Whenever I’m in a situation where I’m explaining to someone that I plan to (sooner rather than later) downshift when it comes to work, they are immediately baffled. Almost every time, without fail, I get some version of the same question: “but what would you do with yourself if you weren’t working?!”
Because I’ve thought about this question for a long time, heck I even have a Financial Freedom List (a list of all the things I want to do or try as I gain more and more financial, and thus time, freedom), I always have an answer. I tell them, with more and more confidence over time, what I would do with myself if I wasn’t working. But even with my response, with my ability to list even just a few things I would do with my time instead of work, they often say that they have no idea what they would do. And maybe more importantly, that they don’t even know where to start to figure it out.
Because it’s my natural tendency to want to help people, I’ve thought about this conundrum a lot. For me to add something to my Financial Freedom List, it has to give me a spark. It has to light me up, give me the warm and fuzzies, make me feel some excited and nervous butterflies. If I’m going to trade making money (although that’s not always the case) for something else, it has to tick these boxes. So, what if nothing gives you those sparks now, but you want desperately to feel them?
After much thought and reflection, I think I’ve finally settled on my answer. How I’ll respond to anyone that tells me they don’t know where to start when it comes to figuring out what they’d do if they weren’t working. The question I’ll ask them. What did you love to do as a kid? And, as a follow-up if they have some good answers to that question, “do you still do it?” Or at the very least, do you have some thing or things in your life that give you the same feeling you got when you did the thing you loved to do as a kid?
How I came to this realization
If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you likely by now know my story. How I was flying along on the hamster wheel of life, desperately chasing someone else’s definition of success. How when I finally got off the hamster wheel, and as my life began to slow down, I began to realize I had all these passions I didn’t even know about because I had been so focused on work and riding the success train.
When I started to really think about and consider these passions, and began to incorporate them more into my life, I realized that I could connect most of them to things I liked to do as a kid. This was surprising at first. But then I began to hear this topic come up more and more in the content I was consuming. I began to hear on podcasts and read in books others talking about the power of a kid’s spirit.
What others have to say
Just think back. You know how to do this. Think back to first grade – to yourself in first grade when you could still hear the sound of your own voice in your head. When you were too young, too unformed, too fantastic to understand that you were supposed to take on the protective coloration of the expectations of those around you. When you were absolutely, certainly, unapologetically yourself.
Anna Quindlen, Creating a Life You’ll Love
This might be one of my favorite quotes I’ve heard on the subject. Because for me, it hits the nail on the head. Her words are so powerful, you could literally read them out loud to yourself if you’re feeling stuck, and I bet you’d come up with a bunch of things you used to love to do as a kid that you don’t do anymore.
I can’t remember now what book it’s from, but there’s a lovely story about a woman who is feeling stuck in life. She wasn’t getting much joy out of her current daily life routine. Someone asked her what she loved to do as a kid, and she answered immediately with “swimming”. She had been on the swim team in high school, and had really never swam since (besides occasionally in a pool or an ocean on vacation). She started going to a pool in the mornings before work, and it was completely life changing for her.
On Glennon Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things, she’s talked about how we lose our inner voice around age 11 because that’s about the time we start to experience shame. Researchers have even found kids experience shame as early as age 3 (or in preschool). Many of us lose our spark, lose our carefree ability to be fully and truly ourselves, at a young age. We begin to compare ourselves to others. We start to feel shame and embarrassment. And sometimes it takes us awhile to unlearn everything we’ve been taught, to let go of the shame, and find what lights us up again.
In a wonderful book by Kevin Townley, where he tells the stories of lesser-known artists, he writes about this one who rediscovered art later in her life. She talks about how she used to be the class artist in elementary school, but as she got older, she stopped making art. Later on, when she was a journalist in Brazil, she decided to take a drawing class and rediscovered her talent. She says “As soon as I started drawing, all this talent I have came shooting back. I started painting and looking at these farm families that I’d been interviewing. I saw them visually and humanly. I was still interested in their stories, but I began to want to draw them. Little by little, I gave up my journalism job and became an artist.”
If we are stuck in life, unsure of where to go next but knowing that where we are isn’t fulfilling, what if all it took was thinking about what we loved to do as a kid? And then, once we’ve come up with something that we miss, what if we found a way to sneak it into our lives somehow, even if it was something as small as drawing for 15 minutes a day? And we see where it takes us. Because who knows, maybe little by little, we’d find our way to being unstuck. Or to the thing we’d want to do if we weren’t working. And that can tell us so much about where we want to go in life.
Another way to get at this same feeling is to figure out whether we have enough “play” in our lives. In the book Essentialism by George McKeown, there is a whole chapter on play, with the subtitle Embrace the Wisdom of Your Inner Child. He talks about how kids learn about creativity through play, “but then as we get older, something happens. We are introduced to the idea that play is trivial. Play is a waste of time. Play is unnecessary. Play is childish.” Even if we don’t know exactly what to do, even if we know we don’t want to go swimming every morning before work, adding more play into our lives can still help us find some answers. It may lead us to getting unstuck, to finding a thing or two that we can add into our lives to bring us pure joy. It may feel unnatural at first, but play can help you get there. Play helps you relax, let go, get creative again. And it just might lead you to something you want to do with your life besides (or in addition to!) work.
You could also experiment with one of my personal favorites and take the Sparketype Assessment. The assessment, along with the corresponding book, were revolutionary for me when I was feeling stuck. Before I had my Financial Freedom List. When I knew there was more to life than just work, but I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to do.
The Sparketypes (and you’ll find out which are yours when you take the assessment) are what the author Jonathan Fields calls “the source code level driver of work that makes you come alive.” He goes on to say that “Early in life, it turns out, we begin to exhibit a certain unique imprint or affinity, an intrinsic impulse, for work that makes us come alive. This work gives us the feeling of being Sparked.”
One of my favorite lines from the book is “for most people, discovering your Sparketype is like meeting your true self.” Now, this sounds dramatic. But honestly, as someone who has taken the assessment and was pretty rocked by it, I completely agree. When you take the assessment, it will tell you your primary and your shadow Sparketype. My shadow didn’t surprise me at all: the Maven Sparketype is about lifelong learning. As a PhD with a job where I get to learn new things every day, this makes perfect sense. What surprised me was my primary Sparketype, the Nurturer. The more I read about it, the more it made sense. I love taking care of others, and I have always been the person in my family and friend group to bring everyone together, to keep us in touch. Most of the things on my Financial Freedom List have to do with taking care of others or being of service in some way. But I don’t do any (or much) of this in my daily life currently. I’m missing out on a huge part of who I am, and this is a big driver for me on my financial independence journey and in my desire to downshift when it comes to work. Perhaps taking the Sparketype Assessment will give you some ideas for how to spend your time if you weren’t working, like it did for me.
And if none of this has resonated yet, you can always listen to the simple words of Martha Beck in her book Finding Your Own North Star: “Channeling your inner child will tell you (almost) everything you need to know.”
What I have to say (some personal examples)
Something that is not on my Financial Freedom List but is a good example of an activity that sparks play and immediately transports me back to childhood is going to the county fair. I had this revelation this year. We have a lovely little county fair where we currently live, and I love going every year. Mr. Dink and I have gone for several years in a row. I love the food. I love the atmosphere. I love that everyone is happy (or at least seems happy).
Since Mr. Dink could really take or leave the fair, but he loves going with me because of how happy it makes me, he asked me this year where that hapiness comes from. I literally feel light and free, like I haven’t a care in the world, when I’m at the fair. I thought about it, and I realized it’s because I LOVED going when I was a kid. Growing up in a small town in rural NH, going to the fair each year was a big deal. It felt like such a treat. It was the first place my parents let me go off on my own with friends. It holds a special place in my heart. And so, to this day, going to the fair makes me feel like a kid again.
Something that is on my Financial Freedom List that is associated with what I loved to do as a kid is theater. I used to love to be involved in theater, but then I discovered sports, and got obsessed with getting straight As at school, and went on to graduate school. There was no time for theater (except for the one time in high school where I was in the school play). Remembering how much fun I had participating in theater and how much joy it brought me, being in a play (specifically a musical) is now on my Financial Freedom List.
This blog is even tied to what I loved to do as a kid. I used to love to write stories. I remember when we learned how to bind a book in middle school, and I was obsessed with writing a book that I could then bind myself. I would write chapters and chapters of ideas, but I could never finish the book. Not to mention that my stories were always about the hard things in life. My characters would experience pain, sadness, and vulnerability. I would give my chapters to my mom to read, and she would tell me they were too sad. I don’t blame her at all, but I don’t think it helped my confidence much. Looking back, I’m actually glad that I didn’t try to be a “writer” to make money, so that I could rediscover my love for writing later in life.
This blog started as more of a whisper. Although I have always kept a journal on and off, as I got off the hamster wheel and had more time and freedom from work, I found myself wanting to do more than journal. I had all these ideas in my head that I wanted to get on paper. I used to daydream of starting this blog, maybe writing a book one day. And now the blog is no longer a dream. Pay attention to those whispers, those nagging longings that creep up from time to time. They just might be telling you exactly what you need to hear.
Closing thoughts
So, my friends, if you’re on a journey to financial independence, do you know what you plan to do once you hit your number? Many of the early pioneers of the financial independence movement have written and spoken about how this magic number doesn’t magically make you happy. How they raced to the finish line and retired only to discover that they didn’t know what to do with themselves. They’ve talked about how they wished they’d gone slower, or they wished they’d done more of the work to discover what it was that made them happy outside of their income-producing work.
If this is you, and you don’t know where to start, ask yourself what you loved to do as a kid, and do you still do it?
But I will warn you. Once you start to do the work and figure out what it is that sparks you, you likely won’t be able to wait until you hit financial independence to start doing it. If it is something that really makes your heart sing, you won’t be able to stop thinking about it. But there’s good news. If you’re on this financial independence journey, you have so many options. You likely are already in relatively good shape when it comes to money. And thanks to the many community members who have followed the early pioneers, we now know about so many alternatives to traditional FIRE. Barista FI, Coast FI, and Flamingo FI, to name a few. If you haven’t, I encourage you to go read some of the amazing Slow FI Interviews published by The Fioneers for ideas and inspiration (they even interviewed me in one!).
And if you get overwhelmed, which you likely will (I get overwhelmed on the daily about how best to craft my life), just remember: you have options. And just because you choose one option, doesn’t mean you can’t shift to another. The possibilities are endless, my friends. So go out today and be a kid again. And then let me know what you discover.