I went off to Mount Martha with my mum for coffee and cake and a walk along the beach, and while we were there we sat down to talk about her five things. If you’re not aware of the five things philosophy, check out my first post and my five things page.
My mum retired over a year ago, freeing up all the time until then filled with a day job and filling it with all the things that had been put on hold. Invariably, the amount of stuff on hold will not fit in the newly available time, and it all becomes a bit overwhelming.
A few days ago I asked her to make a list of everything that she wanted to do, from life long dreams to sparks that had crossed her mind. She made this list and had already grouped them in to related items.
Luckily for my mum, there were 6 things. Writing, genealogy, crafts, business, community work and another block of things that she sort of felt she wanted to try sometime. The first 5 I’ve mentioned were, in no particular order, her top 5. That was quite easy. So she now has her five things. Interestingly, the crafts has many sub-categories: glass work, sewing, etc. She made a conscious decision to group these together, because she felt she’d get her fix from one of them. Until then, she had diversified by doing lots of different types of craft and the community work. In reality, while she was busy, she had only concentrated on 2 items in the five things list. For her, the biggest thing to come out of this exercise was identifying the areas and she can now be conscious about the top five.
Of her five things, she was a little unsure about how her business would work, or even what it would be, so we moved on to that. She wants to write a book, but the type of book she wants to write is hard to get through a traditional publishing company. She had considered self-publishing, but has no interest in doing the marketing or promotion.
It’s at this point that I started channelling. I started talking about alternatives, out-of-the-box finance ideas, ways of asking for money when doing so makes you feel really uncomfortable. The words were coming out of my mouth effortlessly and without distraction or diversion. And when I finished I sat there and wondered; where the fuck did that come from?
I’ve always enjoyed helping people work out how to start businesses, how to structure them, finding support, finance, contributors and supporters. I’ve helped Jo with hers, mum with hers. I helped a friend of a friend by working out a financial plan to solve $130,000 worth of debt that was locking him in to a marriage he felt trapped in. I love this shit and today I found that not only does it satisfy my problem solving and solutions development interests, it also ties in with my passion for money and I seem to channel information on this topic.
There’s a future as a business coach in me.