This year I’ve been working through a challenge to read 1 book a week for the whole year. It’s been tough going and I’m currently about 10 books behind having read 20 and this is week 30… But I’ll catch up yet.
The last book I read was 18 Minutes by Peter Bergman, a book about finding focus and making sure your days don’t fly by without you. A lot of good stuff worth reading if you find yourself overwhelmed but my biggest takeaway was actually a was a small riff about Iceland.
In 2011 (when the book was written) Iceland was the happiest place on earth to live, it’s still holding strong at number 4 this year. Surprising for a place that’s cold and dark 6 months of the year.
Why?
Well, there are lots of potential reasons, but Peter Bergman talked about another Author Eric Weiner who travelled to Iceland to find out, he found that Icelanders aren’t afraid to fail, there is no shame around it in the way there is in the UK.
No one tells people they’re not good enough or how hard it is to start something new, if they want to try something new they just do it, they just sing, paint, do stand up comedy, make apps, start blogging, record their podcast. There isn’t the fear that we’ll fail and someone will laugh at us.
And as a result, there are more artists per capita than anywhere in the world.
Now at home here in Scotland, and I suspect the rest of the UK, it’s not like that. I’ve overheard countless conversations from people taking joy in someone trying something hard and failing at it.
The joy of “Hah! I told you, you should never have bothered.”
But when someone does well it either doesn’t get talked about or jealousy slips in.
So how does that relate to FIRE?
Well as Sparks we need to be able to try things that are difficult, we need to be able to start things knowing we might not manage, without a clear goal at the end. Because retiring early is a far-off journey, one full of unforeseen obstacles.
A lot of the changes to becoming more frugal are hard, if you want to start up a side business it’s going to be hard and you might fail.
Good!
At least you will have tried and learned and can try again, we can become a supportive group only offering helpful positive comments.
That way when we hear about our friend who wants to rent unicycles we can be like “Yeah do it! I bet there are loads of people interested in learning circus skills! Is there anything I can do to help?”
It’s easy to be dismissive and talk about what could go wrong, what if you don’t earn enough, what if no-one wants to rent your unicycle. Well, what if it does work? What if that’s the perfect niche? Let’s just cut out the what ifs and take action.
We can do loads of things that will hurry our journey to FIRE, why not try to go a week without putting the TV on and make some house repairs instead? It’ll be hard and maybe you’ll have a tough day at work and come home and binge a Netflix series. Great! You went 6 days without TV, that’s awesome!
What if I don’t read 52 books this year? What if I only get up to 35? Awesome! That is still far more than I would have read otherwise.
Fear is contagious and we all need to work hard to stop the negativity cycle.
I grew up by the seaside and used to occasionally go crab fishing, just with a small line and bait, you get the crab up onto the pier let it run around and release it, it’s fun as a kid to see the crabs run around but the really interesting stuff happens when you put them in a bucket of water.
If it’s a shallow tray and there is only one in there it will climb out and escape, crabs are great climbers and can climb up and out easily enough.
But if there are two in there they get trapped.
Because as soon as one starts climbing out the other one grabs it, it tries to use the other to pull itself out. The result? The first one get’s pulled back in and they get stuck. As soon as one gets close to escaping another one will pull it back in and they remain trapped.*
I think we as a society can be like that, everyone has their heads down working through careers, stressing more and buying new fancier and bigger stuff as they get older, working towards that sweet 65 mark where they get to retire and join a golf club.
And when someone tries to buck the trend and start something different everyone pulls at them, “It won’t work” “You’ll never make enough money” “Will anyone even buy it?” and then you have so much self-doubt your head slinks back down and everyone resumes working.
Fuck that.
Embrace the fear and do the thing you’ve always wanted to, climb out and discover a world above the clouds, be frugal, avoid meals out, cook at home and have people over, start your podcast, go to the gym on a Friday instead of the pub, badly fix things around the house, start a business that doesn’t work. Just make sure you do it, I’m behind you and other people will be too.
And if you hear of anyone with a whacky new project say “Fuck yeah! That sounds really cool!” and get on board with their excitement.
– Flint
*until we release them of course.
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