Are you sick and tired of others underestimating you? Then set your own high standards and chart your own course
TELL me: Just how famished are you for success?
Each reader of today’s New Sunday Times and every fan of this fun Sunday Vibes pull-out section will give a differently nuanced answer because we’re all a little different from everyone else.
Our uniqueness is good.
To appreciate just how good, consider a story element from Gene Roddenberry’s successful and abiding Star Trek franchise that hardcore fans refer to as the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC or Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
(If you have time, I suggest you Google ‘IDIC’ for an intriguing back story on Roddenberry’s economic interests and his planned merchandising thrust back in the 1960s that pales in comparison to what George Lucas (initially) and now Disney have unleashed on us all through the economically more successful Star Wars juggernaut.)
As you mull over the truth of IDIC, let me ask you an important question you probably never had to ponder before:
Do you crave freedom?
Are there powers in your life curtailing your existence and diminishing the person you know you have the potential to grow into?
If so, consider the words of the only person to ever win four US Presidential races, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “In the truest sense freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”
FDR was right. I know from my own life and from years of working with financial planning clients facing varied personal and economic challenges that for any of us to truly and wholly possess any form of freedom then just being granted freedom isn’t enough!
Wanting freedom; seizing freedom; and internalising the tenets of personal freedom are prerequisites for total freedom.
So, if you are always waiting for someone higher up — perhaps a parent, uncle, aunt, spouse, in-law, teacher, boss, manager, tycoon or political overlord — to say it is all right for you to choose your path of success, then you’ll never be fully free.
There are many dimensions of personal freedom. For example, in a famous 1941 ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, FDR talked about freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from economic want, and freedom from fear.
Author Pearl S. Buck once illuminatingly observed, “None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”
She was referring to political freedom but Buck’s words are also relevant to those who are not yet financially free but who nonetheless know that such a state exists for some.
From a financial planning perspective, freedom from economic want is linked to the concept of financial freedom. So today we will embark upon the first four steps to understanding financial freedom.
The first step is figuring out if you already have it.
If you do, congratulations! Please keep reading to the end for suggestions to more effectively help others embark upon their own personal sojourns toward personal economic liberty.
If you do not yet have financial freedom, then most definitely please keep reading.
Your second step is figuring out what financial freedom is.
While there are numerous definitions, I’ll use my own, which I have taught for almost two decades to my consulting clients, seminar attendees and readers:
“Financial freedom is the state of having more than enough passive income to meet all normal expenses.”
The third step is comprehensively understanding two key terms in my definition of financial freedom: ‘passive income’ and ‘all normal expenses’.
All of us start our economic lives working for money. Our salary, for instance, will only keep flowing into our wallets, purses and bank accounts if we keep toiling — actively!
And that’s why the money we earn directly through our efforts is called active income. It is important but it isn’t the only thing our economy has to offer.
Nonetheless, most people never achieve financial freedom because no one ever wakes them up to the truth that it is possible to become financially free! So, even if you forget everything else you read today, I hope you will forever remember this:
It is possible for YOU to achieve financial freedom!
Our fourth and final step, for today, is deciding if you’re willing to pay the price to attain financial freedom. Well, are you?
If so, it requires internalising the discipline of delayed gratification: Giving up good stuff today for great stuff tomorrow.
As delayed gratification is gradually woven into your thought and behavioural processes, you’ll find it becomes easier for you to control your spending so that your regular monthly expenses are lower than your monthly active income. That difference, by the way, becomes your regular cash flow surplus.
Then, if every month you allocate your cash flow surpluses into well-chosen savings and investments, you will find that you quickly create a tiny trickle of passive income.
Excited yet? You should be.
Allow me to explain why next week.
© 2016 Rajen Devadason Read his free articles at www.FreeCoolArticles.com. Connect on rajen@rajendevadason.com, www.linkedin.com/in/rajendevadason and Twitter @RajenDevadason