I am writing this because I am weak.
This is not one of those humble-brag non-admissions you often see famous people make. Like singers who come off arena stages proclaiming their shyness. They’re not as shy as the people who never got on stage in the first place, and never sang in front of anyone ever. They’re the shy ones, and I’m writing this because I’m that kind of weak.
I shake when I am on cliff-top walks and refuse to walk along them. I let old ladies pass me by while I pretend to enjoy the view. I run, but I slow down when I get a little bit tired, and I don’t run when i don’t feel like it. I take that back. I don’t run. I jog. Slowly. Weakly.
I refuse to go snorkelling, because it scares me almost to death, being out in the sea, listening to my overly exaggerated breathing through a tube that dries out the air in my throat, doubling the feeling of fear. I have made fun of divers for years, that they wear all that equipment just to go “fish-watching”, while the reason I won’t do it is the fear of having a panic attack just a few feet below the surface of the sea, and drown in my self-generated anxiety.
And I have never been able to start a great business, or even a rubbish one, never been able to quit the job I am doing to follow a dream, because I am too scared. Because I am weak.
It is why I am writing now. In my spare time, because my day-job pays too well for me to give it up. And it is why I have done so much research into the Freedom Formula. To know that it is right. To know that it works.
If I am going to step into the sea to look at fish, I am not the type of person to do it with a snorkel – this I now know – I want something closer to a submarine. If I am going to walk along a cliff side path, I want to know there’s an impressive railing between me and the edge. I want to know that it is well made. I want to feel 100% secure.
And if I am going to stop working, take the biggest risk of my life, end my career before I have to, potentially with no way back, I have to know that this is enough. That this is safe.
Some people can do it sooner. Some people can take bigger risks than me. That’s their call. In the “Now” stage of the MISSION, I explain the different ways of applying the Freedom Formula early, quitting before you have 25x, or stopping saving early.
These work in theory but I haven’t tried them out. I have been working for the safe option. I would like to claim that I did that purely as research, as a trial for the purposes of this book, just to test out that the base case was strong enough to build an argument around, but that’s not the reason: I did it because I am weak.
Because of my weakness I can tell you one thing. This will work.