Embrace The Fear
Embrace The Fear
I recently posted about the medicine fear factor. Medicare, legal concerns, and worries about patients create a constant source of angst among doctors from the day they graduate medical school. Fear is a bad thing. Except when it isn’t. A lesson I am learning early in my financial independence journey is that in order to move forward as a human being, sometimes you need to embrace the fear.
We do not stop living when we reach financial freedom. We do not stop striving to build purpose and identity. Part of this process is claiming new projects. Learning new skills. With each new endeavor it is natural to feel a sense of worry.
Today I will embrace the fear.
Fear of Slowing Down
My first and most important decision regarding financial independence was to slowly strangle off the spigot of the accumulation phase. Not ready to go cold turkey, I have been progressively downsizing to early retirement.
I am letting go of responsibilities. Pulling back. Fading my way to imperfection. Day by day I can feel the absence of burdens release the tension from my shoulders.
But there is a price to pay. I must embrace the fear to move forward. Against all reason and common sense, I am terrified about not having enough. I worry about leaving the accumulation phase behind.
Yet to move forward in my path as a human being and to find meaning and purpose, I can’t shy away from this daunting task.
Fear of Diffusion of Purpose
When you have spent so much time defining yourself by your employment, not only economic concerns but also emotional ones arise as you pull back from your W2. The first way we tend to define ourselves to strangers is by our profession. This gives them a reference point to begin the process of judging who we are.
It also is an internal reference point. For the grand majority of us, life needs purpose. We need a focus to concentrate for both short and long-term contentedness.
If you espouse the financial independence lifestyle, eventually you must embrace the fear of redefining yourself.
Every new beginning is a chance for wondrous success or overwhelming failure.
Fear of Being The Novice
Today I will be giving a talk for CampFI South. Although I am no stranger to public speaking, joining a speakers bureau and talking in public is now becoming a bigger part of my Post FI lifestyle. Even now as I write, I have butterflies in my stomach. No matter how many times I do this, it will always be hard.
I am used to being the expert, not the novice.
Whether personal finance or taking care of patients, I pride myself on striving towards mastery. Who wants to begin all over again?
I do.
I can’t imagine a life, financially independent or not, where I wasn’t pushing the envelope on some level and continuing to grow.
Final Thoughts
Fear is not only a big part of life, but also of financial independence. Unlike those negative feelings of helplessness we feel when we are stuck in the daily grind, I try to embrace the fear of financial freedom. It’s a much different type of fear.
These are the mental pains of growing.
Just because you are no longer actively accumulating wealth doesn’t mean that you stop striving towards creating a better you.
All of these factors are definitely something that can be feared. But I have this sense that when you embrace your fear… the fear becomes excitement. I think that the mentality shift of framing fear into excitement is necessary as your embrace your post-FI life. It’s an exciting time for you. Something I’m looking forward to one day. 🙂
I like this idea of reframing. I think we have to learn how to sit comfortably with the unknown.
This is an important post. It took me a while to develop a correct personal philosophy. First you have to understand the comparison is not what others think. It’s what you think. Is what you think clear? Is what you think truth? Is what you think directed toward the good? Next you have to understand all time travel is forward. The past is yesterday’s illusion. It provides reference but not momentum. If you define yourself in yesterday’s terms or by somebody else’s opinion then you are stuck being defined by their world not your world. Every day is a new river to step into, a new set of possibilities. If it’s time to move on you just close out your previous possibilities (directorships, doctordom) and open the new ones (speaking, writing, sleeping in) If you let your title define you your merely an empty suit. You may perform some presumed important “function” but you are just another cog in the machine, a cog that can be replaced. Your title is a shield. It protects you with outer boilerplate but also stops you from being real, and people crave reality not boilerplate. People crave intimacy and connection, and that’s a good thing. What do you think blogoland is all about?
If you have enough, you have enough. You either do have enough or you don’t. There is nothing gray about it. If you base your “enough” on Bogelhead BS where some plumber (or ex programmer, anesthesiologist or ER doc) is calling himself an expert then you will never know if you have enough because deep inside you know a guy who spent years learning about finance and practicing financial management knows more and has finer tips in his toolkit than a plumber. To a plumber everything looks like a nut because all he owns is a wrench. Some financial planners may not be much better than a plumber but it’s up to you to figure it out. That’s called risk management.
That’s how you manage fear. You become honest with yourself about what you do know, what you pretend to know, and what you don’t know. You then progress. Step in the new river and increase what you do know, decrease what you pretend to know, and learn what you don’t know and have a teacher available to check your math. You made a lot of money. You have real estate. You own property in the form of stocks and bonds etc. You have a lot of risk as well. Retiring is not accumulating, it’s controlled deflation. It’s a race to see what demises first, you or your portfolio. You win by losing that race. It’s a completely different way of thinking, but something that can be understood and properly projected. Once understood and projected then it’s merely a matter of pulling the trigger. There is no fear involved. “BUT BUT BUT what if I’m wrong” That’s called risk management. That’s called having 2 backup plans adequate for survival. That’s called putting on your big boy pants. What if you get named in a 100M dollar law suit? Risk management is where fear goes to die.
I think you are right about risk management. It is definitely a shield. but all newness brings some fear. even if it is irrational. Fear is a good thing in a sense because it makes you change. it makes you reevaluate. The key is to use it as a tool to grow.
I remember the first time I jumped out of an airplane. It was a static line jump so the chute basically deployed itself and the rig was a paratrooper chute virtually guaranteed to open. That first step was still a doozy.