This discussion has been about some of the changes that I’ve been focused on, since the Covid19 virus has forced us to stay quarantined in our homes. We discussed how important it is to grow your own food, and the necessity of maintaining your own compost. Part 2 was about Security, and having the right tool for the right job. This part I’m going to talk about your shelter/home.
Please keep in mind that this is only my opinion that I’m sharing with you, some life lessons that I’ve learned along the way. I had a good friend in the military that once told me that everyone starts over in life, and it’s important to establish a base line of how you live. Then work your way up from there, and go bigger and better every year!
It took a long while for me to establish a comfortable base line, because I had lost everything in my life a couple times. After losing all your money and home, you don’t know where to start.. Here is what I learned, and here is my base, and maybe it will help you build your way up should you ever need to.
Starting over with Nothing
If you should ever find yourself in the position of being jobless, and homeless. It will take some strategic planning, location is going to be key. You want to be as close to work as possible, in as much comfort as possible. Comfort and doing the work that you enjoy, greatly improves your attitude everyday. This remains true from rock bottom, all the way to the top.
From no friends, family or network of any kind. You can solicit for work, cleaning, construction, gardening, washing windows etc.. You can find a camp spot near public transportation and build your way up from there. In the end though, it’s not what you make, but what you keep. So lifestyle is important, and being frugal.
Build your network
This is important, and probably the most difficult to do. It means not being selfish, and making efforst to engage with people. Help where you can by paying it forward, and agreeing to disagree in order to nuture relationships. Building a network can provide support during bad times, but it also provides a warm network to solicit business.
Once you’ve worked your way up to having your own place from your day job, it will always be important to live frugal and within your means. Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad is a great book and worth reading, he speaks about that topic extensively. So you can start with a cheap apartment, grow the majority of your food and continue on with your day job. This has been my baseline in the past, and what I’ve had to do when tragedy struck.
Bigger and Better
Ok now that we’ve established a baseline, it’s important to have a plan of action to upgrade our situation. Life is like a game, or any kind of sport. There are ups and downs that are constant throughout our life, but it’s how we play that makes the difference. To have fun and find the balance, like surfing a wave. Surfing takes a lot of work to paddle into a potentially gratifying situation, but without balance we fall and it can hurt.
So we have our baseling with a day job that we typically don’t love, but it pays the bills. Next order of business is to delegate some of our time during the day or night, to plan a home based business around something we like to do. It could be a hobby, a subject of interest, or just another type of work that you enjoy. Now we do a full circle on that Network we started building. We’ll need typically need to reach out to someone in our network, to guide us, and teach us to design, and fulfill this new venture. Then we sell to that network as well.
Once the home based business/passion work starts to generate more than the day job, then we can transition safely without losing our baseline. Then it’s a matter of saving, again living within your means, and then we can go bigger and better every year!
Food for Thought
I’ll leave you with something to think about, and you can stay tuned on my blogs and even engage with me as you feel motivated to do so. Thinking about other streams of income, outside of your day job. What would you enjoy doing? Are you passionate about anything? Do you enjoy doing anthing? Is there a subject that you know more about, or rather more interested in learning?
If you answered no to those questions, then I think it makes sense to start with a hobby. Learn to enjoy doing something, and then maybe we can figure it out from there. Stay tuned to my blogs, I’m not used to writing, but I’m doing more things these days that are outside of my comfort zone. I’ll be talking more about potential home based businesses!