How to Retire Early (PC002)

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Welcome to Money Monday. Lets talk about making positive change in our financial reality? Would you like to know how to retire early? Its really simple.

I retired when I was thirty.

I didn’t think I was retiring back then. In fact, it wasn’t until this year I realized, that essentially, I retired when I was thirty.

What is retirement? For many people it means they finally get to do what they like. Did you know that 70-80% of the population do things they don’t like every day in order to make money. Maybe you are one of those people. Would you like a different option?

When people retire do they really get to do what they like? Actually, some people retire without enough money to really get to do what they like. Some people dreamed of traveling when they retired only to discover that they are limited by health and finances.

The technical definition of retirement is when someone stops working all together. However, many people retire and continue to work. They do volunteer work or they start a hobby business. Some people get bored and find a job they like. Other people have to take on a job because their retirement income doesn’t quite make ends meet.

I like to work, so even when I retired I continued to work, sometimes people pay me for my work and other times people don’t.

I realized this year (at 53) that I really did retire way back when I was thirty. When I was thirty is when I decided to not work for money anymore. I had been thinking all my life, like most everyone else, that I needed to do stuff I didn’t like in order to make money.

When I was in my late twenties I was immersed in twelve step programs and I started living a spirit driven life. As part of my transition to this new way of living, I spent a lot of time inspecting my habitual ways of living and being. I recommend this. The unexamined life is just not as much fun as one that has been scrutinized and the garbage that doesn’t work or make sense is discarded.

One day I realized that the idea of doing stuff I didn’t like for money, just didn’t make sense. It was like making money my god. From a spiritual standpoint, it just made more sense that if I followed my heart’s desire that there would always be enough.

I contemplated my situation for a while and after a long period of deliberation, I decided to only to do work or other activities that I was drawn to do.

This decision felt like leaping off a cliff. Part of me was sure it couldn’t possibly work. I reasoned that my youth and education would protect me from the financial disaster that was sure to come next. I thought if this crazy idea failed, I still could recover, work another 35 years and retire with some savings.

But what if it did work? Retiring at 30 sounded refreshing. I decided the experiment was work the risk. There was also a part of me that was stubbornly asserting that life was not worth living if my time was to be spent doing things I did not want to do. Especially if my only motive to do these things was I thought I had to do them in order to survive.

I took the leap. I give the whole story of my process in my book Developing Awareness. You can get a copy on Amazon. The short story is that despite my doubts, there was always enough money and I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t like.

How can you create this kind of change for yourself? What holds you back from following your heart?

The people I work with tend to have three things that hold them back from retiring early. The first is disbelief, the second is fear, and the third is a commitment they are unwilling to let go of.

Let’s talk about disbelief. When I changed my money reality, I certainly didn’t believe that I could do what I love and the money would follow. I thought I had to work hard and compromise in order to make sure I had enough money. What I did was, make a conscious decision to go against my gut level beliefs and test a new idea out. This was before I knew how to change subconscious beliefs instantly. That is a lot easier. However, being able to consciously change a belief is an important tool. If you are bumping into disbelief that you can just quit that job you hate and you will be okay then maybe my three steps for consciously change any belief will help.

Here are the three steps for conscious belief changing.

Understanding what a belief is
Developing a personal criteria for creating new beliefs
Testing out the new belief

First what are these things called beliefs?

A belief is something we accept as true without absolute proof. It is an assumed truth.

This actually includes pretty much everything we think. Other words that I use interchangeably with belief are thought, idea, fear, guess, hypothesis, deduction, conclusion, feeling, opinion, judgment, assumption, understanding, hope.

We all have many, many beliefs and we hold these with varying degrees of seriousness or levels of certainty.

Let’s say you have a cat you love. Would you let it outside unattended? If you think (or believe) it will wander off and might get hit by a car, you probably won’t. If you believe it will be safe even if it does wander off, you might feel comfortable letting it out by itself. So, your beliefs dictate you actions. Different beliefs, different actions.

A belief we all hold a little tighter is the idea that if we fall off of a 10-story building we will die. Not many people are willing to test that one. Even though people have fallen from higher stories and lived

Now you have an idea on what a belief is…

How do we choose our beliefs? Can we change them? Would it be a benefit to change them?

Many of our beliefs are inherited from our family and others come from teachers and friends. Still others may have come from authorities via tv, radio, books, and other media.

We reinforce beliefs by looking for instances where they are true and ignoring the evidence that they are not true. This can be made a conscious process, by which you change beliefs.

Take some time to think about a belief you have and where it came from. Then consider the opposite belief. Might it be true. Might both beliefs be true at different times or to different people.

The second step to changing beliefs is setting your personal criteria for changing beliefs

First, I recommend not taking any belief too seriously. Now that you know where they come from and how you create and reinforce them, it should be harder to get too serious about them.

Develop your criteria for your personal beliefs.

Many people get stuck in wanting to believe what is right or true. This is the default criteria most of us use. Who doesn’t want to be right? This is actually a waste of time. How this world is created is somewhat of a mystery. But there is a lot of evidence that we can change things by our intentions and with our mind. There isn’t an absolute rightness. If you can find something that is always wrong and bad or something that is always right or good, drop me a line. There are always exceptions.

A better selection criteria is to ask will this belief make my life better? Decide what “better” means: happier, easier, more abundant. Like I mentioned in Episode 1, the criteria I choose is more peace.

The third step is to test the belief by acting as if it is true.

If you are hanging onto a job because you think it is the only way you can make ends meet you might have the belief: I have to have this job to survive. Geez, that is making the job your source. What do you really believe is your source. Where does money come from. Do you believe that you have to work to have money? Can you find an exception to that? Plenty of people don’t work and have income. Why not you?

This bring us to fear. You might be thinking, it would be nice if that new belief was true, but I am just too scared to take the leap. What do they call fear? It is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. But how to do you get around it? Deleting subconscious beliefs (which is the false evidence appearing real) is one way. When I made my decision to only work for fun, I focused on the negative things that might happen if I didn’t make the decision. Not the negative things that might happen if my decision was wrong. If I continued to work for money, I could expect 35 years of drudgery. If I only did fun things I might be homeless in a couple of months. Maybe I was wrong, but fast suicide seemed to make more sense than slow suicide.

You can also work on the process step wise. Instead of consciously changing a scary money belief, change another belief that doesn’t seem as risky. At the same time, remember what I said in episode 1 about choice. Choice will trump it all. Just choose to retire, don’t do anything that is scary, but allow the universe to create what you require to retire fearlessly with ease. See this isn’t a set formula. The answers are within you. To make positive change you start with a choice and stick with it.

I once did a session with an elderly woman that I worked with. She wanted to retire, but didn’t feel she could afford it. We changed her underlying beliefs and had made some great progress during the hour session. However, we didn’t get everything cleared. She needed a little more work around one belief. At the end of the session, as I went to leave her office I witnessed her reconstruct her world. She undid everything we had done. Talking out loud to herself she said things, “I knew it wasn’t possible” “I’ll have to keep working” and “I don’t have enough money to retire”.

I was in shock. Even if you don’t see immediate changes, affirm that what you are doing is working and you will retire early or whatever else you are choosing. Remember conclusions lock out change. (the first attribute to change talked about in episode 1) Always end with a question, even if it is only, I wonder when I’ll see the results? Or maybe you can ask what is blocking faster results?

The last thing I have witnessed in people that would like to stop doing work that they don’t like, is an unwillingness to let go of a commitment. Perhaps they are supporting adult children or other people and they are unable to let that go. This again can be a problem of coming to a conclusion. Sometimes they believe that their support is necessary, when other options are available. This one came up for me when my daughter was 8 years old. I had the opportunity to get a free medical degree at the same time as my doctorate. That would have changed my financial reality significantly. However, the time investment for medical school would have impacted my time with my daughter. I shared custody with her father, and if I took on a medical degree she would have ended up spending more time with her father. I didn’t think he was as healthy for her as I was. I could feel that the medical degree was the right choice, but I was committed to be actively involved in her life. I was unable to give up that commitment and could not imagine that it was totally fine for her to spend more time with her dad. I now can see how it would have been even preferable. That was me hanging on to something that limited the money the universe was trying to gift me. Is there something you are hanging on to that limits your ability to receive more?

So where are you? Can you believe that if you do what you love the universe will support you? Are you brave enough to take a leap of faith or at least choose to create a financially free life? Can you identify commitments that you have made that have you locked up. Are you willing to entertain that the conclusions that are holding them in place might not be valid or for your highest good?

If you have questions or comments please feel free to post them or email me at dorenarode@gmail.com I’d like to help you get free of what is limiting you. If you would like to know more about Change Facilitation session or workshops visit my website at DorenaRode.com

CREDITS:

Music
Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Voice Intro:
Dylan McClosky
https://www.fiverr.com/dylanmcclosky