I have barely used an alarm clock in 10 years. Sometimes I go to a 6am yoga class and I use it then. Otherwise, I run on my own schedule. I haven’t commuted, been stuck in peak hour, nor sat in meetings for a really long time. I owe a lot of the freedom I have in my life to the way I have been able to set myself up financially. It has allowed me to live on my schedule.
It was 2018 when I kissed my alarm good bye.
I was studying Neuro Linguistics at the time and the trainers sometimes used games to demonstrate the lesson in an experiential way that so we could, literally, embody what we were learning. In one particular game, they raised the stakes. We were each asked to bring cash when we came in from our lunch break. This would make up the prize pool for the afternoon’s game.
During lunch, one of the guys I was studying with pulled me aside to suggest I join his team for the upcoming game. He’d played it before and he knew how to win. He was a sure thing.
For me, this was a double-edged sword. I could join his team for the short-term win, some cash in my pocket, yet at the cost of him dictating the whole game, stopping me from my own thought process, my own problem-solving skills to organically arrive at my own solution to solve the game. I may gain cash, but I’d lose the whole lesson - which may cost me a lot more in the long run.
The game took several hours. It was intense, it was heated, it was difficult and we truly needed to learn how to think differently about the value of money, about making money and, ultimately, how to make money make money.
My friend won the game and collected $2000 for his team. I continued to sit with my pre-cum-post-game conundrum, questioning my motives in choosing not to team with up with a winner to leverage his knowledge. Could I have taken the cash and the knowledge? What I learned that day, outside of the game of managing money, was a deep understanding of my internal drive to naturally find my own path through life, shying away from over-powering intervention.
This ‘drive’ has been a strong contender in pivotal times of my life and it’s been insightful to have more clarity in the moment, understanding my underlying motives.
With my eyes wide open now, I realise what I’ve ultimately learned is that it is my choice who I learn from and how I leverage the wisdom of the people whom have gone before me; people who have the knowledge and the skills I seek. I choose my teachers, those I allow to intervene in my life, and I learn as much from them as I can.
On the topic of finances, money management and ‘making money make money’, I have had some amazing teachers. I have been guided through their lessons, leveraged their wisdom and applied what they’ve taught me.
I feel it’s now time to share and pass on what I’ve learned. I’ve talked so many friends through these principals of wealth over the phone, over coffee, but it needs to be wider-spread than that. We live in a world which runs on an economy as a means of exchange. We need to understand economics, on the home-front, and know how to set ourselves up to ultimately become financially free.
Everything I’ve learned which makes up the fundamentals of money management and financial growth is now live, in an online program I’ve called Healthy Wealth. Become wealthy the healthy (and happy) way.
If you would love to have more comfort about money, if you’d love to have more money, if you’d love to know that your future is secured, financially, then click through and have a look.
With love & gratitude to those whom have shared their knowledge with me...
xx
Sherrie Laryse
Pic by Frits Ahlefeldt