Chapter One
What Does Freedom Mean to You?
What comes to mind when you think about freedom?
You may be thinking about people that are not free, such as slaves.
You may be thinking about being rich.
You may be thinking about being able to do whatever you want.
Personally, I want to be able to do whatever I want.
Being wealthy does not necessarily mean that you are free. I have met a lot of people that make a lot of money, but they are nowhere near to being free. They work 60 hours a week, and when they are home, they are usually thinking about work that still needs to be done.
On the other side of that though, I have seen people that have no job and very little money, but they are not free. They are so broke that while they do not have to work 40 hours a week, they do not have any money to do what they want.
I do not want to be in either one of these situations. I believe there is a balance. The exact balance of money and time is different for everybody.
For example, I follow a blog at http://www.discovershareinspire.com/. I love what this family is doing. They do not have a lot of money, but they do have a lot of free time. They have cut out all the unnecessary expenses, and they focus on what they want.
They describe their life as this…
“We are normal people who were living a normal life– until we decided the world was too big to stay in one place, so we began living deliberately and designing our life the way we really wanted it to be.
Now we’re homeless (on purpose) and extremely nomadic. We love to wander, explore and DISCOVER new things.
Our aim is to live simply, maximize our freedom, and escape the mundane.
People sometimes think we’re strange (or worse), and they usually agree we’re pretty unconventional. But we believe that life is meant to be extraordinary.
We dream with eyes wide open. And we dream big.”
I read almost every post of theirs. They do not live exactly the way that I want to, but they have inspired me to live a little bit more, well…deliberately. I have laid out my goals, and I am currently working towards them.
The main point that I take from the Denning’ss’ blog is to DO WHAT YOU WANT. Whether you want to work every day of the week and be rich or you want to live modestly and do whatever you want every day.
Define your goal and then make it happen
Why I wrote this book
I listen to podcasts and audio books most of the time while I am working.
After listening to what seemed like my 100th book, I decided to make a change.
I thought of all my past experiences. I thought that everything would be ok if I could just make more money. Besides, I have spent a lot more time than the average person studying what to do with my money once I have it. I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to invest my money if I were rich. But, who knows what would really happen if I did have a lot of money.
But, I realized that I had been thinking about things wrong the whole time. I thought that I wanted to make a lot of money. I don’t necessarily feel like I need to be rich. I just wanted a plenty.
I sat down one day and started thinking about what I really wanted in life. I’ve read a lot of books and blogs about how people are living the life they really want. I realized that not all of them are rich. Almost every single one of them has something else though.
They have FREEDOM.
They may not have made a lot of money, but they were doing what they wanted to do. Some of them live on pennies a day. They don’t spend a whole lot, but they would not trade their life for anything.
That is what I want. I want to have the freedom to do whatever I want. And that is why I am writing this book.
Because I couldn’t find all (or even most) of the information in one place, I decided to put it in a book. These are the topics that I believe will help create freedom in your life.