I’ve spoken a lot about a liberating metaphor I use, that helps stop me from comparing myself to other people. I call it “running my own race”.
The best part of running my own race is I always win.
The one trap I can still find myself in is “moving the goal posts”.
The easiest example of that is around money. Some years ago, I had created a goal for myself called “Freedom 35”. It was a monthly financial number. All of my monthly needs would be met by recurring income. That was the year I launched by webinar business. My monthly income was met shortly before I turned 36, my Freedom 35 goal was met.
However, I started having “lifestyle creep”. I moved out of an apartment and into a rental house. A couple of years after that I bought a 5 bedroom home.
We spent money on renovations, bought a car, I indulged in buying pinball machines, had a swimming pool installed in our back yard.
Now I found myself living a life that is unsustainable on my Freedom 35 goal numbers. If I went back to that number I would be ruined.
I came up with a new number. I called it Freedom 45.
Freedom 45 involved having all the money I needed to thrive, and be debt free. It meant having the resources to fund my next thing, and fund my children’s education. I had emergency cash.
I’ve reached a financial milestone, in the race I’m running. Compare me to a Silicon Valley guy and I look poor. I know better to keep in my own race and not compare myself.
However, I have to be careful about creating new races. I don’t want to have a Freedom 55 goal. At some point I have to call it good, otherwise I’m always chasing something and it never stops.
I played around with the word “retired” to describe this part of my life. A good friend, who is retired, remarked to me “Chris, there is nothing retired about you.”
I needed something else. If I don’t want to create a new race, and I’m not retired, what is it that I’m doing right now?
I came up with an answer: A Victory Lap.
A Victory Lap means I’ve completed my race, and I’m not seeking to replace it.
“What’s Next?” has been like a monkey on my back for years, and a Victory Lap allows me to release needing to answer it.
Lately, my answer to “What’s Next?” has turned into “You’re looking at it.”
I’m still defining what a Victory Lap means and entails. It isn’t simply about money. Money is the easy thing to score, but there are other parts of this that I’m beginning to define, that revolve around the peace I feel in my life.
A Victory Lap also acknowledges that I’m creating from a place of abundance and completeness. For the first time in my life this isn’t about survival. I shouldn’t need to have to find myself in crisis, financial or otherwise, to create a solution out. I’m not served at this time in creating a new race for me to run or moving the goal posts and not letting myself win my own race.
Just as you can run your own race, you can also define when and what your Victory Lap looks like.
What will become possible, from being in this place, a Victory Lap?
