Transforming Habits
Transforming Habits
You can say it is not about money. You can scream it over the mountaintops and whisper it in the valleys. But no one is going to listen. The arguments abound whether work is bad or good. As many of you know, I believe that work is just the simple act of providing goods and services. That we do this continuously throughout our lives should be no surprise to anyone. So the question remains. Why money, work, or even financial independence? Why do we focus on such things if they are really not the point? I am beginning to think that they are all just mechanisms. Mechanisms that lead to transforming habits.
Habit may just be the key. Not just having habits, but having the right ones.
What do I mean?
Good and Bad
We all build our lives based on habit. Our routines and our life energies are consumed by them. What we eat. When. Whether healthy or not. When we go to work. What we do. Whether we live for our job or consider it indentured servitude. How we interpret the countless stimulus that bombard us from the moment we wake up each morning to the time we go to sleep.
When we go to sleep.
These are all habits gleaned from a lifetime of good and bad coping skills. These skills fashion our behavior and our outlook.
What’s great about joining the financial independence movement is that it pushes us in the process of transforming habits.
Personal Finance
I have come to the conclusion that journeying towards financial independence in the end has nothing to do with money or work. Those are the simple targets that we shoot for because they are obvious and present. On a deeper level, our journeys actually have to do with transforming habits.
We earn, save, and invest not because there is something intrinsically good about it, but because we have become tired of our everyday habits. Maybe it’s the habit of waking up early to go to a merciless W2. Maybe it’s the habit of spending so much that we can’t pay the electric bill. Or the habit of of not feeling good until we plow through Amazon and hit the purchase button.
By incrementally breaking these dysphoric habits and transforming to more positive ones, we gain a modicum of control over our lives. We start searching for intrinsic purpose and meaning, and create new habits that are more self affirming.
A Road Less Travelled
This takes time. Transforming habits of drudgery, carelessness, and the YOLO mentality with those of earning, saving, investing, minimalism, stoicism, frugality, meaning, and purpose, is not easily done.
The initial steps may focus on good financial habits, but eventually turns to more life enhancing and personal goals.
- Reading an hour a day
- Meditation
- Writing
- Creating
- Connecting to a community
- Engaging in meaningful work
- Sleeping enough and eating healthy
None of this requires money, retirement, or financial independence. We can start the act of transforming habits immediately no matter where we are on the financial spectrum.
Financial independence is a tool. It is just the impetus to start the process of stacking good habits and discarding poor ones.
Final Thoughts
I have talked in the past about meaning, purpose and identity as being the goal behind financial freedom. I stand by those words, but have refined the vehicle in which I believe we use to get there. The key is the incremental process of transforming habits.
Day by day. Week by week. Out with the old and in with the new.
Wholeheartedly agree!! I believe there is an opportunity for our continued growth with every experience that crosses our path. Both the good and the bad ones. To keep centered I do all the activities on your list! I meditate everyday, but could do with more reading time. Thanks for the wonderful post!
Your welcome. i think if you do everything on that list you are ahead of most of us.
I turned 63 today, have been retired for three years now. To celebrate I got up at 6AM and ran ten miles by myself. Later today I’ll play singles tennis against a better and younger opponent. My running and tennis habits have been with me for many decades. I think extreme prolonged physical exertion is another habit to consider as transformational. Both running and high level tennis are endurance sports, and I have found nothing builds mental, emotional and physical toughness for me like endurance training. Taking a pleasant walk can take care of physical fitness but a grueling long run contributes to mental and emotional fitness as well. Or, I may just be the masochistic idiot some people think I am.
You are right. Stay the course.
Happy Birthday. And man you sound like you are in good shape!
Yes habits. I did a long analysis of the biology of what drives this and my conclusion it’s the risk aversion and reward centers in the midbrain which are sub-cortical and not so much under cortical or rational control. We over eat because it feels good whether in response to stress or the actual food. We don’t exercise because it feels bad and cascades the need for more food aka hunger which feels bad. We save because seeing that account grow feels good and in reality is easy enough to do and saving abates our tendency toward risk aversion. Working allows us to save and also provides hamburgers and a roof so it abates our risk aversion. The system tends to travel down the road as you say because it more or less works effectively risk is averted some level of reward is provided mindless sub cortical homeostasis is achieved. All it takes is a bit of discipline. It turns out risk aversion is a 4 times stronger influence than reward so risk aversion (not having power a roof money hamburgers) drives the show, Reward (laying on the beach getting drunk having the time of your life) plays second fiddle. At some point discipline and compounding over comes risk aversion and you achieve security. You no longer need work for hamburgers, the portfolio you purchased with your work pays for your hamburgers. There is much hand waving and hair on fire about quitting work as as the risk aversion part of your squash has grown accustomed to a plan that provided years of security. The risk aversion part is deeply tied in with seat of “wisdom” part of your squash the part that remembers and judges if a future action will likely be foolish, a probability function. Retirement is therefore about using cortical control to override risk aversion based on rational analysis and against wisdom. It’s a forced suspension of wisdom and its work derived habit and discipline that has always provided your security to substitute the portfolio you purchased to provide your security. Once wisdom understands this security model works you no longer have to work and can attend to something else. It’s spoofing the wisdom part however that can kill you. MMM and his deceptively easy math doesn’t actually take into account all the risk involved. A more robust plan does.
Retirement is therefore about using cortical control to override risk aversion based on rational analysis and against wisdom. It’s a forced suspension of wisdom and its work derived habit and discipline that has always provided your security to substitute the portfolio you purchased to provide your security.
And this is what I think I mean by transforming habits.
I agree. Life is a process of “sharpening the knife” and learning to use it in new and creative ways. We must learn to measure one, twice, thrice prior to making the cut with our well honed blade. We still miss cuts and cut ourselves at times learning to creatively modify, repair, or pivot with our project and heal our occasional wounds. Unhealthy habits are easily aquired and hard to relinquish for the wiser ones we must seek to replace them with. The journey from easy to simple can be a very long road. Well done Doc G
I like that: life is a process of “sharpening the knife”.
This is a really unique view on life! I liked it when you’re talking about the reality, and what is it that gives us true pleasure…
I also do think that people who go to work somewhat get a sense of purpose in life…
Thanks for reading!