What Moves You?: Preliminary Vision-Setting Exercises for Your FIRE and Highway to Yeah Journeys
Back in the ’90s, I was burned badly in a kitchen fire accident. It could have been much worse, so I am grateful to this day that it was not.
This incident both provided immediate clarity on what I wanted to do for a living and set off a whole series of new questions for me that took me down a different path than I first imagined.
Interestingly, I find myself back at that same point in time again. It was the period of time in which my vision for a Back On Campus lifestyle began to solidify.
You see, I took the path most chosen, not the path least taken.
I took the path of monetary rewards and security.
And I spent much of the rest of my working life regretting that decision and trying to come up with another way to satisfy my soul’s desires.
But, as fate has worked out, I have been given a second chance to relive the first half of life with more wisdom, intuition, and resources.
and perhaps I will get it right this time. We will see.
The first half of life, as Michael Meade calls it, is about “growing up and getting a life.” That was where I was in the ’90s and beyond.
The second half of life has little to do with the trappings of conventional success.
On Monday this week, I had an almost spiritual awakening to this idea.
It’s not that I didn’t know this, but it became a visceral, heartfelt experience.
My “inner knowing” literally said, almost out loud, that I am no longer playing the old games.
I no longer need to adhere to the old models and ways of thinking about life and how to live it from here on out.
It was a wake-up call I needed.
That is Because, Here I am, well within six years of my post-FIRE journey, and still subtly considering old Ideas and ways of thinking about how to spend my time.
What is amazing is that I knew this all the time, too.
But it had to hit me over the head, I guess.
that brings me back to the pre-FIRE and pre-Highway to Yeah steps I began to discuss in yesterday’s post.
I turned away from the “clarity” on what I wanted to do for a living.
Then, I spent the latter part of the ’90s thinking to myself, “I’ll do this corporate work for the next five years, and then I will return to what was really calling me.”
As SpongeBob might say … “29 years later …”
Nevertheless, there were three things I did in that time period that really made a difference:
What Motivates You?: Exploring Personality Types
The internet was really starting to hum about that time, and I found myself in work that gave me ample access to what it offered.
I began to explore questions of “who am I” and “what motivates me?”
Because of the work I was doing related to high-performance work systems design and leadership and team development, I started coming across a plethora of personality tests.
In the early part of the ’90s, I had discovered the Strong Interest Inventory personality and career test, and it spiked my curiosity. I found it to be somewhat helpful, but also very limited.
Nevertheless, it likely helped me decide on the corporate career path I took from there.
By the Mid to Late 90’s, I started discovering all other sorts of these typologies.
It was about then I first encountered the Enneagram, but I didn’t dive into it.
However, I did discover the Myers-Briggs Personality test, often referred to as the MBTI,
and, interestingly enough, I stumbled across Numerology, and I found it insightful. I didn’t understand it, but it intrigued me.
One important thing I figured out during that time is that I was an INFJ in the MBTI system.
In Numerology, I discovered that my life’s destiny number and life path numbers were both 7, and my soul’s desire number is 3.
Okay, great, but it was what I began to do with this information that I found most helpful.
I began to search for people who had the same MBTI type and, to some extent, what my numerology numbers meant for my career.
Recall, I was still in the growing-up, getting-a-life, and “find the work you love” mindset, not the reach the cross-over point, then have complete Time Freedom to do what you love one.
Today, you can cut to the chase Of What I did much more quickly with a quick AI search.
For example, what careers does an INFJ-type personality flourish within?
Let’s see what Google Gemini says.
I simply typed in:
“What are the top five careers or career paths that an INFJ would likely flourish?”
Here are the top five career paths it recommends:
Counselor or Therapist
Writer or Author
Human Resources Leader
Social Worker
Teacher or Professor
Well, look at that.
In a couple of minutes, I found what I was looking for and that I probably spent 100 hours or more digging through multiple websites in the late ’90s to try to figure out.
Gemini also says what the work entails and why these jobs work for my MBTI type (i.e., why they would motivate me and I might find the work fulfilling).
But I will let you do your own research for your type rather than bore you with my own.
But that is only part of the picture that emerged, and the picture and vision was way less direct than Gemini’s response today.
Numerology also entered the picture, and I realized it pointed to other aspects of my personality that also needed to be expressed.
In the early to mid-2000s, I began to get an understanding of Tarot and how it works at tapping into your intuition. I began investigating the Enneagram personality typology around this time, too.
Plus, in the 2010’s, I discovered Feinstein and Krippner’s personal mythology research, and that began to fill out the picture, too.
During the pandemic, I got interested in astrology and began to look at my birth chart and the implications of it.
Interestingly, they all tie together and paint a vivid picture of my life’s path so far.
It’s like each one is one of the blindfolded persons trying to describe an elephant.
One has the tail, one has the trunk, one describes the legs, etc.
Put it all together, and the map becomes clearer.
Where Do You Thrive?: Best Place to Live Analysis
During this time, I also got very serious about trying to answer the question of “where would I flourish?”
This had started earlier, while an undergraduate, but by the end of the decade I found myself living in a city that was not a fit at all.
The work I was doing was fine, but I was still regretting my choice to pursue the monetary and secure path. I wanted to get back to a city that had a university where I would be able to finally pursue the calling.
I did all types of research into the culture, weather, surroundings, jobs, economic growth, costs of living, etc., of several cities that could be contenders for my next move.
In the end, I created a large spreadsheet that listed rankings of all these factors.
Eugene, Minneapolis, and San Francisco all scored high.
However, the Seattle metro area was the winner.
By summer of 2000, lo and behold, I was house hunting and moving to the Puget Sound region, and have been here since.
Except not … because I have this other aspect to myself that I am still trying to figure out,
but I was already getting the clues I needed back then.
What Do You Love?: Investigating Early Life Peak Experiences
Also, at the end of this period, I came across a book by Barbara Sher.
She had an exercise in the book where you do a review of your earlier life. The key to the exercise is kind of about getting in touch with your inner child.
You divide your early life into three periods: childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.
Then, you pick three of your favorite memories from those periods.
They represent something that really moved and enthralled you.
Mine were:
Riding horseback for the first time through The Garden of The Gods
Reading The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings
First garage band (i.e., from which The Leavers have re-emerged)
I didn’t realize it then, but what I had essentially done was isolate three peak experiences that reveal my motivations, drives, and aspirational core values.
She encouraged you to go back and re-live the experiences.
The first thing I did was buy a box set of the J.R.R. Tolkien books and start reading The Hobbit.
Little did I know that I was also beginning to delve into my personal myths, too.
Alright, that is enough for today.
Tomorrow, I’ll share two exercises that build on these that were also incredibly illuminating, and still are.
they too are preliminary steps for your journey to FIRE and getting on a Highway to Yeah.