597 | What if Your FI Life Started Tomorrow? | Adam Coelho

28:11And that's really what envisioning is all about. It's about being intentional about the life that you want to live and the story you want to tell yourself so that you can start moving towards that vision right away. Yeah. I love how you said, is this useful? That's a great operating question. I use a similar question with a slightly different interpretation. So for me, it's, is this a good strategy? And they're essentially the same questions, even though they're a bit different at their essence. For me, it's like, okay, I can choose to have positive thoughts about myself, or I can choose to have negative thoughts about myself or others or a situation or whatever.

28:50Which is the better strategy for having a good life? Okay. Well, I think it's pretty obvious, right? It's like, okay. And you can always, it's, it's the, Hey, if you're looking for good, good things, you can find them. If you're looking for bad things, you can find them. So which is a better strategy? I think it's just so patently obvious when you break it down like that. But, but frankly, many of us, and certainly myself included go through life complaining about certain things or, or just focusing on the negative or whatever, maybe like, I think that is kind of part of the human condition to some extent, but, but I think there is a way to, by focusing attention on this to actually get a chance to rewrite those stories and rewrite that, that myopic focus on the negative.

29:35And I, and I love how you're saying this story creates reality. So for, for people out there listening, I know you just gave some examples, but sometimes these stories are so ingrained that, that it's hard for them to see it. It's like the fish in water, Like what's, what's water, you know, how can people take a step back? Cause I think that's really the required first step for most people. Yeah. And I come back to mindfulness on this. It, you know, again, it's just a kind, curious awareness of what's going on in your, in your mind, your body and your external environment. And so one thing that's really useful for this is just sitting down to meditate, right?

30:14Meditation is just mental training where you're cultivating this capacity for mindfulness. And you can sit and just focus on your breath coming in, focus on your breath coming out. And these stories are going to pop up. They're going to come up again and again and again. And the more you start to notice them and relate to them where, oh, there's a thought or there's that story. Okay, let me bring it back and start on my breath again with this in breath and then this out breath. Each time you do that, you're kind of training your mental muscles, so to speak, to be able to observe your experience with that kind, curious awareness without getting caught in the judgment, right?

30:57Because sometimes we do come aware like, hey, I shouldn't be talking to myself like that, right? Would you say, is this a good strategy or is this useful? It's essentially, is this moving me towards what I want or is it moving me towards what I don't want? And so this builds our ability to not add judgment to these thoughts that are already not making us feel good. We can just notice them and then choose to come back and start again. And so the more you do that on the cushion, so to speak, the meditation cushion, the more you'll be able to notice them out in your day to day life, right? Something happens and you're like, oh, I always do this.

31:35A good example of this is like somebody who thinks they have bad luck, right? They say, I just have bad luck. What do they get? They get opportunities to see bad luck. And this is just, you know, the reticular activating system filtering for what we're already focusing on. And that's why envisioning is so powerful because we can start to, well, first we can stop watering the unhelpful stories, right? Because we notice they're going to come up. But a lot of times when people aren't fully aware of them, they're running that play again and again and again. They're telling themselves, and believe me, after my situation at Google, I was caught in this quite a bit.

32:16I would tell anyone who would listen. One time it took me 18 holes of golf, right, to tell this story because it was so fresh. And that was fine. But the 20th time, it's not useful anymore. And now I'm just rehearsing that story, planting and watering those seeds. So step one is notice that. Stop watering those seeds. And at the same time, choose a new story so that you can start planting and watering those seeds. And those stories will strengthen the neural connections in your brain. And then just like the person who thinks they have bad luck sees bad luck everywhere, suddenly you'll start to see opportunities to move towards this new story in your environment without you even having to try that hard.

33:03Right. It's like another example is imagine you just got a new Subaru Forester. Suddenly Subaru Foresters are everywhere. It's not that there are more Subaru Foresters. It's just you're more ready to see it. And so that's what we're taking advantage of in our brain. We're planting the seeds of what we want to see so that when we do come across it, we're ready to act on it. Yeah, I think that reticular activating system, it's so powerful and it really is ever-present. I was listening to the Modern Wisdom podcast, I think with a guest, Nir Eyal, and he was talking about a new book that he wrote.

33:40I think he said something to the effect of, and the numbers might be a little bit off here, whether he reported or I misremembered, but we take in, our brains take in something like 11 million bits of information per second or whatever it is. It's just this unbelievable onslaught of information, but our actual conscious brains are only capable of focusing on something like 50 of those bits. So, I mean, it's 0.00001 % of all the information coming in. So you have to therefore assume, there is a significant amount of information to look for. And like you're saying with the Subaru Forester, all of a sudden it's in your awareness, things start showing up.

34:21It's not a coincidence. It means it was there all the time. You just simply weren't noticing. We're filtering out because otherwise we would be insane. Our brains would be on overload at all times if we tried to focus on those 11 million things that are coming in at every second. It's just not plausible. And it's funny, Adam, because you mentioned the good luck, bad luck. The story that my daughters have for me, actually, is that I have incredibly good luck. They constantly talk about it. They're like, if you ask them, who has the best luck of anybody you know? They're like, oh, dad, by far. Good things are always happening to him.

34:54And it's kind of become a little joking thing in our family. And now they're, and I am always looking for these instances of good luck in my life and I see it all the time. And I think it's also frankly why people talk about like a gratitude practice. You hear this all the time in self-help circles. And I think it's the reticular activating system again. It's like when I go through the day and I'm looking for three or five really good things that I can be grateful for, man, you have an onslaught of them to use that word again. Like there's a never ending list of things to be grateful for. But if you're like the normal grumble, grumble person who's going through life, it's also pretty darn easy to find negative things.

35:37It's just it's whatever like valence you choose to apply to a situation. Adam, you know, it makes a massive difference, right? Yeah. And the thing is, is that what we're talking about here is like you can choose. You can choose what seeds to water and plant, which then influence what you will see in your experience. It's not going to happen instantly, but you are able to influence that and kind of tilt the scale, so to speak, in the direction of things that you want. And just you'll be amazed at how much you start to notice, just like with you with the good luck, you start to notice it all over the place.

36:14And the thing is, the more you appreciate it, getting back to gratitude, the more you appreciate it, the more you see it. It's like it's like you're putting fertilizer on the seed, and suddenly you start to see them even more. I love that. What are other ways that we can envision? Are there like other holistic ways that people could approach this? Yeah. So that, as I mentioned before, I wanted to give you the background of why this works. I always start with that because people don't give themselves this opportunity to think big and it's hard for them to break out. I always joke like my biggest skill in this whole thing is just incessantly insisting people think bigger.

36:53And so let's get into specifically how they can do that, right? And again, if they want, they can go and grab that Fi Life Jumpstart, which has the exact envisioning exercise that I use in all of my programs in my Firestarter Mastermind Group coaching. All of that, when you sit down to do this journaling exercise, I want you to think really, really big. And setting aside all ideas of what's reasonable, rational, realistic, possible, don't worry about that, You don't need to worry about the how. You don't need to worry about how you're going to make this happen at all. And that's where people usually get caught up.

37:29So just set aside all of that. I say put it in a little box and set it aside. It's right there. Some people don't like to do this. So just set it aside and think really, really big about what you want. And the prompt essentially goes, if everything in your life starting today meets or exceeds your most optimistic expectations. Everything goes wildly better than you can even imagine. What does your life look like five years from now? You can do this on any time frame that you want, but I like five years because it's far enough in the future that you can really let go of your current reality to think, if I could do anything, what would it be?

38:07That's setting aside your current reality. It's just if you could do anything, whatever you wanted, anytime you're completely financially independent, what does that life look like? And you just journal about it in as much detail as you want. Some things to consider. Where are you living? Who are you with? What people are surrounding you? What are you doing? What's bringing you alive? And then one thing that people often overlook is how do you feel? How do you feel on a day-to-day basis? Yes. That is really, you know, these emotions are what drives our behavior. And so I want you to consider what emotions you have.

38:48For me, when I would do this exercise for years, it was always unrushed. I just want to feel unrushed. And that's why when I say I wanted to build this business in my own time, in my own way, unrushed is at the core of that. And so that's really the first step is thinking big about what you want. I know you had that did that workshop with Alan and Katie, the extraordinary life. And someone asked like, what is extraordinary even mean? The same thing here is like thinking big. This is for you thinking big about what you want, right? If, if you could do anything you want, what would that be? I've worked with people who they just want to hang out in their garden and have a slow morning and just garden in the yard and grow food and have community.

39:35That's what thinking big is for them. I worked with another person who wants to empower women economically and create entrepreneurship opportunities for women around the world. And she wants to speak at Davos, right? So she's thinking really big. It's really up to you what that looks like. But really, step one is thinking big about what you actually want, if anything was possible. Yeah, it's so easy to limit yourself. And I think that's why an exercise like that is really important. It's put down the limiting beliefs, put down what you think is possible and think big. I think that again is one of the beauties of FI is, is we have time and we have resources that most people could never dream of.

40:20Why not think big? Why would you limit yourself if you could possibly avoid it? Yeah. My first coaching client that I worked with was this guy, Nick, And he came to me because he was a flight doc in the Air Force and he was getting ready to leave the Air Force and move into his residency. He was going to move across the country. He was going to be in this residency. But he had realized he had the awareness that the track that I'm on is not the life that I want to live. He realized that he was a workaholic and that he really couldn't separate his work from his life at home. and in this caused him to miss his child's first steps and to miss his child's first birthday because he was you know working at the base he had the awareness to realize like i need to do something different what we worked on together is this idea of thinking big it didn't come naturally to him one example that came to mind is he as i said he was moving across the country and he was going to wanting to buy a house right and i was like oh well like let's talk about the house what do you envision for this house that you're going to raise your family in?

41:25And he's like, oh, you know, two bedrooms, you know, maybe a little yard. I'm like, no, like, what do you really want? Yeah, really. Right. Like your dream house is two bedrooms with a slight yard. And he said, okay, I want to have four bedrooms. So enough room for people to visit for my, all my kids. I want to have a fenced in backyard so I can have the dog and my kids play back there safely. And And I want to be 20 minutes from the office or I want to be 20 minutes from the hospital so that I can get home quickly and be with my family. Interestingly, as he got clear on this, like two weeks later, he sends me a text message and it's like, dude, you're never going to believe this.

42:08We have an offer accepted on a house that is exactly what I described to you. When I challenged him to think big about what he wants his post-fi life to look like, he had this idea that kept coming up. He's like, I've always wanted to do medical mission trips, right? When I think about being a doctor and going through all this training, I want to be able to give back to underserved areas. And I want to go on these international medical mission trips and share this expertise. at the start of his residency, he had already met and told the person who's in charge of the program for these medical mission trips at the university he was at, he's already planted the seed with that person telling him that he's interested in that.

42:55And this guy is now telling him that he would keep him in mind. And I just caught up with him a couple of weeks ago. It's been like two years since we worked together. He's about to finish his residency. And he told me that he was selected among like six people in the entire country to go on two international mission trips, one to Africa and one to Asia next year to teach anesthesiology to the local doctor community. This all started with just thinking bigger about what he wanted. And of course, he also is now expecting his third kid and he's got that balance where he leaves his work at work and he has his home life at home and he's able to, for the most part, keep those two things separate and be incredibly successful in both.

43:48Is he at FI? No, he's about to enter the workforce. But when he thought about what he actually wanted that post-FI life to look like, he was able to accelerate and start living into some of those things in the present. And I think that's what makes this practice so powerful. Yeah. I love that. Did you ever talk to him after the fact and rehash the actual thought experiment and why it made such a difference for him? Because you could have that same conversation with 10 people and maybe one, two, or three of them are going to have the results that he had. Do you have any sense of what was it about him or what was it about this specific instance that made such a transformative difference?

44:31Yeah, that's a great question, Brad. And this is not about, you know, just doing this once and like hoping for the best. It is actively, it's about actively planting the seeds. And when I say planting the seeds, it's using envisioning practices to essentially invite your brain to wire together and to predict these things more regularly. And so let's talk about some of those. I'd say first and foremost is continue to journal and refine your vision, right? You get that journaling exercise, you start by thinking big and getting clear on what you want your life to look like overall. You can zoom in and you can look at what does that look like for my health?

45:17What does that look like for my relationships? My family, my work, my community, right? Whatever's important to you, do that same journaling exercise on that topic. This is essentially planting and watering the seeds, getting clearer and clearer and clearer. And you don't have to have this all figured out. And frankly, you won't have this all figured out. My vision has grown and evolved over this time. And we can talk about how it's grown since I've left. But doing this work is going to help you immensely. So that's first, continue to journal about your vision. second and probably the most powerful thing you can do is talk about your vision to other people this does two things number one it makes it more clear for you because when this these ideas are swirling around your head that's one thing when you have to put them into words that another person can understand that forces clarity and number two it also plants seeds in your mind by doing that, but it plants seeds in the other person's mind as well.

46:21And so when Nick went and met one of the leaders of the hospital and found out that this guy was in charge of the international mission trips, he spotted the opportunity because he was ready to see it. And then he told him about his vision. And so now that seeds planted in his mind. And so when the opportunity arises later on, in this case, a couple of years later, that person thought, Oh, Nick is interested in this. I'm going to come to him. And so that's why talking about your vision is so powerful. Yeah, I like that. There's so many lessons built in and not least of which also is accountability.

46:57There's some aspect of that is interpersonal relationships. When you talk about it, there is some A, you want to live up to being the kind of person that does this because you talked about it. So it's real. And B, they might follow up with you. I think about when I met Jonathan, my co-founder of Jews of I, and he had this idea for a website and he didn't really do anything. And then I followed up with him and it was like a lightning bolt for him. And that accountability is huge. And also, you just never know when is that person going to think of you? When is luck's surface area, right? Like we're building luck in our own lives is, hey, you talk to somebody and you never know when, oh, just out of the blue, two years later, this opportunity comes up.

47:42and who are they going to think of? They're going to think of the man or woman who they had this conversation with six months ago or two years ago or five years ago, whatever it may be. Yeah, there are just so many layers of potential luck surface area in that. Absolutely. Yeah. And you're doubling the luck surface area when you tell other people, right? And I think, yeah, the accountability is huge there as well. A couple other things that you can do, visualization, right? Just walking through that life in your mind, a typical day of what that life looks like. That is planting seeds. One that's really powerful is what I call mindset affirmations.

48:19Essentially, once you have a clear vision for what you want, then you kind of back into what are the beliefs and mindsets that would empower me to move towards that? What are the ones that I want to embody and carry with me on a day-to-day basis as I'm walking this path? Then you essentially say those to yourself. The way I do it is I meditate, I allow my mind to kind of settle a little bit. And then I say the belief. So one of the ones that I'm trying to embody is I'm healthy, strong, and full of life. This is my desire to be healthier and stronger and to be there, you know, play with my kids, you know, in my old age.

48:59So I better start working on that now. So I'm healthy, strong, and full of life. I say it, then I visualize in my mind, how is this true in the past? Oh, well, you know, I worked out yesterday. That's great, right? And I felt really good when I was playing with the kids yesterday. Then I say it again. How is that true in the present? Oh, well, I'm going to go to the gym today. I'm going for a walk. I'm eating healthy, whatever it is. Now you do it, say it again, and project that into the future. Oh, I see myself playing with my kids. I see myself running around the yard chasing them, which they love.

49:33what you're doing with this is you're essentially giving your brain evidence of how this is already true because our brain doesn't know what's true or not it just knows what we feed it right and in this case we are giving it real evidence in the past and the present and then we're projecting it into the future planting these seeds in a really specific way and amazingly those things start to appear on your path and you start to become the person who is healthy strong and full of life in my case. So this practice has been an absolute game changer for me on all areas of life. Yeah, that's cool. I know on episode 420 that we did three years ago, we talked a little bit about James Clear and his incredible book, Atomic Habits.

50:18And this reminds me of something. I like your words, the planting seeds. That's beautiful. There's just something visceral about that. But yeah, James talks, and I'm going to paraphrase, it says in essence, you're putting a little check checkmark on the side of the ledger that like, I'm the type of person that dot, dot, dot, and then does these things. Right. And every time you do something, it's that little checkmark that's saying like, Hey, I really am that type of person. Look at all this history, look at this evidence. And then you combine it with this envisioning practice that you talk about so beautifully.

50:52And you can see how this coalesces into something really magical where again, because there's so much information floating out there. Like we can choose to focus. It sounds woo woo, but this is, this is real. I think we all know it when we actually apply some scrutiny to our lives. Like, yeah, is this scientific? Like, can you and I scientifically prove that? Well, maybe you can, but can I right at this moment? Yeah, maybe, maybe not, but, but I don't care because I've seen it work in my own life. That's really the most important thing. Frankly, what you believe is as important as anything. We know this from the placebo effect.

51:28You want to talk about science, right? There's nothing more powerful in science than the placebo effect. So it's like, okay, we know for a fact that our brains can help us actually get positive medical outcomes. You're telling me they can't get positive outcomes in other aspects of our lives? It just defies logic. Right. And like you said, if it works for you, that's all you need. And so I invite people to try it. You don't need to believe me. Just give it a try for yourself. And when I teach this, the difference between goals and expectations versus vision, right? And this is important, right?

52:06Because some people will do this work and they'll say, oh yeah, I have this big vision. And two weeks later, they're like, why hasn't it happened already? Right? And the difference between goals and vision, goals are very specific. They're very time bound and they look a certain way, right? And if those things don't happen exactly that way, it's considered a failure. Now, a vision is more open and you don't worry about how it's going to look and when it's going to happen, right? You can't control the when or the how it's going to come about, but you can then focus on the what and the why, right?

52:43What do I want and why do I want it? And just believe that it's going to come at some point in the future. And the thing is, is it might not look exactly like you thought. I mentioned I had the opportunity that I envisioned to speak at the CEO of Google's leadership conference. That started from that conversation with Nick about his house, right? I was challenging him aggressively to think bigger. That's great. I was like, well, maybe I should take my own medicine. Right. And so I thought, okay, I want to think big. What would it look like to make this big vision a reality of leading these workshops and doing these things sooner?

53:22And so that's where I came up with this idea of, I want to do this for Sundar Pachai's team. I had envisioned doing it for his direct team. Now I spoke at the CEO's leadership conference. He was not in the room. If that was a goal, it would have been technically a failure, right? But I am wise enough to look at that situation and say, this is pretty darn close. I went from having no path to making this happen to choosing that I wanted to do it, starting to plant those seeds through the practices we talked about. And next thing you know, I have an email from a woman at 1130 PM. A woman named Mary sends me an email and it says, we're looking for someone to lead a workshop for a group of executives, right?

54:06I just happen to be up finishing my work for, for the quarter at that time. I'm not usually, it was never on my email at 1130 PM, but that night I happened to be ready to see that opportunity. The next day we talk, I share my vision for the workshop. She says, Oh, it's great. Would you, it's going to be at Sundar's leadership conference. Would you be okay with that? It was like, perfect. Yeah. You know? So like this, getting back to the point, it's like, be open to how and when these things happen and just see it like fi, right? You're walking down the path. You know why you're trying to get there and just trust that you're going to make progress.

54:44And it might not look exactly like you envision at the outset, but as you walk the path, you're going to learn and you're going to grow and you're going to figure things out. And you'll be surprised at how fast some of these things can come into your life. Adam, I definitely want to get back to your story. But before we do that, Any other lessons before we move on from the actual, the meat of your teaching? Yeah. And so we mentioned that there were all these practices that you can use to plant seeds, right? And this, again, this is all in the service of starting to live your post-fi life right now.

55:20You don't want to get caught in that one more year syndrome where you get to financial independence. You got the money, you got the math figured out, and yet you're stuck, right? Like so many people find themselves in this situation and they can't step into the next chapter. If you start living your post-fi life right now using these practices, you are going to be getting clearer along the way, learning what you like, what you don't like. And then when you get to fi, you're going to just make the decision. Hopefully you'll get to make the decision and you can just step into that next chapter. The final practice that will help you do that is mini experiments.

55:56And I know this is something that the Donegan's talk about a lot as well. And I love this concept. But this is essentially just what is a low risk, low cost way that you can try this life on? If a big part of your vision is to be in the best shape of your life, can you take an exercise class? Can you read a book about health? Can you listen to a health podcast? Can you talk to your friend who's in great shape about what they do in the gym? right? What are these super low risk ways that you can try this life on without blowing up your whole life, right? I think a lot of people get stuck thinking that they need to leave everything behind to move into this next chapter.

56:41I'm here to tell you that you don't. You can start little by little right now, trying these things along the way. And each one of them is going to give you information about what you like, what you don't like, and how you can move forward. And so that's kind of what I would wrap with. It's like all of these practices, you don't need to do all of them, but you can kind of pick and choose what you like and just do that. And it all starts with getting that envisioning exercise, sitting down and thinking, if I could do anything, what does my life look like? That's really the foundation. And just doing that, if you only did that, you'll be amazed at how your brain goes to work and starts predicting and showing you opportunities to move towards that.

57:27Yeah, I love that. And we certainly will have the link to that. I know you said it multiple times, so people probably grabbed it, but we'll have the link to that in the show notes for sure. So thank you for making that resource available. Okay, let's double back to you. And I did challenge you with a question earlier that I think you might have sidestepped a little bit. So if fire life started tomorrow, I'm not going to let you off the hook, Adam. What would you do? And again, you did have that visual reaction even 18 months later of, oh, wow, FyLife is starting a little earlier for me than I thought.

58:00Who am I? Now that I get to choose, how do I choose? And even though you had been thinking about this, you're probably in the top couple percent of people who had been planning. It's still, I suspect, and based on that look on your face that it wasn't easy. And I say that because this helps people. It helps them because if someone gets thrust into FI or even reaches FI on their own volition and takes those steps, they're going to wake up one day and it's going to feel weird and it's going to be hard, even if they plan. And I just want to let everybody know that's okay and that's normal. Okay. It doesn't absolve you from planning.

58:38It doesn't absolve you from doing this envisioning exercise. It doesn't absolve you from having many experiments and trying to figure out what you want life to look like, but it does let you just know this is normal. Okay. This happens to all of us. And Adam, it very viscerally happened to you. So talk me through that day when you woke up and you're like, Oh wow. Yesterday I was a Googler today. I'm not, what do I do now? Yeah, it was That's quite a shock. In that moment, I knew it was coming. I'd say it's quite a shock. I didn't know exactly when it was going to happen, but when I saw a surprise meeting pop up my calendar on a Monday morning, it wasn't looking good.

59:26Interestingly, because I had turned down the money and because I had started moving towards my vision, I didn't actually close the loop. I mentioned I had wanted to pitch this guy on doing this workshop, right? That's the whole reason I didn't take the money. I'm glad I remembered this. What I did after that meeting where I had that very visceral, you know, betrayal feeling in my body, I actually did pursue that. And I did go to him and met him in the micro kitchen, the little break room of Google where they have all the free food and whatnot. And I was talking with him, hey, how's it going? What not?

1:00:04And he starts walking back to his office. I start walking with him. Say, hey, you know, I'd really love to talk with you about bringing envisioning into exec summits. I think it would be really valuable. He's like, okay, yeah, talk to my assistant. We'll find some time. We got time on the calendar a couple weeks later. Of course, because this guy is super busy and important, when the time came, I had a feeling maybe it would get canceled. And it did get canceled. And so when it got canceled, I went into plan B. I went to his office. I knocked on the window. He's like, hey, I'm like, hey, if you have three minutes at any point today, please, like, I would love to share this idea with you.

1:00:40Just three minutes is all I need. He's like, can I ping you? I said, I'll be sitting right there. And I sat outside of his office, not like on the floor at a desk nearby. And a couple hours later, he comes out. He says, Adam, I have three minutes. And I said, perfect. He's like, I have to pack my bag while we're talking. I'm like, not a problem. I share the idea. I said, I'd love to do this. I think this makes a lot of sense. he says, I agree. I want you to talk to this VP. One thing led to another and I got a pilot. I had a pilot on the books, right? So on the one hand, they're trying to push me out.

1:01:14On the other hand, I'm pursuing this thing that I've been hoping for for years. And unfortunately on September 30th, 2024, one day before this was to start, I was fired. And so I said, I had that meeting on my calendar. I go into this meeting and I'm like, oh, this isn't good, but I'm ready. And so as they're firing me, I send out my goodbye email because that was another reason I wanted to go out of my terms. The good thing, sending a goodbye email at Google in any job is a huge part of the transition. And so I sent my goodbye email subject line, my last day retiring at 36, which I love. I don't know why I love it so much, but I love it.

1:01:59And I sent that to 15 ,000 of my Google colleagues, all the people interested in mindfulness, all the people I've had, had trained over the years, I sent that email. So that's kind of, that's, that's ground zero for, for leaving. So back to your question that it seems like I've been dodging the entire interview. what did day one look like and as cliche as it sounds i i left that that meeting and i went golfing okay like such a cliche early retirement i had been getting into golf i'm not good but i do enjoy just like walking around outside in the nature and the kind of building the skill of hopefully one day getting better.

1:02:42Like the first month, I just gave myself grace to do nothing, to just recover from the very, very difficult couple of months. I mean, it was all in all, it was almost a year, this process. And I just gave myself time. And as I gave myself that time, And I started to kind of come back to that vision of, okay, cool. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now I'm an entrepreneur. Right now I'm a full-time entrepreneur. Before it was a side hustle. Now it's game time. And so I started little by little kind of planting the seeds of that. I started telling people, hey, I'm offering these workshops. And I started reconnecting with colleagues at Google where, hey, I could do this workshop for your team.

1:03:32And so it started to evolve from there. But I think first and foremost, it was like, I played a lot of golf because that got me outside. It got me in nature, it got me walking around. And it just allowed me to clear my head because I, as I said, I, it was a very difficult time and I needed to let go of that, that identity. And interestingly, it's taken a year plus to let go of that identity of that Google and that pace. And as I got into the entrepreneurship stuff and started selling the workshops and doing the coaching and all these things, I really found myself falling into old habits, you know, getting into that, Oh, you're not doing enough.

1:04:16Got to go faster. Got to do more. It was like, why am I doing this? It's like, Oh, I guess I had 14 years of that. Not to mention being a straight A student before that, you know, that, that whole thing that those habits die hard. they do indeed and and yeah i mean i think it's normal really you didn't use this word but it's how i look at it is it's okay to mourn that that chapter is over even if you're excited about the next chapter or in your case the rest of your life it is okay to mourn it especially when it didn't come on your timeline or even if it does come on your timeline sometimes that's been your identity that's been part of your life that's been a really integral thing and it is okay to mourn it and then pick yourself up and live into your FI life.

1:05:02And I think that really at its essence is what we all are going to have to do at some point. And by planning ahead, by having these exercises, by thinking about it, by iterating, by testing and experimenting, we can have a higher likelihood of a short-term success when we get into FI because we've seen countless examples of early FI people who woke up one day and they hit a number and they stopped working. And then it was, oh man, what the heck do I do now? And that's just not sufficient anymore. In 2026, in this day and age of the financial independence movement, after nine years of Choose FI, it's just not sufficient to say like, oh, everything's going to be unicorns and rainbows because I hit some number.

1:05:48You know that definitively, it's not going to be the case. So if you're listening to my words, It's just, and Adam's words, please know that will never be the case. It's inconceivable. You have to put the work in. And thankfully, we have people like Adam in our community who can help guide the way. So Adam, thank you for coming back on. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. It's really, it's kind of like my unofficial mission to get that message to people. It's like, don't fall into that trap, right? Don't fall into that trap of hitting a number and everything's going to be great. because you need to do that work now.

1:06:26You need to get clear on what you want now so you can try it. And so when you get there, you can make that transition and start living that life. Continue living that life, right? You're not starting. You're continuing to live that life. And the other thing I'd say is just give yourself the space. You have the rest of your life, right? That's the thing I have to remind myself. You have the rest of your life to do this. You don't have to rush. there's no timeline right you can give yourself space and it's going to take three six nine months even if you leave in the best of circumstances to kind of let go of what you were doing before and kind of move into this new chapter it just becomes a lot easier if you already have tried some of the things that you envision for your post by life beforehand so that's kind of my my soapbox i love it i love it well thank you and again we'll have a link in the show notes, but it's mindfulfire.org.

1:07:20You can go to slash choose a fi. You have a great podcast that has 220 odd episodes. Unsurprisingly, it's the mindful fire podcast. Adam, thank you again for being here. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Brad.