Taking Stock of Yourself
You already hold what you need — you just haven't named it
What you already have
Freedom is the serve — being able to choose. That’s how I defined it in the last piece.
But to choose with any ease, you need a foundation.
If the company folds, I’ll be okay. If I’m laid off, I’ll be okay. If illness stops me working, I’ll be — to some degree — okay.
It’s that kind of security that lets a person choose for themselves.
So what do you need in order to build that foundation? Here’s the thing: you already have it. You just haven’t noticed, or don’t yet know how to use it.
Knowing what you have right now, and knowing how to use it — from here on, the power to see those two clearly is what decides things. So let’s start by sorting out what you have.
The “belongings of a life,” as I think of them, come down to three elements.
The first is your resources: time, skills, history, relationships, and a little capital.
The second is your values: what you hold dear, what you’d be willing to let go of, what you love, what you don’t.
The third is your constraints: family, health, age, where you live.
Once these three are clear, the elements that make up the present you come into view. Like taking inventory of a shop, let’s bring all three into the light.
Every past experience means something
What matters here is not to deny your past self.
In my own case: years poured into music that ended in failure, a long recovery from illness, more than a year of trouble overseas. By the world’s measure, nothing but detours. And yet, looking back, every one of them became an element that now supports my work.
The detours were the treasury of raw material.
Bringing the “now” into the light can hurt. You can feel small, as if you hold nothing. But within everything you’ve lived through, the material for what comes next is certainly there.
Aren’t you underrating yourself?
You may think you have no special skill. But the things you do as a matter of course in your daily work can be, to someone else, a valuable craft.
Maybe you carry an illness or some kind of handicap. Even so — I know people who have given courage to many simply by writing about their illness and their return from it.
“But really, I have nothing,” you might say. Go to a bookstore once. There are whole books written on just “getting up early.” You hold some material, certainly. It’s only hard to see its value from the inside. Praised for being tidy and meticulous with paperwork; complimented on your smile with customers; strong with numbers and fond of analysis — those are real resources. Every kind of work holds value. First, take honest stock of it.
Face yourself, calm and honest
One more caution. What looks at first like a constraint can be a resource, and the reverse is true too.
That was me. For a long time I could see my failed music years only as “failure.” Nothing for a résumé, no money left over. A pure constraint, I thought. But when I took stock, the view changed. The expressive power music gave me, the computer skills, and a “no way back” hunger — all of it quietly underpins the web work I do now.
The reverse happens too. A “past success” can look like a resource and turn into a constraint that binds you. The memory of “but it all worked back then” can block a new attempt.
Look at your values carefully too. Say you dream of a nomad life abroad — do you truly want that life? Maybe some media or someone else simply planted the image “freedom = nomad” in you. Maybe, for you, a city high-rise would actually be more “free.” When you take stock of yourself, it’s better not to weigh in the world’s common sense or other people’s opinions. Facing yourself, thoroughly, matters more than anything.
Start by writing it down
Inside you, a mountain of unused material lies sleeping. The problem is that no one teaches you the work of naming it and putting it into usable form.
So try this first. Take paper and a pen, and write out three things: resources, values, constraints. (I’ve prepared a worksheet you can print and use.) Any one of them is fine. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
By writing it down, the outline of the seed inside you will surely begin to show.
