I’ve been on
The Island for four weeks now, just shy, and we are ending the first ‘holiday’
phase. The kids start school on Wednesday and it will be splendid to gain
routine to our days. It is very easy to drift along when you have no purpose,
and our days have been drifting for a few weeks now. Our routine, up until now,
has been loosely, writing or paperwork in the morning and then a beach visit in
the afternoon. We have been blessed with good weather so we have made the most
of it while it lasts, and also it is good to spend some time with the family,
which is one of the reasons why we moved here in the first place. But, we are
now naturally nearing the end of this cycle, and so the kids starting school is
to be a welcome change, and also a wakeup call to get things moving.
It’s
sometimes difficult to remember why we’re here in the first place, but to
recap, I will state some reminders.
- · Spend more time as a family
- · Be able to give Sophie more support
- · Give Dylan a better lifestyle and upbringing on the beach
- · Escape from being dependent upon another person’s decisions
- · Create a life that we love, the perfect balance of work and play
- · No ceiling on future earnings
- · No time wasted on corporate dead days
- · MASTER OF OUR OWN DESTINY
We are very
fortunate to have the opportunity to be able to do this, and instead of
watching that opportunity pass us by, we are living it, now. It feels quite
liberating to know that we’ve pushed through the system and are now sitting on
the other side of the gates. What we need to make sure now is that we don’t get
complacent, the gate is still open and we now have to keep the momentum up, albeit
recharged from a rest period, to make sure that we close the gate and set ourselves
up on this side.
A
conversation that I had this week allowed me to observe how increasingly common
it seems for someone in a similar position, and age, to myself to radically
change their life. I know of one of my friends who has just relocated to Dubai,
another that is ‘throwing away’ a highly qualified position to buy a ski chalet
in France and live there whilst running it as a business, and that’s just this
month.
I’ve
commented before on how times have changed since my parents’ generation, when
one had a job for life and the target was always to achieve this and then ride
it out, you would be looked after at the end and if prudent along the journey
you might have a bit more than just comfortable. The reality of this utopia has
now changed. I feel sorry for those of that generation that began their journey
with one destination and then sat by helpless as the bus stopped everywhere
else but.
The reality
of professional life these days is that you are worthless to a large company,
you are a commodity that is analysed for value and compared with cheaper, less
quality, alternatives all around the world. This is all out of your hands and
when the time comes to restructure, guess who’s looked after, not you. People
are increasingly taking their lives back into their own hands, and the only way
that you can achieve this is by setting up on your own where you are no longer
reliant on others.
If you decide
that you’re going to do this then you then have two choices; either do what you
do but as a consultant, or do something completely different that you’ll love.
The people that I’m talking about that our making these changes are often
highly qualified, and have spent the last ten years collecting bits of paper
like they’re in the Crystal Dome, so the risk of moving out of that field is
mitigated by a qualifications safety net. Most people I have discussed this
with say the same thing, “if it all goes pear-shaped then I’ll just do what I
do now.” The fact is that now people feel empowered to take their life back,
and those that are in a privileged position to exploit this, are.
Signs of
discontent can be seen all over the country, and the world, at the moment in
all demographics. A higher post-retirement age workforce than ever before due
to empty promises made thirty years ago, the youth rebelling and feeling
completely disassociated due to no real opportunity or guidance to be trained or
have a purpose, companies laying off thousands of people for cheaper alternatives
overseas, public schoolboy bankers killing the system due to unregulated greed
over the last decade, and no connection between any of these groups of
people, a hung Parliament that’s caused
by no obvious solution of how to get out of this mess. It feels as if we have
now broken IT. Whatever IT was is now no longer worth it.
This
situation forces a person to regain control of their life; this is why we’re
all here. We’re not born into this world to be a product of a system; we’re
here to strive forward, to make a positive impact on others, to become better
people and to be happy. As long as we’re blaming others for our own misfortunes
then we’ll never achieve any of this. We must take control and if you’re in a
position where you can do something about it, then why wouldn’t you?
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