Have you ever heard the saying, "Be careful what you wish for -- you just might get it."?
It has always fascinated me because it sounds like a challenge.
Over the past year or so, I have come to appreciate the wisdom behind this old adage.
When I was 23 years old, I set a goal for myself of retiring at the age of 50. I worked hard at building a successful business in order to earn (and then save) enough money to spend the rest of my life completely free of what I call "Have tos". I did not want to have to do anything. I wanted to work only if and when it was work I loved, spend more time with the people who mattered most to me, do some traveling, relaxing, reading, and just enjoying life on my own terms. In my mind this was the epitome of freedom: doing what I wanted, when I wanted.
Last year, at the ripe old age of 49, I achieved this goal. I sold my company and was ready to start living my dream. I had spent the last 5 years preparing for this transition (or so I thought). I went to school to get trained and certified as a professional life/business coach so that I would have meaningful work that I enjoyed.
Now here comes the strange twist. (And the reason for writing this article!) I realized that *freedom*is pretty tough to handle if you are not prepared for it.
The last 12 months have been such an incredible learning experience that I thought I would share just a few of the lessons I have learned.
Do you remember the movie A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise?
There was a very powerful line in the film when Jack tells Tom, "You can't handle the truth!"
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup)): You want answers?
Tom Cruise (Kaffee): I think I'm entitled.
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You want answers?
Tom Cruise (Kaffee): I want the truth!
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You can't handle the truth!
The truth I couldn't handle: I was not prepared for freedom. I had no plan or any idea what to do with my new found freedom or why I even wanted it in the first place. Truth be told, I was lost without my old way of life!
First Lesson - Don't idealize what "freedom" will mean for you. What I thought was going to be a life of utter bliss turned out to be, at times, a real struggle. Making the transition from full throttle into coasting along was a shock! I had been living in a constant and frenetic busyness mode for 25 years. My days, hours, and minutes were planned out well in advance, down to the last detail. My life was on auto-pilot right up until the first Monday morning after I stopped working when I woke up and realized there was nowhere I had to be that day or the next day --- or the next week for that matter! It was exhilarating and yet extremely scary at the same time. The freedom to choose was really mine but now I needed to choose something. Yikes!
I have seen this happen to athletes who have had great success playing professional sports and when their playing days comes to the end they have no real plan of action for the next phase of their life. Brett Favre comes to mind. He announced his retirement from pro football last season. Within two months he changed his mind and wanted to come back and play. The Green Bay Packers had already moved on without him and offered him 10 million dollars to stay home and he said no. Why? Perhaps he had never envisioned his life without football and didn't know what to do next. He is now the quarterback for the NY Jets, but even if he manages to postpone the inevitable for a year or two he will soon need to look at his own truth because it is coming. He will have to find something else to do with his life in the not too distant future.
Often, I will say to clients, "It's not the what that's most important, it's the why."
So--- why had I wanted to achieve this ultimate goal of freedom?
Second Lesson - Don't wait until you have achieved your goals to start planningwhat to do next.
Think about it like this: would you go on a vacation to a place you've never been without doing any research about what it's like there, where you might want to stay, or what you might want to see or do? If you don't spend some time on preparation, you will waste your precious vacation tending to these types of things instead of enjoying and relaxing the experience.
When I stopped working, I gave up the pagers, the meetings, the multiple phones ringing, and all of the responsibilities that went with running several companies with dozens of employees. Standing in the middle of a grocery store aisle one morning, I realized my biggest concern for that day was what should I make for dinner. It was an eerie feeling to no longer be at the center of a whirling tornado. I was not expected to do much of anything or to be anywhere.
No one expected anything from me, including me.
Recently, I was listening to a speaker talk about this same concept of being careful what you wish for. He shared his feelings of desperately wanting a woman in his life. He asked God to please bring a woman into his life so he could share this wonderful life with her. The very next week his 19-year-old daughter moved back in with him! His humorously illustrated point was that we need to be specific about not only what we want, but also why we want it.
Third Lesson - Avoiding the truth doesn't make it go away! When my life started to feel out of harmony I tried distracting myself in many different ways. I started taking long motorcycle trips putting 15,000 miles on my bike over a 6-month period. I became bored with my old motorcycle, so I bought another one and started fixing it up. Then we bought a condo in Florida and started going down there to escape but these material things weren't filling the void. I started to repair and update everything around the house; I started taking care of all the landscaping myself, the grocery shopping and cooking, even reorganizing and cleaning out the closets in our house. But getting really busy just filling my time wasn't working either. I realized what needed to change was me.
I needed to stop moping around and feeling sorry for myself, wasting precious time pondering what my next move should be and take some action in order to find out!
I was playing the avoidance game, as all of us do at one time or another to avoid looking at the truth. Take a minute right now to think about some of the ways you might be avoiding certain truths in your life.
Fourth Lesson - Take meaningful action when you are stuck. I needed to start moving towards things that really mattered to me not just a bunch of activity to keep me busy or entertained. That gets real old quick.
(And by the way, pondering is not taking action!) This rut I was in was keeping me from enjoying this incredible gift of freedom. I was stuck! Imagine- the life coach who helps people get unstuck was stuck!
So I have put myself back into the game of life. It's no fun just watching others play.
My "retirement" is my "reawakening", so, as they say, "Game on!"
Thankfully, I never gave up my coaching business. I love the work I do with my clients, so I have decided to re-dedicate myself to my coaching business and see what comes next.
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