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.