching I had another child and married her dad a few years ago we bought a house with a backyard where I happily got chickens and began gardening we then had the opportunity to start a low-risk business that was my Allin just go for it move I quit teaching and before we made profit our business failed we lost what little savings we had and are still paying for it my husband now has a new career which he loves and will advance at a gradual Pace I've not gone back to teaching but with but it's been a big sacrifice I'm a male carrier and the first two years of this career required a 60h hour work week 80 hours during Peak Seasons which drastically limits time with family and almost cancels all free time working out gardening chickens art I'm about a year away from becoming a regular employee and can opt in for the overtime or take a pay cut for a 40-hour work week being away from home so much is not worth the overtime my husband understands my farm goals and with his help I Now understand the reality that we are still up to 10 years away from getting there I'm almost 40 and I'm aware my functional years on a farm may be shortlived which I would still be grateful for but I cannot help but to believe that some opportunity may still save me Publishers Clearing House the the occasional lottery ticket or even some freak natural disaster in which no one gets hurt how can I know these things will not happen yet still believe they might is this hope or Insanity how did I get this far visualizing a life that I had no direction for how did I move from one beginning to another I've always been resilient but has this become a way of life how have I always seen myself where I want to be but have never seen the path signed from Samantha Samantha I read your letter and I thought about it and thought about it and it's just haunted me and it really touches me I I really appreciate your life journey and I want to talk about this okay I think it's so it's very common it's very common you're so not alone with this so you had childhood issues you want to focus on this inability to achieve your financial goals and I heard there was even more to it really what you want is you want to do the kind of work you love and not being able to achieve your financial goals is so much more common than you may realize I'm guessing you know a lot of people who have been in this situation and it hits particularly hard when people didn't have parents who knew how to handle this at all when I hear the way that you grew up with the addiction your your aunt losing the farm your dad having the back injury and staying up all night playing video games and War reenactments like a child basically I mean it really does sound like a teenager your mom having a meager salary I heard this thing that um the motivational coach Brian Tracy calls the E factor and it's where it's expedience where uh it's sort of like the get-rich quick mentality and we all have a little of it and if we don't watch out and especially if we're not parented this way we can think about like what's the fastest way that I can get my needs met right now what's the easiest way that I can get money and we don't end up planting the seeds I guess I'm going to use a farming metaphor here but growing slowly you know the flowers of the work that we really love to do now don't I'm not on a high horse here I I just did expedience all my life I sort of did some things that you're I did go to college couldn't get a job in what I studied then I got a master's degree couldn't get a job in what I studied I ended up sort of creating my own opportunities and only later in my 50s s has it been a comfortable life you know I quite like being crappy childhood fairy and it's the best job I ever had and it's very free and it really uses my skills so I want to put that hope in front of you that you you've had a glimpse of what you love to do and it's farming now from what I hear about farming like whatever your financial goals are I guess it's to have enough cash to buy some land to farm right but there's so much more to farming so I'm going to talk about that but let me just go through your story I'm going to bring your attention attention to some areas of how a person moves forward in life I think you can do it I think you can um your family was full of promises your Dad tried to patent inventions promised they would make you rich something about lawsuits with workers comp lottery tickets Big Empty Dreams yeah this is a thing there's like mental health diagnosis about what this is it's sort of a grandiosity and a being completely out of touch with reality like a big gap between what a person is doing with their time and where they Envision it it's going and then always promising people it's going to be so great and any child can't help but believe a parent right so I don't blame you but you got programmed that this was the way well it's not the way every now and then somebody gets lucky and or or invent something really useful which is more than luck but if you're not like in the business of inventing it's really unlikely so I think you know that intellectually but they didn't teach you just the daytoday you know seed planting watering Sunshine process of developing skills that help you both make a living and do something more in line with who you really are I am so not surprised to hear that you had to live on your mom's salary it was meager and that your dad the back injury you know that's really common the back injury it also brings pills into people's lives and video games are definitely an addiction I'm sorry but they are some people can handle it but when people are playing video games all night they kind of might as well be at a casino or doing cocaine or it's a it's a terrible addiction that sucks the life out of people and ruins seems to hit men harder than women even then you realize that you didn't have guidance on life goals no you didn't I understand yeah and you were your generation you were taught to go to college like oh go to college it's just these empty words go to college like college will put you on a path to success but that wasn't my experience either I'm glad I went but because I didn't know you know I didn't know the game like it turns out you're supposed to do internships I studied video production and you're supposed to do internships so I was a great student I did amazing things but then I got out I moved to LA I couldn't get a job in production for the life of me not for two and a half years I finally gave up on the whole thing then later I created my own company and that did well if I had had to wait for other people to hire me which is often the case when you're young and you're trying to learn the ropes I just wouldn't have gotten picked whatever it was about me I was rough at the edges a little bit feral you know I just I didn't know the um social graces that you were supposed to have to work at certain levels but here's what I did I figured it out and I want to encourage you to do that for you to get into farming I haven't done farming so I don't really know the I don't know the the scene I don't know the social life of farmers and how you get to know them but I want to encourage you Samantha go make friends with some Farmers there's this beautiful thing that people will often do for for anyone who asks not everybody will do it but hardly anyone asks it's called an informational interview and um at a party the other night we had a family party and my one of my sons wanted to ask for an internship with somebody who was there who has a very impressive thing going on and we were another friend and I were coaching him on how to approach that guy uh to ask and so I had been thinking just go ask for an internship well some somebody much more seasoned in the world of business um had a better idea and told my son try an informational interview don't go straight for asking for hey can you help me out just say hey if you were a person like me you know a kid who's trying to get into this line of work what would you do and so my son did it and he got this really good answer of something he had never thought of and a sort of not a promise but like if you would learn that thing we'd certainly talk to you about hiring you and I was so excited to hear that and I I wouldn't have thought of it the whole informational interview thing I wasn't raised to know that and you'd think I'd know by now and I've actually you know people contact me for informational interviews a lot and the bigger crappy childhood fairy is the more I get contacted to the point that I can't even do it all you know I I kind of can't wait to to be old when and have more time it's like this fantasy I have that I can just help more people with that I love watching people succeed at earning a living and doing something that gives them joy I love supporting that I love watching it so with you and me right now we get to do that so I'm really encouraging you don't try to guess how to farm don't make it a leap from your postal carrier job to farming without that huge step of research and education farming is super you need knowledge to do it it wouldn't be the end of the world maybe if your plan was to um work on a farm that somebody else owns but that you you know play a major a role in running or you become a junior partner in a farm a lot of work is needed and a there's often very little money in farming I think that's true almost everywhere and it's sad and uh everything that I hear about it like unless it's a very giant operation it's very hard to make a living I'm not knocking it I'm just saying to be prepared for that I can kind of see why uh you need a financial buffer I love that you love teaching and that you're good at it that is really cool you can do a lot with that skill other than work in a school system I think I would go nuts too my mother was a teacher and she was a good teacher and the politics of the school district like ruined her life basically and I grew up watching that and I was not drawn to it even though I like to teach YouTube is a school YouTube is a school that doesn't pay at first and it takes time but it teaches you how to teach you get feedback from your viewers about how you're doing and if you keep going if you make at least one video a week you don't even have to you know you don't have to prepare it so much you can just teach what you know and people really enjoy it I I I I mean everyone here who's watching this video likes YouTube when it first came out I remember just being blown away like I wish this had been here all my life I would have been all over it it suits me nobody's going to hire me to be a teacher or a leader or anything like that I made myself into that thanks to a free platform where I could put my own ideas out there and get feedback and I remember Samantha I remember having jobs and like kind of like not really getting anywhere on them and feeling like there was some sort of limit to how much they were going to advance me and not knowing why and directly asking why and still not knowing why and all of that I love working for myself now some people it's totally they they're their gifts flourish when they're working in a team and I do have a team but I I flourish without a boss limiting what I can think about and what I can make into a priority all my life people told me oh you're getting too creative you're thinking too much no we're not going to go there so now I can have my creative thoughts and sometimes they are failures but I fail in style and sometimes I hit the mark and all in all this has turned into a wonderful Enterprise so don't give up 40 is a good age to you know now you've got some wisdom as your kids get a little older you'll have some freedom and you have you'll you're going to have energy for years to do this I want you to have that farm life and I think there's a lot of ways to do it and the way you're going to learn about that is by talking to Farmers and doing your research doing your due diligence not hopping in not thinking cuz you know what nobody nobody's coming along to tell you how to do this you have to go ask I'll tell you that my family for one we watch um farming documentaries you know sheep farming in northern England and uh the the uh guy with the Clarkson Farm we've watched both seasons of that like we just have this little hobby we love watching farming videos and that's all I know about farming is from that really it's not very good information so I'm not your informational interview but I'm your informational interview to just tell you you have to be very curious and brave and go find out if you go talk I promise you if you go talk to 10 people who farm for a living you will find out you you know it'll be like having a bachelor's degree in how to how to develop um your own ability to create create a farm but you're going to have to stay with it and keep learning learning has to be your joy when you're poor and it sounds like you've been poor all your life and you have kids to support I'm so glad your husband has good stable employment right now that's that's awesome I know how much it limits your time and energy you're 40 don't even think of that as old at all I didn't start crappy childhood fairy till I was 53 so so much can happen what's interesting is my whole life I thought that my career was all over the place that I had never succeeded in putting anything together when I started doing this almost every skill that I've ever used on a job came in handy and it's good you know it's good to be a generalist and to have a lot of practical skills so that you can be resourceful one of my heroes is Laura Engles Wilder resourceful you know she just figured out how to scratch a living out of the ground when everything was terrible they'd have their land taken away her husband had Doria and couldn't could barely walk you know they had problems and she figured it out and uh those are my kind of Heroes and if you haven't read Laura Engles Wilder everybody do don't even wait till you have kids beautiful literature the Little House series but I also read about the history of her life and um I find these stories very inspiring what I don't find inspiring is stories of people who win the lottery and I think we all know people like that they always want to get into a get-rich quick scheme and you'll often see them at the edges of real estate work or things like that where you know they don't want to be good at anything or learn anything they just want to make a ton of money well I don't blame them I like that too I would love that it just hasn't worked out that way and honestly my satisfaction comes from feeling like I did a good job each day and I don't do a good job every day but some days I do do a good job and it's I feel that good feeling when I go to bed at night and when I just waste my time and I I used to feel this way all the time when I was doing work that wasn't meaningful to me I would just feel like wow the days of my life are ticking by and one day it will end and is this really what I want but you know what Samantha I was trying to hang on to a place to live I was a single mom with two kids you know I was trying to get enough work to get through the day and pick up the kids and I had a lot of medical stuff at the time it was it was a really hard time I persevered though and I want you to persevere too and just remember you're like in the club of strong people who get through hard times now Samantha I regard a job as a postal carrier as a pretty darn good job it's pretty stable it has good benefits it has a pension now you might not be thinking pension right now but right about where I'm sitting like I never had a job with a pension so my work now has to support me today and for the up to 30 years after I sto working so it's like so much pressure imagine if there were a pension so I I mean I have social security like everybody who works but it's not enough as we know so the Postal job at 40 hours sounds like a really good decision to me you have little kids and I know I know it's really hard to work full-time with kids I've I had to do that too and sometimes I wish I could get back some of those days when they were just in like after care after school until 6 p.m. and just hang out with them a little more and help them a little more with what they do but you know what I was able to do when I was older than you when I was 50 and I was working from home I was able to be a work from home mom when they were able to walk to school they were old enough to walk themselves home from school and in a way I think it's a great gift to be present for the kids when they're teenagers there's a lot of trouble they can get into then too so yeah if I if I had had my choice I wouldn't have had to work so very much um in their life but I'm so grateful to have been able to make a living and to have given them a decent life materially and to model for them what a person looks like when they're you know balancing their need for money and their need to express who they really are and be creative and have friends and have eventually I remarried and and we I would say we have a very good life so you show the kids how a person does that your kids are probably going to have to work too like almost everybody does it's very rare that people don't have to so to leave you with some inspiration I'm going to leave you with a free download that is called one year to heal now nobody heals from trauma in a year I know that but it's a thought exercise that if you had to heal what would you do I believe that we actually know what we need to do to get to where we want to be in our lives so you can expand the word healing when you do this exercise to if I had to become who I really am in a year what would I do and it's an exercise where you list what you would do and then you prioritize it for what makes sense as your first step all right that download is right here and I will see you very soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 67,106

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Id: B04ykJk0-MQ

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023