The Fable of the Monkey and the Trap

I'm pretty sure that this fable is a modern myth, dressed up in scientism.

Yet, like the fables of the old, it's a good one. Especially for everyone like us - lovers of freedom. What the modern version lacks in narrative, it compensates with simplicity.

The story goes, as we all know, that we can feed monkeys sweet, irresistible cookies. Or banana, I suppose, but there is something more illustrative and diabolical with an artificial cookie, so we’ll go with that. If we give the monkeys a few cookies, they learn to crave it. Then we can construct a simple trap. 

If it had been a fable of the old, it would have had a little bit more soul to it, and would have gone something like this.

It all starts with our young monkey in the jungle, who one day fell out of his tree, and found himself in a glade that he had never seen before. 

In that glade, the sunlight shone through the canopy on the strangest and most beautiful, yet outlandish thing the monkey had ever seen; a beautiful, colourful cookie, covered with the sweetest of frosting.

The little monkey went close, and sniffed the cookie. 

The cookie smelled like all the fruits the monkey had eaten  and could think of in the jungle, taken all together. The smell had something intense to it, as if this cookie could promise everything good with his little monkey-life; distant happy memories, present delights and future promises, the berrys and the ripe fruits, the honey of the honey-bees; yes, even love and recognition from his monkey-friends.

Sparks of joy shot up in his little monkey-brain as he tasted the cookie, and tears of bliss slowly rolled down his little monkey cheeks. 

Then the monkey saw yet another cookie, a little further away. 

Even before eating the new cookie, our monkey saw a small opening in the trunk of a jungle tree. 

The inside of the trunk was full of shimmering cookies. The monkey ran to the tree, and luckily enough, the opening was just big enough so he could squeeze in his little monkey-hand. 

The little monkey closed his little hand around one of the cookies. 

The little monkey tried to get his hand out of the trunk. Strangely, it was impossible. It was as if however hard he tried, he couldn’t break free. There was just not space enough. It was truly impossible. His hand didn't fit through the opening anymore.

The little monkey started to try to figure out what to do about that, but he could not come up with a solution. 

Perhaps it was time to get one of his little monkey-depressions, as sometimes happened when he didn’t get what he wanted. Or perhaps a tantrum and complaints? 

Then he heard a sound in the thicket. Was there someone who would take advantage from that he was stuck in this unfair prison? Was it perhaps even dangerous?

Déjeuner de jambon, Nicolas Lancret 1735

However heart-gripping the story of our monkey is, there are indeed cookies to let go off for most of us. Letting go of the bigger house, yet another car, letting go of the summer house, that vacation escape, realize that the children will be fine without prestigious schools, and the pool and yacht will not add to our happiness, in a neverending chase as real life passes us by.

When the hunters come, in the shape of worse times, a career that doesn't work anymore, lay-offs, skills that have less value, a boss we cannot stand, or a feeling that it's all unfulfilling. Then, instead of letting go of the candy, we opt for 'burn-out', crises, depression, bitterness and we convince ourselves that we are victims.

It’s hard, and harder the more used to the cookies we’ve become, to drive in that wedge that is necessary to free ourselves from our own tree-trunk that keeps us trapped. 

Yet, unclenching the fist and obtaining freedom of time is a shift of perspective that it’s as surprising as it would be for our monkey if he opened his hand. Suddenly what seemed a radical 50-70% savings become a reality. And we can escape the prison and achieve rapid financial independence and freedom.

All we need to do to obtain our freedom is to let go of the cookies.

Balancing The New Year's Resolutions - Part 2/2

This is part 2 of 2 about our overly ambitious way of making New Year's Resolutions for 2021. 

We've divided our resolutions in 4 areas with Epic Mission Statements and all! 

• Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity
• Fun: Enjoying the Ride
• Body: Building our Temples
• Soul: Expanding our Stories

How we think about focusing on the journey and how we set the mission in Part 1. Here comes our resolutions on the last two areas - Body & Soul.

Body: Building our Temples

Keeping the ambitions realistic

As said in the beginning, we are very keen on training and fitness, both of us. 

In the last two years we've improved a lot in our fitness (increasing muscle-mass while staying lan, hitting records on our running). But still - let's make it a focus. 

We've just put in a time goal, of 9000 minutes of deliberate training. And topped it up with at least 3 times 2 mile crawls. We like swimming. Running comes natural. 

If we keep that up, we probably can pull of the odd 42 km run as well. 

Soul: Expanding our Stories

So the last area. Perhaps the most nebulous one, but on equal terms with the rest. What stories do we tell ourselves about ourselves? And, more importantly, what stories do we tell ourselves that we are NOT? 

A question worthy of exploration.

So in the search for expanding our stories, we put things like:

- get a lifestyle / work-life coach

- take the fearless and tougher choice 2 times

- at two social events, having a (tasteful) focus that is 180 degrees contrary to our main personality traits 

- identify three stories we tell ourselves that diminishes us

- improve 1 language

As many non-English speakers do, we already speak a bunch of languages, but why stop there? To a certain extent, as Goethe puts it, those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own. And perhaps less about the world as well. If we think of where we will land, our story will probably include a touch of Socrates cosmopolitan - he who is at home everywhere and nowhere.

Antinous German is not quite were it should be, so he should basically be able to have a conversation in the end of the year. He will aim for reading four books and listening to four audiobooks. Lucilius Mandarin is rusty, so he will focus on building vocabulary and basic sentences, and should be able to survive everyday situations in Mandarin at the end of the year.

A word about that thing about going counter to our personality traits. It sounds strange. It should sounds strange! 

Two Examples: 

• For Lucilius, who naturally is very goal and result-focused, this means going to a social event, outside of work, with the sole purpose of being really nice to everyone. No other results needed, no learning telling mingling with ulterior motives. 
• For Antinous, who naturally is a very likeable person, it will mean putting his own will in the centre of a social event and make something happen that just depend on that he wants it. So it's "Expanding our stories" that have snuck into this category a little bit as well. 

What about that tougher choice? It's about at least twice taking a choice where we first feel like "nah, this is nothing for me" and say "yes, I'll do it!". It's probably related to worklife, but not necessary. The idea is to push us to expand our story of who we tell ourselves that we are. 

We will also try to get a coach this year. We've found a way to finance that, so it's not as expensive as it sounds. We will try to use the coach to identify a few stories that we tell ourselves that diminishes who we are. And just being open to getting new perspectives and ideas.

Let's see how this works out for us, but we hope this way 2021 will become more intentional for us. 

What are your missions and how do you go about to reach them?

Balancing the New Year's Resolutions - Part 1/2

We occasionally run marathons. It's not like we aim for it, but for us it's a proof that we stay reasonably fit. 

How do we pull this off? By loving the process, as the saying goes. Those 42 km:s become the outcome of early morning runs, good food, blissful swims and long, long runs in the woods.

Not a forest per se, but still very good for running

So how does this relate to New Year's Resolutions? 

It's about avoiding wishful thinking. Don't fall in the b*llshit trap of magically wishing for a goal (run a marathon). Wish for the journey!  

A good resolution moves us in a desired direction. Who exactly cares where we might end up, as long as it's in that direction? Super-fit but didn't run a marathon, would that really be a problem?

For a few years now we didn't have any New Year's Resolutions. 

We have been coasting along on our journey towards financial independence, and we didn't feel the need to think about where we were heading. That overarching goal blinded out all else. But this year, it feels like the coasting part has changed. 

Our lives will need to transform again, and start to prepare us for landing at some sweet spot outside  gravity's pull of the paycheck. 

Our New Year's Resolutions 

So how can we avoid losing sight of the horizon? After some thinking and some more running in the woods (snow included) we decided to split our resolutions up in four areas.  

And what the heck. Epic mission statements can't be wrong. Here they go:

• Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity.
• Fun: Enjoying the Ride
• Body: Building our Temples
• Soul: Expanding our Stories

Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity

In the job category, we put things like:

- Work more than 4+, 3 Sundays 

- Work more than 12h+ days, 8 times 

- Establish Total Budget Control, for each of the 12 months 

We try to stick to the motto that our jobs must feel worthwhile. Lo and behold, we are at work places were we think humanity is one nano-iota better off if we show up at work. When we haven't believed in work - then we've done all we could to wiggle ourselves out of that situation.

And with probably a much, much shorter work life than the average Joe - we don't have to get disillusioned to put in hard work every now and then. It's more amusing to go all in. So instead of seeing that as a sacrifice - we turn it around and make hard work a promise. 

We shall stand up and fight (when necessary!). Much more fun.

And on another note, related to that paycheck. We've never really had complete budget control. We have just stayed very frugal, and summed things up roughly at year's end. Usually we hit our budget.  

The thinking here is that if we better know where the money goes, it will actually allow us to spend more. We should feel allowed to actually spend what we've set off as our fun budget.

Which opens up for the next topic; the Fun Area.

Fun: Enjoying the Ride

One danger with the quest for financial independence, or rather financial freedom, is that we tend to become so goal oriented that we just forget having fun. We forget everything that doesn't have an obvious payoff. Like piano. We are never going to play the piano at Carnegie Hall, let's put it like that, but it's still fun to play!

So this year we decided to have a spotlight on Fun as well. 

In this area we put:

- 1 long-haul flight for fun only

- making the socially adventurous/interesting choice, 3 times

- able to play two songs well on the piano

- put in the time necessary for at least three close friends

I think the list speaks for itself. 

Why all the social stuff? We score somewhere on the middle between introvert and extrovert, hence some focus at the social side, as we know we enjoy it but need a push to take initiative. It's also an area that was somewhat sacrificed under our financial bandwagon during the last few years. So it's about coming back to something we used to have. I suspect we share that with many in this community. 

Related to that we also put an explicit focus on our close friends. It's tragic, but we admit that we tended to play down the time for friends while aiming stubbornly for financial independence. That is probably nothing that will serve us well in a financially free future.

Let's save the two last areas, Body and Soul for Part 2.

How are you going with your resolutions so far?