Photo by Don Stouder courtesy of Unsplash.com
It’s obviously a new year within a new decade. As many people do, I recently made a New Years resolution. I’m going to unequivocally win at the game of money in this decade. More specifically, I have made a commitment to the mission that I have been on to completely retire by 2028. If I am able to do that I feel that I will be able to completely win at the game of money.
Now in fairness, I already started out the new decade in a position where I had amassed a retirement portfolio that could cover my anticipated retirement expenses which technically makes me financially independent by the now popular definition.
That said, however, I have calculated my expenses for my wife and I in retirement at a reduced spending level than what we currently enjoy. I suspect like anything else that it would be nice to be in a situation whereby we could simply retire and not have to cut back at all. Now that would be one heck of an outcome if that could happen!
However, the unknown situation with health insurance for my wife and I has created enough of a questionable situation that I’m not entirely comfortable with retiring just yet.
This effectively is the variable that is keeping me from completely retiring at this point and concerned enough that I feel that I need to keep on working for a few more years.
I’m missing something that I need
Even though I have executed on a very actionable plan to have put myself and my wife in a position to retire tomorrow, I’m not entirely certain beyond the health insurance issue why I’ve not been able to fully retire. Although I have had the interest for the past several years to retire when I hit my financial independence number, which I already have done, I have still not been able to pull the trigger.
Looking back on these past several years, I have been missing something beyond the financial execution of my plan. I believe that I have been missing the correct mindset needed in order to be able to make the decision to fully retire.
Being afraid to Win
Somehow, someway I think that I have been afraid to actually complete the process of winning at the game of money. In fact, I think that I have been unconsciously telling myself a counter story which has invariably held me back from fully embracing the ‘thought’ of full retirement. Thus, I have been holding myself back just enough so that I have never have had to embrace the uncomfortable thought of early retirement or what it’s going to mean for me in my life.
Let’s face it, winning is perhaps more uncomfortable for many of us because it requires us to do the uncomfortable things that are needed to be done in order for us to get things that we have no idea yet of how it feels to get them.
As a result, it is so much more comfortable for us to hedge our bets and hold ourselves back a bit only if to have a safe excuse if we are not to be successful. In looking back at the last several years and wondering why I haven’t been able to make the commitment to fully retire, I now can honestly say that I have been uncomfortable with the very concept of full retirement.
I need to change my Mindset
Clearly in order for me to win in this area I need to change my mindset. Period. I need to become comfortable with what it feels like to become completely retired. I also need to come to grips with the idea of being fully retired at an earlier age than what I’ve been programmed to believe is retirement age. It’s this new vision of how I see myself in the near future that I have to become comfortable with.
I think one of the main reasons for me not winning at this is that I haven’t fully embraced the idea of what full retirement represents. Up to this point, I have seen myself as always working full-time. Even though I had been aggressively planning for retirement in many ways financially,
Truthfully, I can’t see myself not working every day. As a result, I don’t believe that I had truly become comfortable with winning at early retirement and subconsciously couldn’t fully map out the required path in my mind in order to get to where I initially told myself I wanted to go.
Why do we stop ourselves from Winning?
Why do we do this? Why do we sabotage ourselves from winning? How could it be that we somehow are holding ourselves back even if we tell ourselves how important it is that we obtain this very important goal?
I have to believe that our brain is truly just trying to protect our ego from being hurt if we somehow don’t get to our goal. We know ourselves better than anyone else.
We know that we’ve set a bunch of goals before and never fulfilled them and we also know the bigger the goal that’s not obtained, the bigger the disappointment.
As a result, our brain is on the defensive and willing to make sure that our feelings won’t get hurt. Our ‘Lizard Brain’ will do whatever it can in its ‘fight or flight’ configuration to make sure that we are unscathed from a defeat. However, in order to get a different outcome we need to take uncommon actions in order to override this prehistoric fail safe mechanism.
Remap your Mindset
As such, I am going to need to change my mindset in order to meet my goal of fully retiring within this decade. I’m going to need to remap my brain to another meaning as to what it means to retire. Instead of the old norm of retirement standing for ‘ending something’, I need to map out the vision, the feelings and the norms of retirement meaning ‘starting something new’.
What types of behaviors would I need to develop in order to become comfortable with the concept of full retirement? What daily habits would I need to create that would get me to change how I think about retirement?
How could implant visions into my mind relative to retirement that would identify it as a positive outcome that I want to replicate?
What small experiments such as vacations, new experiences, new businesses, new activities or hobbies that would represent retirement could I start to experience now in order to develop familiarity with what is going to occur in the future?
Change your feelings about Winning first
In order to change my mindset about retirement, I first need to change the feelings that I have around the things that will make me ‘win’ at retirement. Could retirement mean something totally different to me than what I thought it meant when I started out on my mission?
Conclusion
Could retirement now mean surrendering my current responsibilities but taking on a totally different configuration of new responsibilities, even new business pursuits that I’m passionate about? Could it simply mean a new balance and or cadence between work, relaxation and recreation?
Once I change these feelings and start to develop a strong positive association with these new thoughts then I will start to become comfortable with the idea of retirement. In this comfort, I will start to build confidence and begin to mentally contemplate and thereby ‘experience’ the kind of activities that I will later undertake in this new form of retirement that I have conjured up for myself.
At that point in time when I can visually and mentally experience the feelings and activities of what a successful retirement will be like, and positively reflect on them, I will then have everything I need in order to change my mindset.
And once I can change my mindset… I can finally win!
