For 2022, my word is Fortune.
I resolve to make my fortune this year.
I’ve got money issues, like all of us do. My issues are woven up in issues of safety and worthiness, and falling ill has shown me that when finances are tight, I get sick. Living with an autoimmune disorder, the best thing I can do to ensure the health and wellbeing of myself and my family is to get rich.
For a long time, I thought my work in marketing or speaking was going to somehow lead me to riches, but the last few years have shown me it’s not a reliable path, and this is not a reliable time. I’ve seen too many people try too hard and get poor results on the type of path I am on.
But I see plenty of people becoming rich in cryptocurrency.
It’s still early in the blockchain economy, and the people who have gotten rich in it are no smatter than me. I happen to have some skills that make me better suited than many others to make my fortune in crypto. There’s no reason why I can’t, so I will. This year.
For those who know what it means, Jupiter has just moved into Pisces. As a Capricorn, this happens to fall in my 2nd house of personal finances, and it is an exceptional aspect to have for this year.
I don’t talk a lot about astrology on the internet, because people have strong opinions about what it means (or doesn’t mean). For myself, I’ve found it to be an invaluable resources for aligning my plans to the patterns around me.
I have used this astrologically-based planner from Freedom Mastery for the past 4 years. Today I am closing up the 2021 planner and prepping the 2022 planner for daily use. This beautiful book will continue to be my constant companion during my workday, helping me mark the time and craft my plans in accordance with the celestial tides.
New Year’s Resolutions 2022
Publish my book Marketing Yourself
This book is overdue. It should not be taking me so long. I’m on draft 7, and one way or another, I will publish and ship this book in 2022. Get notified when it launches here.
Accumulate 6 months of expenses in reserve
With everything happening in the world, I want to safe, and that means stockpiling supplies and cash. I’ve been treading water financially for so long, moving so frequently and so far, I haven’t had the stability or the momentum to build up a storehouse of assets. I’m not moving house this year, at all, under any circumstances. (After 11 moves in 11 years, I need a break.) By staying put for 2022, I can stockpile essential goods and packages, and hoard enough cash for six months of expenses.
Having this much wealth in reserve, not as investment money but as semi-liquid accessible backup, will give me the fortitude to endure when I don’t send out any invoices for a few weeks. Living lean, with no financial backup, means I have to constantly hunt for my next influx of cash. This prevents me from investing time into the longer-term (and more lucrative) projects that would help me accelerate my wealth faster.
I’m trading a small pool of crypto on a leveraged exchange, figuring out how it works. If I can get this going and do it well, I could rapidly expand my wealth and earn my fortune. When I have earned enough to save 6 months of expenses, and stockpile a pantry with necessaries for my family, I will feel confident enough to change my relationship to my work.
Take time to rest
Once a month, I should sleep for 12 hours. Every day, I need to lie down in the middle of the day. When I feel tired, and I get ready to marshal my resources for a push, I need to redirect to rest instead of stress. Counterintuitively, relaxation is my path to success. I’m not built for this, my inclinations are completely opposite. So I need to make a resolution to take time to rest, whenever it is time to rest.
I have a weekly practice I learned at Dell’Arte called Life Repair, where I take off from 3-5pm on Wednesday to run errands, go to the bank, handle all the little stuff in life that needs repairing. I’ve expanded it to 1-5pm Wednesdays. I never take phone calls or meetings in this window, so I can always recharge and relax midweek. This is probably the biggest reason I was able to avoid a relapse in 2021: I took off Wednesday Afternoons for Life Repair every week. This meant that I never worked more than a consecutive 2.5 days without rest.
This is good, but I need more rest in my life. Specifically, when I feel myself using my inner afterburners to push harder, that’s when I need to redirect my energy to recharge instead.
Share a hobby with each kid
Last year I made a resolution to have a Saturday date with each kid one-on-one. My wife and I were both trying to do this, but it meant Saturdays were a chaotic mess of plans and priorities. It didn’t have the casual, relaxed bonding that I actually wanted with my kids. For Christmas, my wife got me and Zaden a chess set, the same kind of big sturdy pieces and rolled-up canvas board that we used in the cafe where we met in Portland – Coffee Time. Instantly, Zaden and I started sharing more time and experiences together.
We share a hobby. We have always liked playing chess together. Getting some good equipment invited this hobby back into our lives, and now he’s asking me regularly, ‘Hey, Dad, do you want to play chess?’ We didn’t need to block out a plan for Saturday afternoon, we just share a hobby.
I have hobbies with Indi and Taos that we like to do together, just as a pair, with nobody else. My resolution for this year is to make sure there is always at least one hobby per kid that I’m participating in regularly. If they get bored of the hobby and we stop doing it (which happens when you are unschooling), then I’ll keep inviting hobbies so that we all have a hobby to share together.
Ship storage unit to NZ
When we left the United States for Costa Rica in 2011, we sold almost everything we owned to finance the trip. Everything that didn’t fit into two suitcases per person for the flight down, but was too precious to part with, went into a storage unit. We moved back to the States for a few years, and I had momentary access to my stuff; but when I left for New Zealand in 2017, everything went back into boxes.
I’m ready to be reunited with my possessions. It’s expensive, and the project will be complicated. I put this off while we emigrated, and then earned permanent residency, and then moved a couple more times. Now it’s time to finish the move, and I aim to do it this year.
These are only 5 of the goals I set for this year.
To find them, I wrote a much longer list of all the goals I could attain, using 2 resources:
- the front pages of the excellent Law of Attraction planner by Freedom Mastery pictured above
- the writing exercises from the 22-minute Goalsetting Workshop I led this week.
The first resource, the planner, gave me a list of 50 goals I want to achieve in my life, categorized by the time horizon by which I want to attain them. In the second resource, the workshop, I wrote 3 lists for: things to Start, Stop, and Change, and then 3 more lists for: things to Be, Do, and Have.
This gave me 7 lists of goals. The only reason I was not overwhelmed is because I recognize this as the generative part of the creative process; you make a volume of stuff, before censoring or editing, so you have a rich variety of choices. As the old Portuguese proverb goes, “think of many, do one.”
Lesser goals can even threaten your greater goals. Mike Flint, the personal pilot for Warren Buffett, once asked for his boss’ help in achieving his own life goals. “Have you written down your goals?” Buffet asked.
“No,” the pilot replied, “but I know what they are.”
“That’s not good enough,” he was told by one of the richest men in the world. He asked the pilot to write down 20 goals and bring them to work the next day. When the pilot arrived with his list, Buffet asked him to circle the five most important goals.
Taking some time and thinking about it, Flint circled his 5 most important goals on the list.
“Do you know what to do now?” Buffet asked him.
The pilot said, “Sure. Work on the top five goals first.”
“And what about the rest of the goals on your list?”
“I suppose I will work on those when I have the time,” the pilot replied.
“No,” Buffet said, “that is your Avoid-At-All-Costs list. These extra goals beyond the top five are the greatest threat to achieving your most important goals. These lesser goals can sap your energy and willpower, preventing you from achieving what you’ve already decided is the most important to you.”
I wrote a lot of goals this year, but I’m only making New Year’s Resolutions for these five:
- Publish my book Marketing Yourself
- Accumulate 6 months of expenses in reserve
- Take time to rest
- Share a hobby with each kid
- Ship storage unit to NZ
You can check in with how I do when my Annual Review is published at the end of the year. Stay tuned!
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