#10 - "Freedom From" vs "Freedom To" Goals
The Backstory of Quitting The Corporate Bullshit
Most people when they create a life-goal have a massive element of “Freedom”
Everything can be boiled down to either “get away from XYZ” or “Achieve/acquire XYZ”.
For me, I term these “freedom from” and “freedom to” goals.
Some people have “freedom from” goals, others “freedom to” – In general, age plays a big factor into which word people throw on the end of it, but the core aspect of freedom is there and in many cases what looks very similar as a goal can actually led to you being a totally different human being.
Examples of Freedom Goals
Freedom from health issues.
Freedom from debt
Freedom from “this shitty job”
Freedom TO travel
Freedom TO do what I want to do.
Freedom TO spend more time with family/kids/friends etc.
They all sound the same on the face of it, but there’s massive mental differences.
When the pain of not doing the thing (the debt, shitty job, not spending time with kids) is greater than the perceived pain of doing the thing (starting the business, quitting the job etc) then people take action.
These goals tend to be sub-divided into others; travel more, earn more, earn way more, get jacked, get thin. On and on, very boring and generic, things you’ve heard and seen a million times before.
But if you pause and really think about death.
The process becomes far more straight forward.
As Bill Perkins Explains in “Die With Zero”
Maximize your positive experiences
Sounds great but how? - more on that later.
Assuming you agree, we want to maximise our positive experiences, it would be naive to think we can go full monk-mode, instead we do need some money to achieve this (this is where the edge mentality comes in).
This is also why it helps to think of money as a tool rather than anything remotely good or evil.
As the general wisdom on this tends to go, money simply amplifies what someone already was.
If someone was a jerk when poor, they’ll be a rich jerk.
The problem, more people see the rick jerk and draw the line as “Rich” = “Jerk”. When in reality they were probably a d*ck when they were poor too.
But I digress
There’s actually a good, bad and very bad way to go about achieving these goals of freedom/financial success etc. And it all relates back to our programming, experiences, how we were brought up, what you currently do, who you currently have to support etc.
These good, bad and ugly ways of achieving financial goals boil down to 3 core avenues in life.
This has been explained a lot in different books on the subject but the best explanation of this, to this day, is still MJ DeMarco’s book, with the albeit a bit cheesy title “The Millionaire Fastlane”
In his example, there’s 3 “lanes” to life.
The first is the sidewalk
Which, long story short, is basically people who have given up on trying to be "successful" in life.
This can be in almost any area as well, not just in the monetary or career related success but literally everything.
These people tend to have poor health habits, poor parenting techniques and are generally found to be "quite a negative person" as a close friend mildly put it about someone we used to know.
The sidewalk isn’t for homeless or druggies.
It’s actually for the “perceived helpless” – The forever victims of their situation.
The nothing is ever their fault.
When actually taking some responsibility would help get them out of this life, but it’s easier to point and blame than to pull yourself out of it. We all know these people, if you are reading this post you probably don’t know them well anymore and almost definitely aren’t one of them as you wouldn’t be this far through….
The second lane is the slowlane.
It’s also the busiest lane to be in.
This is really the person I’m writing this post (and subsequent) book for.
The individual who I am really trying to talk to in a non-condescending way.
In a way that hopefully comes across as more of a educated “this is how you get out of the slow lane” that doesn’t involve selling your soul, or even doing something you don’t want to do.
The slowlane is what I personally call “The Drift” – The drift is what I was originally going to write about in another book, but after reading MJ DeMarco’s Millionaire Fastlane and unscripted, the concepts are so closely related that it wasn’t needed yet.
The Drift or the slowlane is where people are doing what they think they are meant to be doing, what they think they are meant to do to live a happy, successful life, but really really really deep down, they know something is not right.
Instead they are just drifting through life.
Going through the motions.
Slowly.
This is almost always the result of the process we've all seen and heard a million times --
Get good grades
Get into a good school
Get good grades again
Go to a good university
Get a good degree
Go to a good job
Do well in this job.
Climb up the industry
Get promotions, earn more, buy more.
Get a house, then a nicer house
Get a partner, have some kids and retire with some money.
An on and on, essentially sell your soul and your life for a pay check.
In multiple different languages, in multiple different systems the story is always the same, just sprinkle in some cultural differences.
The issue.
This sounds terribly unfulfilling.
But you actually miss out on the opportunities you cannot go back and do.
The example (that every american seems to use) of the person going backpacking through Europe in your teens or early 20’s”
Is not the same experience when you are 45 with 2 kids.
Not that it’s necessarily worse, but its different, the experience can not be achieved, you have lost the chance to do it.
So timeline-ing your life is essential, and what the development of a real edge helps you achieve. '[a real edge being a digital project that allows you to do anything, gives you the funds to experience life].
Luckily nowadays there's people talking about how negative this process of the drift can be. Some people call it "the matrix", others the slowlane, others "just the way it is".
What’s funny is that now we’ve almost gone full circle.
There’s almost too much information on “how not to be this” that it’s tough to know how to just hit your own goals, “I want to enjoy what I do, make good money, have freedom to do what I want” – That’s what we’re going to solve but through the development of an edge on this site and future book.
This drift or slow lane is the road I was on as well, and weirdly I knew it was wrong but for a long period of time my situation just wasn’t “bad enough” for me to notice.
Like most people my initial story is the same – I didn’t mind school, although I thought it was boring. Same with sixth form, some good people but generally quite a boring course. Went to University as this was the “thing to do” but the course was unbearably boring so wouldn’t go in much, so went in maybe once a month, scraped by through that and then came moving to a very small city called Salisbury.
Sidenote: What’s funny is that in this period, because I kind of knew this whole school/Uni life was bullshit and I didn’t want a job really, I did start to learn some skills; online marketing, SEO, digital business etc. But the push to go all in wasn’t enough. AKA The pain wasn’t greater than the pain of action, but that was soon going to change.
Anyway, Salisbury.
This 8 month period was the pivotal moment in my life.
And not because it was good.
Salisbury is a sleepy town/city in the middle of England.
There’s not much going on, and if you Google the place, the main “attraction” is the Cathedral, not exactly what you want if you are a 21 year old guy living in a new city.
Anyway, I “had” to move to Salisbury, I “had no other options”, as this was where the career-placement year was in-between uni.
For anyone not familiar, in the UK it’s common to do a year-in-industry type thing where businesses are meant to help teach students real world skills. Based on my experience and what I heard from others, it’s more of just a way to get cheap labour.
Despite moving to Salisbury I was still a 20 minute walk and 30 minute bus away from my job in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
What made things even more incredibly enjoyable was that I was paid £12,000 a year, which when you factored in travel time, tax(not exactly much on 12k/year) and expenses for me, meant I was on about £4.50 an hour… Below minimum wage at the time….. So saying “fuck this” wasn’t actually a difficult thing to do as I wasn’t exactly losing much (which is a massively important point!)
In fact I wasn’t losing anything.
That’s why quitting wasn’t a big deal.
The pain of staying was greater than the risk/pain of quitting.
Very long story short, this job was mind numbingly boring, sedentary and I learned more about what a terrible business looks like than I did from anyone there in terms of useful advice or skills.
What’s more is because this was so bad, I started reading “proper” books about business, marketing, accounting, investing etc and just learning about how to get the F*CK out of this place ASAP.
Learning everything.
Quickly as well.
If you’re in a situation that you hate, and you are deciding not to simply become a sidewalker, your only way out is to learn and work.
That’s all it comes down to.
Find out what to do, do that.
Learn the next thing.
Do that too.
I couldn’t just leave because I “needed” this job to actually complete the placement year of the degree….
And as every single person I asked said at the time; parents, friends, family “just do the extra 18 months, get the degree as a back-up plan”
I can’t tell you how many times I heard this.
And it sounded like a good idea as well.
So because I was still somewhat in the “I need this degree to get a good job” mindset, in a cruel twist, I had to keep the shitty job, to get the stupid degree, to get the future shitty job….
Madness looking back but it’s the programming 99% of people receive.
This job being so bad did help in some ways though.
It made it so incredibly easy to say “f*ck this” versus something that might have been a more comfortable or interesting role.
The “Fine” job is potentially the most dangerous thing to someone trying to achieve their goals.
Ambition is killed by the “my job is ok” comments. I genuinely think more people are crushed by good/average jobs than terrible ones.
Terrible ones you work to get out of.
Average ones you work to move up in…
In Salisbury there was also a few too many “only another 40 years of this” comments.
Which scared the sh*t out of me.
The decision of “I do not want to do this”. I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I don’t want to do this.
Older, wiser me knows this is actually a pretty good way to make decisions nowadays called “inversion” – decide; “what don’t you want”.
In my head I knew I'd rather take a ton of risks than commute to a job paying "average salaries" for 40 years.... Or as I put it at the time to someone who made the “only another 40 years of this” comment to me; "I'd be dead or in prison before doing this for 40 years".... Not exactly the most eloquent language but you get the picture.
So “f*ck this, I’m out”.
But then what? Live with my parents at 21?
I didn’t want the job, but I needed the job for the degree…. But did I need the degree….
Back to MJ DeMarco - The Third Option - The Fast Lane
The final "lane" in MJ DeMarco's pivotal book is called the fast lane.
Although a bit cheesy looking back, the fastlane is actually a really good metaphor for achieving success because it simplifies the entire explanation around wealth.
The difference between rich, fake rich and wealth.
I'm not going to go into crazy detail here but buy and read the book if your edge avenue is anything business or monetary related.
For me, the Fastlane was the answer.
The Fastlane is basically just saying “I can do more, add more value and as a result earn more through doing my own thing”.
In this case it was and still is business.
The concepts of the very first businesses and edges were formed between 10pm-2am in that Salisbury room.
Sidenote; that room, until this day is still the most expensive rental accommodation in relation to my income that I’ve ever had! £400/month for a room (with a great family though) when you are only making £1,000/month = 40%!
But those long nights and 12 hour weekends were again helped by the really sad fact that I didn’t know anyone in the city. Not 1 single person outside of the job and the family house.
Kind of sad looking back but also incredibly important as it made working the 10pm-2am and 12 hour weekends not that bad, as there wasn’t really a better option.
This is back to the “if the pain is great enough” point.
These times are needed and essential.
I don’t agree with the modern concept of “going dark” forever in this vain, but when you need the solution and need to build momentum, sometimes you have to make these decisions.
You can still be social in these times, I think the community aspect is important, but hobbies, interests, dead-time, that all needs to get thrown out.
Was this process good for personal mental health? Definitely not, but create that activation energy across that 3 year period as a very important time.
“Freedom From” Trumps “Freedom To”
Anyway, finishing up the very first point.
Freedom FROM trumps Freedom TO.
When you are young and naïve you have freedom to goals.
These always tend to manifest in the “I want this supercar” or “I want a million dollars”.
But freedom from goals are actually what matter.
Freedom from unnecessary stress, freedom from health issues. The usual counter to these freedom from goals is the core “freedom to do what I want” – but this is actually just another freedom from goal.
To do what you want usually is a vague goal people have that they say after a freedom-from conversation.
For example, “I’m just looking to move jobs so I’ll have the freedom to do what I want when I want” “I’m just looking to move house so I have the freedom to walk around/live in a better area”
But these concepts always just come back to the same core element – you want freedom from the bullshit.
Freedom from anyone being on your back, telling you what to do.
And anyway;
Freedom from gives you the freedom to.