The FI Journey: It's ABOUT MORE Than MONEY!! with Vicki Robin

i've mapped the fi journey into the hero's journey simply as a heuristic device you know just as a way to sort of see the pattern this community thinks getting fi is the whole journey and it's really just the first quadrant of setting forth you know seeing there is another way i'm going to find it you set forth and you you know you find allies the other mr mr money mustache whatever you find your allies and you think you have identified the goal you know what the grail is it's fi and then you that's the first passage into the unknown as you pass through that portal and you find yourself in another landscape in the landscape you thought you wanted to be free but it's completely uncontained and so you go through this struggle to orient yourself to this new landscape the things that you thought were beneficial or not beneficial they're challenges there's shame associated with i thought i was going to do the thing you know do the great task and here i am and i'm sort of a nobody out here so the second quadrant in the hero's journey that part of it for the fi journey i describe as first there is i sleep i watch all the series on netflix that i haven't watched maybe i read a book i take up the hobbies i always said i wanted to do you know i do my bicycle or i learn guitar or something like that and then what i've noticed is a lot of people when they start to find their footing around purpose it becomes to teach others about this path because it's the one thing you found in life that's distinctive and it's made a difference and that other people are really interested in and it's actually what joe and i did you know we started to after we traveled built our motorhome traveled you know done stuff then we started to teach the process that joe had actually gone through and um and that became that all the way up to including became your money your life and then after you get there and you think aha i have my cred you know i'm an fi person and i'm teaching other people and i'm hosting conversations and i go to camps then you start to see that there's a there is actually a greater world outside the context even of getting and having money or you know whatever those activities are you start to see that there's a larger world you go and you live on the beach in thailand for six months but you realize oh the reason i can do this is because of the global economy is that my dollars earned in the united states can actually privilege me you start to see privilege you start to see poverty you start to see people who are actually more capable of happiness than you are living on nothing you know and dying of you know a preventable disease you start to whatever these things are you start to realize that there's you know maybe you tune into politics you realize i want a bfi but i can't because of the health insurance and then you start to see oh i i see this is not an individual problem this is something that's besetting all of us you know you start you widen your frame beyond your personal life and your personal success creating your own personal fiefdom and you know being able to entertain yourself and keep yourself busy and make a difference to people to a certain degree i think that's the third quadrant is is that that deeper identity crisis of it's really not about me actually anymore it's not about me it's about how can i help so that's the third quadrant is that you start to engage in and none of this is a necessity you know like the hero's journey none of it is a necessity you can just stay in the village and not you know sally forth at all you know none of it is a necessity it's just what's waiting for you how can i help quadrant and then there is the realization at some point that there's something deeper in this whole thing that i've learned there's the effort not to just make yourself accountable by being a blog or make some extra money but there's that's really your wisdom years that's your time in life where you go like distill what's this all really been about as i look back on this whole storyline it's the realization that as i am passing through this world this world is also passing through me i am there is no way i cannot make a difference because my very life is part of the whole and my actions in it are not acting upon segments of the whole it's just who i am is an expression of what life is about i don't know how to describe that it is an elder process and that's where i feel i am now where it's really not about you know some heroic something that i'm doing it's just about this simple fact of i've had this privilege to have this little slice of eternity to be conscious in a little slice of eternity and it doesn't matter whether i wake up in the morning and am kind to one person take a walk or make a speech to a thousand people all of that is on the same par because it is all simply love and action i guess you'd call it observing the people in this community and the thought that i have chosen a path that is going to take me to happiness you know this i'm i'm going to be happy when i'm fi you know and i have found myself a path out of the misery of you know sort of repetitive i'm going to find meaning purpose i'm going to find everything in this fi path um and that it doesn't actually it all it does is give you a fuller opportunity to encounter these deeper issues around identity purpose um belonging those are the big questions i think of course you i mean anybody in any circumstance we're all on a path the fi path just has this distinction of people being passionately interested in amassing sufficient wealth to be able to live on passive income it doesn't define a whole life path of course i mean this is life this is life but i think it's a question of of waking up and i think i think the fi path is a is um is a certain kind of awakening that the pattern that's been presented to me as the way to live your life does not sufficiently cover the territory of my life and i see a way out i see a way that i can get out of the humdrum the unconscious repetition of societal patterns of being a victim of this whole thing i can there's a there's a sense of agency it's and and that's what makes it that's what puts it on the hero's journey you know circle is agency i can take agency in my life and one path of agency is to get out of the financial game another path of agency is oh i'm going to build a career i'm going to go to graduate school and you know i think that that is you know you wake up earlier in life to that you have a choice you you are the director of your movie and there are tools that you can use and fi is one tool um but all of the paths will lead eventually to these questions of who am i who are my people what am i here for where do i belong how much is enough i think people can wake up in any circumstance there's no question about it so it's a difference between whether you've woken up i think waking up is really just being able to have to step outside of your daily life and have a witness you have you realize it's not just your living you realize oh i am alive that is actually you know that's an important realization i'm alive i'm making choices everything i've done in the past has led me to this moment and so the choices i'm making now are leading to me to the next moments that is a kind of a waking up and a lot of people you don't have to do that if you stay with the traditional life ways that your culture has presented you but in our society the traditional life ways for many reasons are unraveling and so i think people in this fi path can feel the unraveling you know like uh oh you know this the the path ahead there is no path ahead there's only a story from the past but there is no path ahead because jobs are disappearing whole professions are disappearing you know climate change commun you know like your communities the seas are rising we're starting to realize the insecurity of it all so i think people on this fi path are trying to grab a tiller you know and one killer important one in our society is money i think in our society we have conflated four things that are different but we put them all in the same bucket work job income and identity and this is why a lot of people go through an identity crisis when they get fi develop passive income and leave their job it's like suddenly some of those essentials are not there for me you're because because life is coursing through us in every moment the task of self-expression is with us in every moment what will i do with this life energy now not some being philosophical what am i going to do with my one wild and precious life just like energy is coming through you know to you know i get up and brush my teeth you know i take a shower like you know the work of existence is to metabolize the energy that's coursing through you and make it into something that you yourself deem as worthy and most often it's making a contribution in the lives of other people making things better for other people some people i guess are sociopaths and all they want to do is just make it better for themselves but i think most of us are social creatures and they we have some instinctual understanding that we're part of a tribe and the you know with the tribe flourishes i flourish if the tribe fails i fail we are we are designed to work for the benefit of all that is my i am not a follower of iran so so what am i going to do with this coursing energy if so of course we love to work we don't want to be without it we don't want to be without a project without a fascination without a routine that that makes sense to us without a without a somebody to love or somebody's to love without a community without a club without a tribe without a clan without a you know we we want this we want to contribute you watch kids they want to do that you know if they can if they watch the people you know tanning hides they want to tan hides that's all they want to do they want to contribute so work is natural to us and you don't want to take somebody's work away you take away somebody's work and that is like putting somebody in solitary confinement in prison that is not a happy place jobs are are doing something that is somebody else's agenda doing a bit of work somebody else's agenda usually that is time limited if your job is not associated with your true work which comes out of yourself and your own creativity and your own philosophical base your own sense of caring and love your heart not your mind your heart that thing inside you that responds to the world outside it's sort of the heart that beats the heart of the world and notices like mother what's needed you know if you're if your job is the same as that work well glory be but this doesn't happen that often and if somebody else has agency over when that job disappears and so if you've invested all of your love in something that can disappear somebody else can take it away from you you need to like work to work at a deeper level so that ideally anything that you do comes from yourself comes from your own sense of what you care about who you you're who you are what you think is important in life yeah your contribution and that you can you can invest that in your job you can invest that in your hobby you can invest that in your family you can invest that in your studies you can invest that in your travel you can invest it many places but your work who you are is a non-stop self-expression

Channel: Playing with FIRE

Views: 112,831

Keywords: Financial Independence, FIRE, FI, Early Retirement, Retire Early, Personal Finance, Financial Freedom, Happiness, DebtFree, LifeHack, Personal Development, Self Improvement, Vicki Robin, Your Money or your LIfe, Hero's Journey, FIRE Movement

Id: Vfc1YMfDFY4

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021