9 Steps To Financial Freedom - Step 8

 

UNDERSTANDING THE EBB AND FLOW OF THE MONEY CYCLE

WHEN THE THINGS that occupy us so intensely in the present have receded

into the past, we look back at these events, which produce such turmoil and pain, with an entirely different eye. How often have you heard, for example, of someone who is devastated by being fired, only to land a much better job and end up happier? Or of someone whose spouse leaves her, and who decides—one, two, five years later—that it was the best thing that could have happened to her? Or of someone who emerges from a serious illness with a wisdom and appreciation of life that he had never had before? The passage of time always offers a new perspective. “If only I knew then what I know now.” Haven’t you ever uttered these words? Time can reveal many lessons, but often it takes us too long to listen. The eighth step to financial freedom is about understanding and accepting the natural cycles of money—as it ebbs and flows through our lives, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in discord, much like the cycles of our bodies, our planet—and the constant up-and-down movement of the economy you read about in the newspapers.

It is so important to learn to accept that your own money will also have its ups and downs. No matter how carefully you plan—even if you do every financial thing right—money, like every other living thing, isn’t always going to behave in ways you can predict. Sometimes you’ll have

more than you expected, and at other times, money will flow out and you’ll have less than you thought. There may be a time when you have money in the stock market and it goes down dramatically. Or maybe you suddenly inherit a valuable piece of property. Perhaps you are downsized from your job without warning—or given a surprise promotion. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen with my clients again and again. You think your financial life is rolling along a certain track and boom, you’re going in a different direction.

These transitions can be exciting, or often scary, but they are all part of the natural cycles of life—and money. In Step 8, there are two lessons to remember about these natural ups and downs.

First, you must always take the long view of your financial future. If you have taken the steps outlined in this book, the setbacks you may have today or next year will not keep you from financial freedom. In order for you to create what is in your power to create, you must believe that you can and you will.

Second—and for some people this may be more difficult to do than anything else I have told you so far—you must believe that everything that happens is positive, if you are willing to let it be.

I know some of you are going to say, “Suze, how can it be a positive thing if my husband leaves me and cleans out my bank account?” “How can it be a positive thing if I lose all my savings in a stock market crash?” Please understand, I am not saying such events won’t be tragic and painful; I have been through some of them myself, and I know how hard they can be. But I also have learned that they can, if we are open to them, teach us lessons and give us gifts that we would never have found at more comfortable times. Things that seem almost unbearable as they’re happening to you can even, in the long run, lead to riches you never imagined.

This is a very simple truth but it has tremendous power. That is how it got its reputation with our grandmothers. If you can believe that somehow everything happens for the best and hold firm to this belief, especially during troubled times or when you undergo what appear to be setbacks in your life, then you will be able to draw the good out of any situation. You will be looking for the benefit, the hidden treasure, and you will be able to profit from even the toughest experience.

I’ve heard it said that when you first have a dream for yourself, you

think it’s totally impossible. As time goes on, you’ll think it’s highly improbable. In the end, you will know it was inevitable all along. Remember to remember your power—everything you’ve learned with these steps to financial freedom—and put it all into practice every day, because in the grand scheme of life, you’ll never really know how things are meant to turn out until they turn out. And when is that? When they turn out as they’re meant to turn out, you’ll know it.

I learned this from watching the life of my dad.

 

 

MY DAD’S STORY

 

Maybe yes, maybe no.

After his little chicken shack had burned to the ground, my dad was penniless. Because he wasn’t properly insured, everything was a total loss, and he had absolutely no money to start up another business. His health was suffering, too; he had gotten emphysema from all the smoke he inhaled in the fire. It was a very hard time in our family. My mom was already working full-time as she always had, and my brothers and I were doing whatever we could to bring in extra money. Still, for a long time after the fire, there was never enough. Everyone was saying how unlucky my dad had been, which started to bother me, so I went right up to him and asked him if he was unlucky. “Maybe yes,” he said, “maybe no.”

One day I heard him on the phone taking a call. “Really?” he was saying. “How can this be? Are you sure?” And then, “Great! I’ll take it!” I walked into the hallway where the phone was and he looked at me and said, “Honey, we are back in business!” I can remember to this day how thrilled he was. A salesman who had been one of my dad’s suppliers at the chicken shack told my dad that the meat- packing company was going to give him the start-up money to open a new place, and that they had found the perfect location for him as well. I said, “See, Dad? You are lucky after all, aren’t you?” Again he just looked at me and said, “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

A few months later, Morry’s Deli (named after my dad) opened up on Chicago Avenue in downtown Chicago; my brothers and I worked

there every day after school. From the beginning, there was always a line out the door, and this time I knew my dad was really going to make it. Then one day he came home looking forlorn, and said that Northwestern Medical School was expanding and taking over our space, so we would have to find a new location. This can’t be, I remember thinking. We were just starting to do so well. Just to check, I said, “I guess we’re not so lucky after all, Pops,” and he said, “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

My dad began looking for a new place. When the word got out that he needed a new location, a landlord back in Hyde Park, where the original chicken shack had been, contacted him and said that he had the perfect spot and that, again, everyone would help with the cost of moving back to Hyde Park. He was so happy—in fact, we were all so happy since, for my brothers and me, it was a whole lot easier getting to Hyde Park than downtown Chicago from where we lived. The day he signed the new lease, I felt I had to set the luck record straight, so I said, “I guess this means our luck has changed for the better, right, Dad?” “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

The new store was also a success from the day it opened. I loved it. My brothers and I would race around seeing who could make the sandwiches fastest, especially Dad’s corned beef sandwiches, a house specialty. Dad’s health was getting worse, but somehow we were able to manage. My brothers Gary and Bobby took turns running the store, and I would work all summer when I was back from school.

Only two years after the store opened, though, we had another fire. It happened at night, at least, so the blessing was that nobody was hurt. This time, I said outright to my dad that I thought he was the unluckiest man in the world, thinking that finally he would agree. “Maybe yes,” he said, “maybe no.”

It turned out that the fire was caused by an electrical short that had started in the apartments next door. The landlord, knowing that my dad had been doing such great business, put him on notice that he was going to triple the rent after he rebuilt the place. There was no way we could afford it, so, at the age of seventy, with his emphysema getting worse, my dad began looking, once again, for another location. When word got out, a representative from the University of Chicago, who loved my dad (not to mention his food),

called up and said they had this place right on campus and would my dad like to open the first private business ever on the university campus? The spot was perfect, right by the bookstore and a hospital where thousands of people worked, and the rent was affordable. “Wow,” my dad said, “I’d love to!” Then he called up his old landlord to say he wasn’t moving back in. The landlord was in such shock that he offered him back his spot totally rebuilt, and for less rent than he had been paying before. Now my dad was the one in shock. He took both places.

Soon, with my brother Gary’s help, both places were up and running—and successful beyond my father’s wildest dreams. For the first time ever, there was enough money—more than enough. My dad knew, too, that my mom would be taken care of after he was gone, and he was so proud that Gary would carry on the family business. I went up to him one day as all this was happening and I said, “You know what, Pops? You are one lucky duck.”

This time, to my utter amazement, he said: “Yep, Suze, you got that right.”

Not long after that, on June 21, 1981, which was Father’s Day, my dad died—in his eyes a lucky man.

My dad’s gift was knowing that good luck and bad luck are always in the eyes of the beholder, and always cycling; neither rarely stops for long in any one place. He was able to see past the present situation, whatever it was, to the future. Another thing about Dad’s story: Many of the good things would never have happened if the bad events hadn’t happened first. If the second fire hadn’t happened, and the landlord hadn’t tried to raise the rent, Dad would never have found his store at the university nor gotten a better deal at the first store.

 

YOUR EXERCISE

 

Please think about your entire financial history. Try to remember all the worst things that have happened to you. Think back to how you felt— tense, afraid, paralyzed, angry, determined to prevail, whatever the emotions were at the time; there may have been several emotions at

once. Remember the entire sequence of events. What happened before the crisis to set it off? What was the crisis itself like? How did the crisis resolve itself? What elements of it seemed crucial at the time, and do they still seem important now? How did it change your life? Write down the story if it will help you remember, or pull out any old notes or papers about it, to help you remember how you felt at the time. Here are a few questions to trigger your memories:

Did you ever not get a job you wanted badly?

Did you ever quit a job or get fired without knowing where your next penny was coming from?

Have you ever lost a lot of money on an investment?

Have you ever had a business deal that you worked hard to put together fall to pieces at the last minute?

Have you ever had a relationship break up and, in addition to the grief you suffered, found yourself also very worried about money?

Have you ever had a friendship end over money?

When and why in your life were you the most frightened about money?

 

Now, let me ask you this: Have there come any gains from any of these losses? Didn’t any of your misfortunes turn out, over time, to be the best thing that could possibly have happened to you? Didn’t the gains come in ways you could never have predicted? You can turn the same exercise around and do it backward—review events that seemed to you at the time like lucky breaks—and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that these lucky breaks sometimes brought with them problems or heartaches you never expected. Did that mean they weren’t really lucky? No—it means they were part of the cycle, and the  cycle  is natural. Gains and losses aren’t flukes, or curses; they are built in, like the doors and windows in a house; and they both have the capacity to bring us closer to the sort of life we long for.

In my own case, I know that my greatest periods of genuine growth came from the not-so-good times. What I got was more than just practical learning, though God knows there was plenty of that and it was

very important. Still, it was the times of having nothing that taught me how much I really did have. They taught me to be grateful and to have faith in the natural rhythms of money and life. That inner knowing is the essence of the eighth step.

 

INNER KNOWING

 

It is in this eighth step where we must really take the leap and believe that our own inner knowledge and beliefs are what truly create financial freedom. If you want money in your life, then you must welcome it, be open to it, and treat it with respect. Your beliefs and your attitude are what will make you feel rich, feeling free to believe in yourself, knowing that you will take the right actions with your money, no matter how much money you have or do not have today and knowing  that everything really does happen for the best.

Next time you feel that bad luck has struck you again, I hope you’ll remember my dad’s simple phrase—maybe yes, maybe no. If you can face your misfortune and ask yourself how you can find the gift, the lesson, in what is upsetting you now, then you are rich despite the setback. And you are only one last step away from true financial freedom.

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