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Editor’s note: This is a question from one of our readers and community members of the Turkish edition. If you read Turkish, you can see the original post here.
Ali in Turkey says:
Being in the last year of university keeps me away from everything and puts me in shackles. I feel like there is no life before the school finishes and I am wasting every second of my life.
I know that once I start doing something, it will get very easy, like rolling down the hill but I don’t know how to make the first movement. Another thing is the debt that my family has to pay. It torments me and I feel like I have to pay it and I will never have my own freedom until the payment is over.
Besides this, I am ready to live hungry, but happily anywhere possible.
I don’t want to live in one city on this planet, where I travel between two points every single day. I want to do something that makes me feel good in all circumstances, even when I can’t see what tomorrow will be like. It may be a life in the comfort of a good holiday, or a miserable one including sleeping hungry sometimes. The important point for me is living every moment in the pleasure of having my own life. While doing this, it wouldn’t be bad to put aside some amount for my future children. I guess that’s all…
The Coach’s Response:
I remember being exactly where Ali is. I see this type of pain all the time. One phase of his life is about to end and other one is about to begin but this new one has no focus and has the shackles of debt attached to it, diminishing the delight of the future.
And since Ali is near the end of his time at university, he has lost patience for it. After so many years of school he’s ready to move on but he has his final year to finish.
Beyond school, Ali hungers for a life of excitement, full of highs and lows and the idea of a traditional life with a traditional job horrifies him. He would rather go to sleep hungry than feel trapped in a stable life. I like that Ali has accepted the instability of a life outside the traditional path. Yes, there are great rewards but also great risks and the future often isn’t clear. He wants to pursue happiness, not comfort.
These two words although related, have distinct meanings. Happiness is a sense of contentment even when uncomfortable and in negative situations. It comes from actively choosing actions and accepting the consequences with open arms.
Comfort on the other hand can often be painful. We accept comfort when we don’t make active decisions or when we choose stability over happiness. I’ve been unhappily comfortable in my life at times, having chosen the stable and known over the risky and unknown, even if the risk might have gained me great happiness. When I finally made the leap I decided that I would never again let myself be merely comfortable.
Ali can’t however just run off and take risks as soon as he’s done school because he needs to pay back the debt of going to school and he would like to start saving money to support the family he plans to have the future.
The following three desires create conflict in Ali’s life.
- He’s impatient to finish one part of his life.
- He wants to live a life of risky happiness, but doesn’t know what that looks like
- He has a financial responsibility to his (current and future) family.
Impatience
Unfortunately there’s not much Ali can do about his impatience. He has to finish his final year but by creating a strong idea of what he wants to do next, he can use that dream as inspiration to pull him through his impatience and get him to the end of the year.
A Life of Risk
The need to pay the bills or pay debt has killed the dreams of millions of people. It doesn’t have to. The two can be combined – sometimes not in an obvious way – but they don’t have to sit on opposite sides of the either/or fence.
I recommend that Ali figures out what he wants out of life without the financial pressure. Create the dream – both the outcome and the major steps to get there – and then bring back the reality of the financial situation.
Ali’s conflicting desires all revolve around a clear future.
What exactly does he want to do? He has a vague idea of doing good and traveling but beyond that there’s nothing specific. I’m not a big fan of vision exercises that picture the perfect outcome because they so often don’t ever come true because in this type of vision we do nothing to look at the gap between here and there. But in this case having even a few details about Ali’s dream life will help him with his impatience and the financial pressure he feels.
Notice as well how I said creating the dream isn’t just envisioning the outcome. It’s also deciding on the major steps to get there. For example, if Ali wanted to become a travel writer, he would picture a life where he’s traveling mostly for free and earning money for his writing. He would also however, envision learning how to be a travel writer and envision practising his writing and submitting pieces to editors with both rejections and acceptances.
When creating a future or a dream to inspire him, if he doesn’t include the steps from here to there his present self has no obligation to do anything. The future, in whatever form, will come true at some point, so why work for it?
By envisioning even a few steps along the way he will acknowledge that the goal will take effort on his part, starting now.
Responsibility
Once Ali has his dream and the major steps he’ll have the inspiration to get through the rest of the school year, but at the end he’ll still have the paralyzing debt and financial responsibility facing him.
Reality often intrudes into life this way. For example, I would love to spend all day writing fiction and not worry about anything else. However I need to eat, pay rent and would like to take holidays every once in a while, so I have to earn money.
For that I have two things – a coaching business and a job teaching English. The teaching job covers the basic bills and the coaching business pays debt, extras and savings. The first job is part-time but pays well and the second is slowly building. Financial freedom doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a slow process.
So that’s one route Ali could take: pursuing what he loves while earning money on the side to support the dream and his other financial responsibilities. He has another option however, which is one many people have pursued: working hard for a short period to earn big money.
Depending on Ali’s university degree he could find himself a decent job and combined with living frugally, pay down his debt as fast as he can to then start pursuing his dream.
Neither route is right or wrong and both have their positive and negative sides. A slow build risks never earning enough while the short detour along the traditional path risks getting comfortable derailing the dream completely.
Homework
Based on the above, this is what I recommend Ali do to start moving towards his dream Location Independent life:
- Brainstorm and use other creative thinking techniques to come up with an idea of what he wants to pursue (this likely will change along the way but it at least provides a start).
- Come up with five steps that connect the present to this future.
- Determine how this journey from now to then be supported financially (with a side job or front-loaded by a detour away from the dream).
Of course, as Ali brainstorms ideas for his dream life he might stumble across something that gives him both the excitement he craves with the financial support he needs. It all depends on what he wants and what he’s willing to do to achieve it.
Absolutely spot on the clarity of the future. I went through this stage myself and am just about to finish Uni in a few months. It took me years to realize that my vague vision of where I wanted to be was the cause of procrastination and despair of my current situation.
Once you define your future in detail, you have a real destination to look forward to (not just a dream of paradise) and can thus take the necessary action steps towards it. You can’t start a journey if you don’t know where you’re going. You’ll only end up walking around aimlessly which plunges you further into despair.
For example in my case, I’ve always wanted to travel and be financially independent by having my own business. Problem was I didn’t know how and I kept re-assuring myself that once I got through this stage of my life (whatever it was at the time…work, school, uni, etc), I would figure it out because I would then have all the time and resources I could muster to make it happen. It didn’t work out too well. I spent years in limbo.
It was only when I really sat down, thought hard and put down in writing EXACTLY how it was I wanted to live my life ideally that things started falling into place. All my actions and thoughts collectively aligned to the goals I defined. I was able to motivate myself better, I no longer felt like I was lost, I started building on my income streams instead of just waiting for my Uni to finish first, I could tell people very clearly what I wanted and I felt like nothing could stop me…..all because I knew where I was headed to.
On the debt, I have similar commitments that I may or may not be able to finish paying off in time for my intended plan to start living location independent by mid of this year. However, it doesn’t trouble me as I think of it as a minor setback of maybe a few months to a year which means I have more time to build a better income stream before setting out. No worries. It is just a detour to the destination I know I’m headed for. The mindset you get once you’re clear on what you want changes everything.
All the best.
Great comment Wil – having a very clear idea of what you want & where you’re headed is so important otherwise, as you said, you can just limp along for years not really getting anywhere. Good luck with your ventures.
I completely agree. Ali needs to have a clear vision as to what he wants to ahieve as only then can he work out away to achieve it.
If you want something badly enough you’ll get it.
What do you really want to do?
Now work out every way you can get it.
Agree Matthew – there’s often more than one way to achieve something. If one doesn’t work, try another :)
Excellent post and answers Alex that should help many facing these challenges.
Planning well will make the LI life MUCH more rewarding. We did nothing but plan for a whole year before we took off in 2006 and had done MUCH research for years before that.
Living large well beneath ones means and having no debt are important keys to freedom in this life.
Those who seek freedom and security should look for ways not to create debt (even with higher education and housing) and make clearing debt quickly as the highest priority.
“A man in debt is so far a slave.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m with you on the planning side, Jeanne. I know it’s horses for courses but from what I’ve seen so far, those who don’t plan their LI lives so well & prefer to be more “spontaneous” often end up in a pickle or spending far more than they need to.
Wow, this post came at a great time for me. I’m in pretty much the same place as Ali, and it was really nice to see someone else in the same boat.
Glad it was of use Kevin…good luck.
I am in a similar situation to Ali; nearing the end of my college career, I have no desire to get stuck in a “traditional” job. I want to be location independent as I pursue adventure. I am, however, married. Fortunately, my wife shares my desires.
Here’s what I plan: My wife and I are going to find jobs to pay off our loans as quickly as possible. We will then build up some savings to give us the cushion we need to pursue our dreams.
Some ideas we’ll be following:
- Life off of one income (which will keep us at or slightly above our current situation)
- use the other income to pay off debt/build savings (this knocks out the debt in a year or three)
- Explore alternate solutions (live in an RV, to help us be ready to mobilize – have only one vehicle, or have a motorcycle for a second)
- look into programs such as the Peace Corps (can pay back school loans while traveling, doing good and getting experience) or teaching English over-seas (the exchange rate would allow us to come out ahead financially, so we can pay back loans)
Sounds good Matthew – I like the idea of living off one income and paying debts off with the other. Keeps things nice and simple. Good luck with it all…nice to see you back in the comments :)
What a great article! There’s some really fundamental stuff going on here, which applies to making any sort of meaningful lifestyle change.
First, the comparison between comfort and happiness is spot on. So many people confuse the two… (I recently wrote about this very thing).
Second, your strategies on how to get from “here to there” in Ali’s case and for many others are super realistic. Too many people let debt stop then from realizing their dreams. Working hard for a limited time to pay off debt, or working both in a more lucrative field while also building your dream income slowly or part time is a fantastic idea.
It sure beats letting the dream or desire die, and can definitely provide the inspiration to make it through that less-than-inspiring but bill-paying job you have in the meantime.
I recently wrote an article on Making Big Changes (and resisting them) where I talked about the comfort we choose and the inevitable discomfort we feel when we don’t act on (or allow) these sorts of changes in our lives… especially when they are things we really want to do. There article is here:
http://bit.ly/6hBHKg
What you’ve outlined here is a solution, an actionable plan to making big changes around one’s work. Great stuff. I just subscribed. Thanks a bunch!
Cheers,
Miche :)