RB40 Jr. loves the playground. The weather has been drier than usual for Portland, so we have been going to the playgrounds pretty often. Anyway, he is one daring little guy. He jumps off the side of the circular slide, climbs all over the play structure, and can even do the monkey bars. Well, he can shimmy along on the rail. The only thing he had a problem with was the fireman’s pole.
I showed him how to slide down the pole and encouraged him to try it, but he said it was too high (probably around 10 feet or so.) Fortunately, the sliding pole at his school has a wooden bridge next to it and he learned to slide down from just a few feet off the ground. I told him it is okay if he’s scared. He can slide down from the top when he’s four. Amazingly, that’s exactly when he did when he turned four last month. He slid down the whole way like it was nothing and said – “I can do it now, I’m four”
Wow, I thought that was pretty amazing. A few days prior to turning 4, he was too scared to do it. Then he suddenly mustered up the courage and accomplished his mission without making a big fuss over it. There has got to be a lesson here.
Mental Barriers
When I was young, I never thought I’d quit working for a corporation. The money was good and the work was bearable, if not enjoyable. Unfortunately, the situation worsened and I had to figure out an exit strategy. At 36, I set a goal to leave my engineering career behind by the time I was 40. That was an audacious goal! I’m sure all of us have thought about quitting our jobs at some point, but to completely leave your field of expertise is another story.
Most of us have been mentally conditioned to work until 65. Even if you don’t like your job, you just have to grind it out. You need to support your family. You need to be a productive member of society. You need a big house, fancy cars, and luxurious vacations to make life worth living. It’s incredibly difficult to break away from that mentality. Making the decision to retire by 40 was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome. Of course, the execution was tough too, but I broke down the big goal into smaller milestones and was able to cross them off one at a time.
Alright, I’m keeping this short today. I want to hear your story about overcoming a mental barrier. Share your story with us and leave us inspired for the weekend.
Passive income is the key to early retirement. This year, Joe is investing in commercial real estate with CrowdStreet. They have many projects across the USA so check them out!
Joe also highly recommends Personal Capital for DIY investors. They have many useful tools that will help you reach financial independence.
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Searching on this topic and got to your site. Help! I have such a mental block. Financially I am fine (I run the numbers almost every day) to retire now at 46. I have other income streams and live frugally, but well. I think about resigning from my job every day and it’s making me a lazy employee. I just don’t want to be here. I’ve structured things so I’m working mostly remotely so that stress is gone, but I want to be the one to decide what to do with my time. My target is January 2016. If I quit today (6/22/15) in addition to the rest of the year’s salary (~$75000 gross) I’d be leaving around $3350 on the table in employer contributions to HSA and 401K. In the big scheme of things, that won’t break me. I only think about running out of money when I’m 85 (not a realistic fear). Why oh why can’t I pull the plug??? Ugh.
You should set a solid date and aim for it. January 2016 sounds great. It’s not that far away, right?
Good luck!
I have had many mental barriers. One is the fear of failure, we probably all have that. Also, not living up to everybody’s expectations when I moved to America and left everything behind was a big mental barrier for me. I had to start everything from 0 and reinvent myself, without any support from anybody.
I learned a lot since I started this site almost 5 years ago. One of the biggest thing is that I shouldn’t be afraid of failure. How can you grow if you don’t fail occasionally. Failure is a good thing, you just need to get up and keep trying. I wish I learned that earlier. Don’t let fear of failure stop you from taking action.
I plan on teaching my kids to have an escape plan in place if they ever decide to work for a corp. Working for a corp can be addictive as it seduces you with the promise of financial security and boosts to your ego, but it comes at a cost. Eventually you will be assimilated into the collective just like the borg on star trek and you lose your self identity.
When I worked in the corp they created sales contests that ran throughout the year and posted the results company wide. Being a competitive person I would work hard at “winning” which gave a boost to my self esteem but it only lasted till the next sales contest started. This cycle repeated itself over and over and every year it became harder and harder to win but I needed to win to prove that I was a valued employee. Lucky for me one day someone changed the rules and I realized that no matter how hard I tried I could never win again. That broke the spell they had over me and I was finally able to break away from the corp.
Sounds kind of sick but believe me it’s true!
I worked like a dog and made a fair amount of money. I had 4 kids by age 34 and all of my debts, including my house, paid for by age 39. Then I died. Yes, I had a heart attack at age 40. They revived me with defib paddles. I then took several months off leave without pay. I returned to work and it was terrible. I had changed, my whole outlook, and no one else had. They were the same greedy, jealous bunch, a$$ kissing and back stabbing. After a few months, I had a breakdown and took another 10 months LWOP.
I was 41 and couldn’t keep living on my wife’s meager income, so I finally had to make a decision. I applied for and was granted a disability retirement. It was tiny, about 1/5 of my previous income. My wife became very jealous of my not working and it appeared as if divorce was in sight. I finally just told her to quit her job, which she did without hesitation. There I was, broke, very little income and 3 kids still at home.
Let me tell you, I was certainly beginning to doubt the wisdom of taking early retirement!!
Sorry to hear that. I sounds like you’re not really prepared for early retirement. You might consider finding a job that you enjoy. Or maybe open a small business. Maybe a part time job. Hopefully you can salvage your marriage. Early retirement is probably impossible without a supportive spouse.
The biggest mental barrier that I’ve overcome is to care what other people think about me. I used to care but now I don’t. As long as I’m happy with myself and at peace, it doesn’t matter what others think about me.
It’s funny hearing someone pitching an expensive course a while ago, aimed to teach you how to figure out what others think about you. I just laughed about it and walked away.
I have so much more time on my hands to do things that are important to me now I don’t care about how others feel or think about me.
That’s great. I only care what close friends and family think. Other people don’t really matter. It’s liberating to not care so much. 🙂
Biggest mental barrier to me would be to become a stay at home dad. My ego and pride just couldn’t take it.
Hi Joe,
Mental barrier are in my opinion the biggest blocker of every single person I know. If you are able to remove them new horizons appear to you.
I never block or stop dreaming of knowing the world, I am lucky to have a job that allowed me to travel around the world and let me visit 50 countries, going from Brazil (where I met my wife) to Pakistan, to New Zealand, Malawi, US, Canada Colombia..
Let break these barriers and start creating new objectives.
Well done to Little RB40, Cheers,
RA50
Beliefs are always at the core of what holds us back when we know what is really right for us. It’s sad how many people stay in situations that harm not only their happiness, but their health and only serves to put just a little more money into their perceived security blanket. Money gives you options, but you also need to know when to walk away before health issues no longer let you choose. Michael Neill writes powerful stuff about inside-out living that you may enjoy that connects well to this topic.
I’m still battling with a mental barrier of living up to the expectations of others. One particular area is my career – it’s taken a lot of work to get where I am now, and everyone is so proud and has such high hopes for me. I’m not sure how they will react when they find out that I’m already planning my exit strategy. I try to keep focused on living my own life; the one that inspire and motivates ME.
One of my biggest fear is socializing in large crows. I do much better in small groups. I’m getting better at this by pushing myself to ignore my anxiety. I know I picked up this anxiety from my mom. I just have to remind myself it’s my mom’s fear not mine.
I’m pretty bad in large crowd as well. I’m anxious, but I’m just not very good at it. 🙂 Great job overcoming that problem.
It’s weird. Your earlier comment said you don’t care what others think, but yet get anxious in large crowds. Try drinking some alcohol to relax the next time.
I’m not nervous or anxious in a large crowd. I’m just not good at making conversation in big groups. I tend to disappear into the background. Sorry, I remove part of your comment. As a parent, I can’t endorse that.
I’m not a fan of flying. The other year my wife won a silent auction for a trip to Belize. I was excited until I realized that the resort was on a small island off the coast and we had to take a puddle jumper out there. I was a nervous wreck, but found the experience to be not so bad. In fact, it helped me overcome a good bit of my fear of flying. I still don’t love flying, but I’m no longer the nervous wreck that I was before.
I love Belize. 🙂 Did you do any preparation to overcome the fear of flying? I don’t know what you can do for that. I guess you just have to push through your fear and just do it, like you did.
In the corporate world, I had a six figure salary, drove a nice car, lived in a beautiful house, and enjoyed wonderful vacations with my family. While this all looks good on the outside, inside I suffered from the feeling that no matter what I achieved it was never enough and as a result I could never become truly satisfied with myself. In the corp it is all about winning and recognition but for me with each new success the feeling of emptiness only grew. This feelings eventually translated into health problems for me at which point I knew that I had to leave in order to survive.
Now I’ve started a new career and feel like a kid again. Not making much money yet but I feel free again and always remind myself that I have nothing to lose. I’m in the process of writing a book to serve as a set of guiding principles for my kids. I want them to understand the concept of financial freedom and how important it is to achieve it as early as possible. I wish I knew about it when I first started out!
Thanks for sharing your story. Health problems are bad, but it’s a good wake up call. I had some health issues as well and I knew I had to get out. It’s too bad so many of us had to wait until we have health problems before seeing the big picture.
Good luck with your new career!
I had a high power lawyer friend who was racked with student loan debt and spent money like it was going out of style. She worked 80 hour weeks and hated her job. When I asked her why she spent so much money instead of paying off debt and freeing herself, her response was, “Nice things make my job worth it.” She had it completely backwards. She’s still in the rat race.
That’s definitely backward. She needs to save up so she can get out. Spending more money isn’t a good long term solution.
Overcoming “One More Year” Syndrome is the first thing that came to my mind. Instead of starting my earlier retirement at 53, I could have very easily succumbed to fuzzy fears and opted to continue grinding away. Thank goodness I did not.
That is a tough one for someone close to retiring. Was it difficult to overcome that fear? I’m sure you were prepared financially.
I once a read a story similar to your sons’. It was about two kids and the younger sibling going to watch the older one in little league. The young one wanted to play, but the older one said, you have to be 5 to play. Later on they were playing at home with family and the dad asked the younger sibling if he’d like to join, the response- “Am I five today?”
That story isn’t very empowering. 🙂 I’ll try to encourage our little guy to think for himself and not follow the rule so much. Actually, he doesn’t need encouraging in that department…
The biggest mental barrier I’ve overcome is caring what other people think–about my appearance, about my personality, about my life choices. I wasted so much time worrying about what people might or might not be thinking about me!
Interestingly, letting go of caring has enabled me to figure out what I really want out of life–not what society wants out of my life. I realized I don’t need to wear make-up, I don’t need to buy more clothes, I don’t need to be “successful.” Through the course of this process, my husband and I were able to solidify our early retirement goal, which is a totally counter-culture, non-traditional move and not something I would’ve been comfortable with if I still cared what people think. We’re going to quit our jobs and move to a homestead in the woods–and I’m sure people will think we’re crazy. Well, we don’t care!
The other side bonus of not caring is that it’s vastly more frugal! No more spending on haircuts, beauty products, or any trappings of lifestyle inflation. Woohoo!
Thanks for sharing. It must be tough as a woman to ignore what other people think. I think it’s easier as a man to just ignore everyone. 🙂
Hi Joe
Grinding it out and doing something you don’t like seems to be something society admires. Making the jump from the corporate ladder is certainly tough so good work!
I am still in that world. But firming up plans for an exit around 45 :). Love topping up my motivation from this site.
I’m not bothered about cars, fancy clothes etc. The only idea I was taken with is maxing out on the house I could afford. Luckily I smashed that mental barrier to pieces. It hit me that I could have a huge house AND work until 65. Or take something more modest and not be tied into mortgage payments for an extra 20 years. Long live FI blogs!
Mr Z
It’s funny how our expectation of living space changed from generation to generation. Houses keep getting bigger and bigger. It’s a conspiracy to keep regular people tied up with a big mortgage for years and years. 🙂