“Freedom” is a huge value of mine. For my entire life I’ve lived a life of freedom and possibility. I haven’t had a “job” since I was 20 years old. Since then, I’ve worked for myself, doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.
Part of what motivated me was that I needed to make a living. I just happened to choose things that I was extremely passionate about. I lived on the edge and forced myself to get things done, because I had no choice. Failure was not an option.
Looking back, I see that I lived a very precarious and stress-filled life. Whether it was as a DJ and rave promoter, dealing with unbelievable stress, tangling with authorities and the police, feeling the responsibility towards a generation of young people, and risk everything blowing up at any moment.
Starting over again, a literal personal bankruptcy, and years more of precarious living as I made a career as a comedy stage hypnotist. This time with the added stress of having 2 small babies at home that I’m responsible for.
And then creating a tech company where I did not know how to delegate, or grow the business in a traditional sense. It scaled, through technology, but I was solely responsible for maintaining the tech. For 10 years, from 2010 to 2020 I was on 24/7 alert and could be called upon at any moment for rapid response to fix a problem (And often was). Combine that with my imposter syndrome of thinking I fooled the world. It was a very dark period of my life until I finally got out, and did so in a very messy way that took years.
The decision to get out was made in 2017, and was not completed until the end of 2020. There was also a multi-million dollar “all-in” bet made, on replacing me with a software team, to replace all of my work. There was no guarantee they would be successful. By the end of 2020 I had burned through my personal savings, and was down to having $7000 in my bank account. It was down to the wire.
And then the switch flipped. Money started coming in, the investment was paying off. I was out, and a new passive income stream was supporting me. I had actual financial independence.
The stress of being on call 24/7 was removed from my life. The financial worry was removed from my life. I had more freedom in my life that ever before.
I explored what could be next for me. Primarily through writing for my blog, that I renamed the Frolic 100, writing books, showing up powerfully in communities I was a part of, exploring leadership opportunities, hosting Zooms and talks for the Frolic 100, exploring connections with various people. I was teaching, by writing and sharing about it, what I most needed to learn.
Freedom was with me, freedom to explore all those things. I made my family my #1 priority. As my children dealt with their own struggles, and sometimes were in crisis, and more recently as my wife has dealt with devastating Long Covid resulting in what is turning into permanent disability. I created freedom to support them.
And now I see, for the last few years, I’ve been doing less and less. I’ve been cutting my schedule back more and more, for the possibility of being needed by my family. I’ve been doing less and less of the things that fire me up, because my financial needs are taken care of, and so that I can stay on hyper-vigilant duty for my family.
I cut, cut, and cut some more, freeing my schedule of connect calls, of regular Zooms, of basically everything. Because of my fears of what *could* happen. Huge freedom, in service of the fears of when I might be called upon with my family.
And then this week someone presented me a possibility I had never considered before: I’ve lived my entire life of the edge, so much so my brain had become addicted to the cortisol release that comes from anxiety. Sometimes this can be a positive thing, like when I take a stage, and put myself on the spot to create something in front of an audience. It’s part of my magic.
But I was also living with tremendous anxiety from being on call for so many years. I lived as a Fire Fighter at the station ready to respond at any moment except my shift never ended.
I thought I needed more freedom to help me recover. So I kept cutting, until there was only one thing left – my family, and my cortisol addiction then only had one target left… my family.
Yes, I’ve dealt with some real challenges and issues with them, but the hyper-vigilance itself was driving the cortisol hits.
And I didn’t even realize it was happening.
All of the self-work I’ve done, all of the healing these last 5 years, and this still happened.
It’s one of those hard lessons you only learn from it happening.
I literally have too much space and freedom in my life. So much, it amplifies the anxiety I have for my family, because that’s all that’s left.
The first step, every time, is shining a light on the problem. I see it now.
My next step is taking action. I’m not betraying my family by taking more actions to find things that fuel and energize me.
What will become possible from this new space? I’m looking forward to finding out.
I’m curious, what comes up for you from my story?
