Questioning value

The Unexpected Psychological Challenge of Freedom

It started with a peculiar dream about an old building, people swimming in a pond, missing a college course, and Jason Voorhees grabbing me from the back.

According to Carl Jung, dreams contain useful material. Some more than others. This one most definitely. It left me in a crabby mood. All day, I was trying to shelve it as a “whatever,” but it kept falling off the shelf, irritating me, until at 9:30 pm, I tugged on a string. The dream unraveled and came together into an unexpected revelation.

About this time two years ago, I had just arrived in Bulgaria, the beginning of a new phase in life. I had my mother to keep an eye on, while traveling with my doggie, while trying to figure out who I am becoming.

Becoming doesn’t arrive, though, because it’s actually a verb.

So, my first mistake was to imagine a final version of the person I am going to be. I changed my alarm clock from 5:45 am to 7:00 am and woke up every morning for over a year expecting a new me that felt comfortable in my new surroundings, new responsibilities, new rhythm, and newfound freedom.

But instead, I felt restless. I questioned my value without the hustle, the competition, my businesses, my projects. Stepping back meant that I’ve agreed to give up achieving, striving, and growing. The accumulator had to become a spender. The hard-working entrepreneur had to relax.

Or perhaps, I could start another business. In Bulgaria. And one in the US. And maybe I should buy another house to fix up and flip. I could buy a couple of apartments in Sofia, fix and flip them, too. What if I learn how to groom dogs and open my own grooming place? I could teach English to Bulgarians. I could start a relocation consulting firm and help foreigners who want to move to Bulgaria or travel around Europe with their pets.

I felt like the year after graduation, when a kid tries to figure out what they want to be. Some go right into a predetermined career, taking the entry job they think will get them there, never stopping to ask if that’s really them. Others bum around trying to figure it out, finding random jobs to pay the bills, and reminiscing about the fun days in college, but complaining that it didn’t prepare them for real life. Yet others go right back to school, earning the next degree, and vowing never to leave academia. I went into working for myself back then.

But what about now?

This is where my mind has been for two years until last night, when Jason didn’t kill me. Instead, he stretched my arm out and ran it through this girl right in front of me. She didn’t feel a thing. I was intangible. I yelled for her attention. She didn’t hear me. I was a ghost.

In my world, I was someone. Not famous or important like a celebrity, or a scientist, or even like a politician, or a local priest. But I had a place in my little community.

Restrained by Jason, intangible and invisible, somehow, I did not panic. I went into full problem-solving mode, wondering how this was possible. Curiosity made me reach overhead to pull Jason’s mask off. As my fingers locked onto the sides of the mask, aware of the heavy straps holding it in place, I woke up. Too soon. I almost had it.

What was this force holding me back and making me feel like a ghost in my own life?

To explain it, I have to tell you about the concept of “generativity,” defined by the psychologist Erik Erikson as the desire to leave a positive legacy. It is a central psychological task of middle adulthood—typically ages 40 to 65—where we focus our energy on making a lasting impact. So, people raise children, become mentors, volunteer their time for worthy causes, build things, create, innovate, and pass it all to their family or others.

Later, Dan McAdams and John Kotre expanded on the idea as a multifaceted, lifelong arrangement of desires, cultural demands, and life stories. Instead of viewing generativity as a strict age-based stage, McAdams proposed we look at it as a dynamic, ongoing psychological construct defined by not entirely altruistic inner desire, social expectations pushing us toward contribution and care, conscious caring orientation toward future generations, underlying optimism in the goodness of humanity, conscious personal goals and long-term plans to help others, and the stories we tell ourselves in which we are the contributors, guides, survivors, teachers, builders, healers, leaders, or protectors.

My story is a story of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, overcoming, and figuring things out. Two years ago, a new story began, and I didn’t know what it was about. I still don’t know, but I know what held me back from figuring it out.

Money.

Money is tricky because I can live with or without it. I am not flashy. But I love making money. I inherited this from my paternal grandmother. She was evil by all accounts except mine. She treated me well and taught me some useful lessons.

She monetized everything she did every day, despite being uneducated and illiterate. She grew a garden but made it bigger than the family needed, so she could sell the excess produce. If she needed 10 chickens for food and eggs, she got 25 and sold the extra eggs and meat.

She loved knitting. I had more sweaters than I could wear, and unbeknownst to me, I had become a model for her craft. People were lining up to order sweaters from her at increasingly higher prices. In a communist country, with only a minimal pension, she had figured out how to build wealth. The extra money she made and saved over the years bought property.

Now, I don’t want to glorify her because there are still people in her village who won’t walk on the sidewalk in front of her old house, even though she’s been dead for 25 years and the house has been sold. My own mother’s blood pressure rises, and she turns red in the face at the mere mention of her name. But I have to give credit where credit is due.

I grew up with her eagerly dispensing advice. It’s no surprise that I’ve managed to monetize all my hobbies. Some only made enough money to buy more supplies so I can continue to enjoy them. Others did much better. Yoga is one of them. It became my bread and butter for decades and grew into a yoga studio, a yoga teacher-training program for two different studios, international yoga retreats, and much more. Interior decorating and remodeling houses worked out amazingly well, too.

For decades, this served me well because it helped me survive and build a nest egg big enough to make freedom and a bi-continental lifestyle possible. It allows me the flexibility I need to take care of my mother, to travel, and still be part of the community I love in California.

But in this new phase of life, the urge to make money and monetize my life is holding me back from contributing in the ways I most want to, and from creating for the sake of creating. It also distorts my focus, misinterprets my outcomes, and makes me depressed.

It asks me to pick a place so I can stay there and build something. But I need flexibility more than I need the money. It wants me to focus on one thing so I can grow it, scale it, and make it a viable business. I want to travel with my doggie while she still can. It whispers fearful scenarios in my ear to convince me that I should be making more money. I am pretty sure I can survive anything, except perhaps a zombie apocalypse. But who needs money in a zombie apocalypse?

It tells me that I am no one unless I am the person I used to be.

It puts a price tag on my value. It evaluates every hour, every effort, and every dream through the narrow lens of potential earnings. It reduces my life to a balance sheet. I look at the balance sheet with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Then I turn around and put myself up for sale again.

At the same time, I already experientially know that what’s valuable is not always what makes money. I have a doggie. I bought her eight years ago. Since then, torn between having to work and wanting to play with her, I’ve had a constant reminder and a goal that making money should become a side gig at some point. I paid $1000 for my little Lulu to save her from her neglectful owner. I would have paid $2000 if he had asked. But her value to me massively exceeds that cost. I wouldn’t sell her for a billion dollars. No way, no how.

“At some point” is now, but I can’t make that transition because Jason is holding me back and threatening me with intangibility and invisibility. But I got my fingers on that mask. It’s coming down, and I know what’s behind it.

Fear.

I’ve been afraid to separate my value from my ability to monetize myself. I hid it behind a search for my next project, next accomplishment, next money-making opportunity. Anything that would keep me visible, relevant, and tangible.

~~~~~

Life Intelligence explores the psychology of relationships, identity, self-discovery, meaning, and life’s transitions.

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