170 : The Five Stages of Financial Independence with Douglas Tsoi
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Welcome to the Mindful Fire Podcast, a show about crafting a life you love and making work optional using the tools of mindfulness, envisioning, and financial independence. I'm your host, Adam Kwayo, and I'm so glad you're here. Each episode of the Mindful Fire Podcast explores these three tools through teachings, guided meditations, and inspiring interviews with people actually living them to craft a life they love.

At its core, mindful fire is about creating more awareness and choice in your life. Mindfulness helps you develop self-awareness to know yourself better and what's most important to you by practicing a kind, curious awareness. Envisioning is all about choosing to think big about your life and putting the power of your predicting brain to work to create the life you dream of.

And financial independence brings awareness and choice to your financial life, empowering you to make your vision a reality by getting your money sorted out and ultimately making work optional. And here's the best part. You don't have to wait until you reach financial independence to live out your vision. Mindful Fire is about using these tools to craft that life now on the path to financial independence and beyond.

Let's jump into today's episode. So

Douglas, welcome to the Mindful Fire podcast. I'm so glad to have you here. Thanks for having me, Adam. Yeah, Douglas and I met about a month ago at the Economy Conference where he was leading a breakout session that I was super interested to go to because it was all about people who have reached fire. They've been able to build financial independence. Some of them even have retired early, and yet they still aren't

getting the happiness that they thought they would get at the end of that rainbow, so to speak. I really loved that conversation that we had in that room.

the kind of presentation that you put together and just the conversation that was going with Doc G and Jordan and other people in the room, just sharing their perspectives and all of that. And for your knowledge, Douglas, I had Jordan on the podcast. And so we got to chat about this and the idea of purpose, which he's been thinking a lot about. But today, I'm really excited to explore this conversation with you and hear

your thoughts as somebody who is I believe you are fire and you've been you're on the other side of it. So I'm excited to have that conversation with you. So welcome again. Yeah, thanks. That was a great little breakout session. It wasn't only me, but everyone in the room just contributed so much. So I'm excited to continue that conversation with you, Adam.

So Douglas, I'd love to have you start by sharing with the audience a little bit about who you are, your journey, and what you're up to these days. Back in 2014, I got laid off from my job, and I immediately knew that I was going to take some time off. Number one, I had gotten laid off or fired many years before, and I

That had a major shift in my life. I was a lawyer, and I was pretty unhappy with being a lawyer. And during that layoff, or firing, I actually took a year off and realized that I wanted to be a Quaker school teacher, and that changed my life. I knew that any break in work could create something totally unexpected, so I wanted that. And secondly, I grew up with my aunt and uncle, and my uncle was dying of ALS at the time. And so...

I want to spend time with him. And unfortunately, he died about a month or two afterwards. But his last piece of advice for me was don't wait for anything. He said, like, I waited my entire life to do things and I can't do them anymore. And I knew what he meant. We grew up in a Chinese nationalist household and his family, they fled.

the communists in 1948, 49 to Taiwan. And he never stepped foot in China. He was born right after that. And he'd always wanted to go back to his homeland, China, and kiss the soil, basically, right? And he had been waiting for retirement to do that. And then he had always been really interested in Europe. He had never been to Europe, but he had watched Rick Steves' Europe episodes over and over for years. And he'd been waiting for retirement to go to Europe. And he died at age 64.

With those two things in my head, both like something new could happen and don't wait for anything, I actually attended a workshop with Mr. Money Mustache. Never heard of him before. Mr. Money Mustache and J.D. Roth. And when they were doing this workshop, I just kept on doing the math over and over. And I realized, oh, I had to do this.

I had already done this. Like I had done 25X already. And I think what happened to me was I realized I'd spent my entire life, you know, Chinese immigrant household, saving money and investing for more and more security. And then I realized at some point you have enough security and by trying to get incremental little bits of security, you're actually giving up life. And that's when I decided, okay, I'm going to stop working. I'm going to stop like trying to make my nest egg bigger.

And so I decided that I owned the rest of my life. I was 42 at the time. And so I started this thing called Portland Underground Grad School, PUGS, which was a school for lifelong learners. It was this idea that the community could educate itself without having everyone pay for tens of thousands of dollars for grad school and give up their normal lives. And that thing grew in four years to 80 courses and 900 students. I started

I sold that in 2019, and then during the pandemic, I became a spiritual director. And a spiritual director is just someone who listens to people as they are wrestling and thinking about their own spiritual lives. And in the meanwhile, after I sold Pugs, I started teaching a course called

financial freedom. I have a website called school of financial freedom.com. And it's a two month course. And I teach people from a spiritual perspective about personal finance. And lastly, I write a substack called money and meaning, where I talked about the intersection of personal finance and spirituality. So all of that has come out of that time off that really that realization that you own the rest of your life. I really love the way that you put that

So all of these various projects that you just told me about are coming out of that time off? Yeah, and I have a bunch of other projects. It's funny because I sound pretty busy, but I'm not. I take naps every day, I play soccer, I travel three months of the year.

But like, I think obviously the greatest gift of financial independence is your own time and creativity. So, you know, I have a website, a gratitude website called the appreciation effect where people can take something like, you know, if you have a spouse, you put their email in, we spit you back out a link and you can share that link with all their loved ones and,

let's say it's for their birthday, instead of getting all these birthday congratulations on one day, we send them one note at a time. They're appreciated for essentially days on end, months on end, which is spectacular. And I do reparations type work and all this stuff. But yeah, the whole point is like, I bought 20, 25 extra years of my own life.

Yeah. And you, it sounds like you have a lot of different interests and have done a bunch of different things. It's very cool to hear your dabbling. Were these things that you had dreamed about that you had started doing or did they come to you when you had more time to think about it? Yeah, that's a great question. I started Pugs Portland Underground Grad School before I got laid off, but it was just an idea like this cute idea, but it only became like a full fledged business.

business and entity after I decided to quit working. Everything else has been sui generis. It's just come out of creativity. And I'm curious, what was the model of that? If it wasn't the traditional pay a bunch of money to go to grad school, I just would love to hear briefly, what was that model? Yeah, it was the basic idea that people want to keep on learning and growing throughout their entire lives, but don't have

the time and money to go back to grad school. So there was a way that we do it by just having people within the community who were experts teach. The model was four-week courses, homework was assigned, it was actually a classroom, and the teacher got half of the proceeds. But tuition was income-based. It was based on, essentially, you paid what you earned. So if you were minimum wage, you paid four hours of minimum wage to be in four hours of class.

Made $100 an hour, you paid four hours of $100 an hour to be in class. So there was an equity model. And basically, the instructor got half of the proceeds, which, quite frankly, they got paid as much for a month of teaching at Pugs as a whole quarter of adjunct professoring at a university.

Wow. And so it was just you said there was a whole bunch of different topics and courses. And how did you recruit the teachers? Once it started, the requirement was that you had to take a class to teach a class. And there was so much expertise in the community. I'm sure, Adam, if you took a course at Pugs, you would probably be interested in teaching a course, right? In mindfulness or something. And people are constantly wanting to teach.

Yeah, I guess so. I guess that people that are interested in lifelong learning are also prepared and interested in sharing what they know as well. Yeah, they're experts in something. Yeah, that is very cool. Is that still going? It died during the pandemic. They're trying to revive it, but we'll see what happens. Got it. That seems like a cool, a cool model and something that like a lot of communities could take into account and try out to bring more. I imagine it brings a lot of people together.

A lot of smart, interesting people together. Yeah, I mean, that was half the thing. So many of our friends in life come from women-run schools. The motto of Pugs was it's half learning and half community. In modern day society, we have what's called civic loneliness, right? We're not connected.

as we used to be, right? We don't have the civic organizations that we used to. And so Pugs was trying to fill that gap. If any of your audience wants to try and start an underground grad school, they should just reach out to me.

There you go. I think it's pretty cool. Not what I thought we would talk about at the start, but hey, very interesting. Cool. So the other thing I'd love to dive into and what you shared there is you have the School of Financial Freedom and you bring together spirituality and personal finance. So I'd love to maybe have like some key points.

tenants or ideas, concepts that you share in there. So I'm curious to hear, you know, how you see spirituality and money coming together. Well, it's funny for the School of Financial Freedom, the tagline is take control of your money to build the life you want, which is basically your podcast.

But I guess the easiest way to put it is people are generally, they don't really want to look at their finances. And functionally what happens is people spend up to their incomes, whatever their incomes are. The way I think about it is people think they enter my course and they're going to think about money, but it's really about their lives.

When you really get down to financial independence, it's really about what is your life really about? Who are you really about? And those are the questions I'm really interested in asking. There is plenty of concrete, like, math stuff that people generally are...

Like they just don't want to look. There's a great fear of looking at numbers. And part of it is being in a community of people who are sharing numbers and talking about their numbers and being honest with themselves. But there's some deep questions about consumerism. Like what is the thing that I'm actually looking for when I spend money? And it's not usually the thing, right? And looking at the deeper emotional scripts or emotional issues, we're trying to fulfill with both spending and working. We overwork and we overspend.

And so I think we'll get into it later. Like,

The world is suffering, according to the Buddha, right? Like it's Dukkha and we're in the wheel of samsara and you can keep on churning and churning, churning, and it's never going to fulfill you because as we say in the financial independence world, it's the hedonic treadmill and you can keep on running as hard as you can and you're not going to get anywhere. There has to be some internal work. And so I think the easiest way to put it is money is just, is the greatest manifestation of the external world. But the external world is only there so you can work on your internal world.

It's a great point. I was just talking with Carl Jensen from 1500 Days on the podcast yesterday, and we were talking about this idea that people in the financial independence community tend to overemphasize money as something that's going to solve their problems and bring them happiness, when instead there's actually these other aspects of life like health and fitness and relationships that actually...

are much more deterministic of a happy and healthy life. But money is, it's black and white. It's a math problem that you can figure out pretty easily. The inner work is a lot messier, a lot more ambiguous, easier to put off, I think. That's what Carl Jung talks about. Like we spend the first half of our lives looking for satisfaction externally.

And hopefully, if you cross what he called the night sea journey, you realize what you're seeking for is actually internal.

This all tends to come to a head when we discussed when we met at your session that people reach financial independence and yet they still don't have that happiness that they are hoping for. Why is it that people think that reaching financial independence is going to make them happy? And then why doesn't it actually happen that way most of the time? Yeah, I think part of it is the marketing of the FIRE community. This whole idea of like, oh, you know,

Once you get this, you'll be happy, but that falls into the same trap that we're all under. Like once you achieve this external thing,

you're going to be happy forever. And quite frankly, that's just not true. I have this framework that I coach people with. I do financial spiritual coaching and I call it the five stages of fire. And the first stage is denial. Like you have enough money, but you're not really willing to think about the fact that you don't have to work anymore. It's that quote, but I like my job syndrome. A friend of mine, he's the head of a large organization, makes $450,000 a year. And

He doesn't want to retire because being the head of a large organization gives you a ton of pretty vital psychic benefits like purpose and structure, identity, belonging, and most importantly, status. People listen to you when you're in those positions. But losing all those things is super scary. So there are a lot of people, I met someone in my session who's 55X.

And he just hasn't retired because on some level, he has nothing to retire to. So he doesn't have, he doesn't know what he would do if he stopped working. So I call that stage one, sort of a denial phase. Stage two, I think almost everyone who does financial independence hits this phase of like, oh, I can do all the things I've denied myself. I,

I just had someone on my podcast who hit financial independence after taking my course, and they retired to Spain. And they're two years into living in Spain and enjoying Spanish life after working really hard as American consultants and lawyers. So that party phase, I think, is totally appropriate. You travel around the world, you see all your friends, you just relax. You drink wine, basically. You drink wine in Spain. Not a bad life. For most of us, we can't do that forever.

Like, my dad is the wisest person I know. He's like, you got to do something with your life. And then you hit this third phase, which I call identity. And you become a fire person. Like, all of a sudden, you start telling everyone, like, oh, this is why I retired. Like, I'm doing all these things. And you just kind of show off. Like, you maybe...

start a podcast or maybe you like start a course, right? Like and also or you go to an economy conference, right? Because you're all about the thing that you just did and it's a great sense of accomplishment. Again, I would say all of this is developmentally appropriate. These are all phases that I would expect anyone to go through. But you know, it's interesting, you know, Vicki Robin, who's become a friend of mine, she was doing this in the 90s and if you talk to her, she's fundamentally uninterested in financial independence.

She's just doing other things because that's the whole point of all of this. The whole point of all this is not to keep on talking about your money. The whole point of it was to do things in your life that you were meant to do. And like Vicky, she's doing environmental work. She does a ton of community work. But there are some people like Carl or Doc G, like they found their groove. Like this is their sense of purpose. But not everyone who reaches financial independence has to stay doing financial independence.

So I hit stage four, which I just called, Jordan calls it the dysphoria phase. I call it the depression phase. And that's when you like, you get to this like, oh, is this it? Like, is this all this is about? Like, what am I actually doing with my life? Who am I? And I think that's where the conversation really starts getting interesting. And again, and this is the whole thing. The FIRE community promises happiness.

And I actually don't think the goal is happiness. And I think our constant chasing of happiness is part of this wheel of samsara, this dukkha, this hedonic treadmill. We keep on chasing and then we realize, oh, this is not it. And like, for example, I have a story like I had one of my clients is Silicon Valley founder. He was born in India, grew up in a village, but somehow he always had a dream that he was going to go to

to America, start a tech company, and become rich. And he flew to the US, and he said when he went to the bathroom, he did not know what a roll of toilet paper was. That's how poor he was growing up. And eventually, he actually went to Silicon Valley, he sold his company,

bought a $10 million house in Silicon Valley, and he's achieved everything he ever wanted, right? Like he has financial independence. He has gotten everything he could have wanted as a child. And he's realizing, oh, there are other things I have to face in my life, all these internal things that I've ignored. And then that brings you to the fifth phase where you actually address the internal work. You do the mindfulness. And I think the super big danger there is, again, another Silicon Valley story,

A guy who's also sold, he sold his company for, I think, you know, $250 million, bought a house in Maui and thought, okay, I'm good, right? Like I'm in my 30s. Like I bought this $20 million house in Maui. Like I'm set for life. And when he hit that dysphoria phase, he did not know what to do. It was crushing with depression. What he did is we went back to Silicon Valley to start another company. And I think that's the danger. The danger is you go through these five phases and you just return back.

Because there's an opportunity to do something completely different. That's what I call the five phases. The fifth phase, is there a name for it? Or it's just like doing the internal work?

Yeah, I think the fifth phase is actually trying to find out who are you really about? What are you? You know, I was trained by the Franciscans in spiritual direction and St. Francis all the way back in about 1200, I don't remember the date. And he asked two questions, like when he has this mystical experience, he says, like, who are you, God? And who am I? And, you know, the first question seems obvious. What is God? What is this ineffable, mysterious presence in the world?

But the second one is just as interesting. Who am I? It's a good question. And I think that's kind of like the life's work, figuring out who we are, what we care about.

and how we want to manifest our who we are in our interactions and in our relationships and in our life. Yeah. So I'm curious, like, what's your reaction? Like you heard these five phases in the breakout session and you just just heard them again. What's your reaction? Yeah, I resonate with them a lot. I think that the denial phase, very real, like

It's one thing to understand financial independence and to build it and to do the math and to save and invest and do all the things that you need to do. But then when you actually start getting close to it and you have to actually figure out, okay, now what am I going to do with this? Yeah, I think that's where a lot of people really struggle. And I think once they move into the second phase of celebration and party, that's just a distraction. It's great and it's well-deserved and it's fun. Also, you still...

are going to have to figure out what that next chapter looks like. And I think you mentioned nothing to retire to. And this kind of brings up something that was discussed at the conference as well, which is basically the Donegans were talking about, like, are you running from something or are you running to something? And I think that a lot of people tend to be running away from a job that they don't love or that they maybe even hate.

But I think that fewer people have something that they are really running towards. You asked me before we started recording, like, why am I doing this podcast? And it's really like figuring out what am I running towards getting clearer and clearer and clearer on what am I running towards? And it's very meta, but like I...

am a vision-oriented person, a futuristic-oriented person. And I have had many examples in my life of getting clear on some big, crazy thing that I want to do. And then, as I call it, planting the seeds of that in my mind, priming my mind to be ready to see opportunities associated with that. And a lot of times it was just like daydreaming. Before I knew these practices, it was just

I want to design and build my own house. That's always been a dream of mine. I would love that. And so I like design it in my mind and all that. And then,

One thing leads to another. I end up making that thing happen. And so you're looking at this background I have here and it's my sunroom at my house. And this room is very similar to what I designed in my mind. And then I actually have written down on paper and drawn very rudimentary drawings of this great room with big windows and a kind of a pointed ceiling and

sliding glass doors. And if you're listening to this on your podcast player, you might not be seeing this, but I was able to buy this house in this room in this house that was totally aligned with my vision without having to even build it. What I'm drawn to do is to help people who have financial independence have options to help them get clear on what they actually want and to start living it now so that they can

avoid some of these challenging aspects of the five stages, especially the depression and dysphoria phase where it's like, I don't even know what I want. And I think it takes time and trial and error to figure out what you want and to build the life that you want. And so the earlier you start, the more success you're going to have because you're going to have just more time to adapt and figure out, oh, I like this. I don't like that. Okay, let me bring more of this into my life and less of that.

So that was a long answer, but especially on the first two phases. Yeah, it's great. I think one of the things people ask me, like, did you know what you'd be doing post-fire, pre-fire? And it's like, no, there's no way. Like,

I was working in the sustainability world and climate change. There's no way that I knew that I was going to be, you know, I would create an underground grad school. And when I was running the underground grad school, there was no way that I knew that I was going to become a spiritual director. I'm pretty sure that I will not be doing what I'm doing now five years from now. It would be something completely unanticipated. And I think one of the great advantages is

of financial independence is I can be faithful to my curiosity. Like I've done tons of other things because I'm able to try and experiment. But again, yeah, I just, I am able to like follow my curiosity and like actually be true to it.

And yeah, and not have to just like fit it into the weekend. Right. Yeah. Like you have more time to explore and all of that. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I often get asked by people when I teach envisioning and these concepts is, well, what if I want this thing and it just doesn't happen or doesn't happen soon enough? I think that there's like a difference between a vision and

like a vision that you're following and a goal or an expectation. And the difference is really the timeline and then the, the way that it shows up. And so when you have a goal or an expectation, there's a very specific way that it's supposed to look in a very specific time in which it's supposed to happen. That's fine for getting things done. But like when you're talking about like a vision that you think you want this thing, um,

The difference is that you can be open to the time in which it happens and then the way at which it looks. It doesn't have to be exactly that because it doesn't have to look a certain way. And so an example of this for my life, like I really challenge people to think really big just to kind of open themselves to the possibility of all the things that they could be interested in. And they don't need to pick any particular thing. But.

One of the things that I challenged myself to do is like, all right, I want to teach envisioning to teams and companies. I know that's part of my vision. I want to think really big. And so I forced myself to think really big. And I had this idea like, all right, I want to do this for the CEO of Google. Like, okay, now that's big. I have no idea how that's going to happen. And I literally was just like, all right, yeah, that would be cool. I'm open to that possibility.

One thing led to another. I had an email come to me while I was like up late finishing my work for Q3 last year. And a woman emailed me and I was, she says, we're looking for someone to lead a workshop for a group of executives. I was like, perfect. That's aligned with my vision. And I got an opportunity to go out and lead an envisioning workshop for 27 vice presidents at Google at the CEO's leadership conference.

I was telling this story in a workshop for another team. And this guy in the front was like, well, was he in the room? I was like, no. I was like, well, then you didn't really get your goal. And I was like, it's not exactly what I had envisioned, but it was pretty damn close. It still moves me forward, right? So this is a long way of saying like,

You don't have to know every little thing that you want to do to start moving forward, but it helps to have some idea of what you're trying to do. Yeah. Like if you have a dream to like become an NBA all-star and you just made it to the NBA, like, okay, like, yeah, pretty good. You still went 80% of the way. It's interesting because now the way I would think about it is nothing that has ever happened that did not start

at first in someone's imagination. You have to imagine it and want it before anything happens. You don't get everything you want, but if you decide you're not going to want it and you're going to limit yourself, nothing is ever going to happen. The other half of it is the undercurrent of what you're saying is you had a vision, but you weren't fully attached to it. And that sense of unattachment and willingness to go forward to where it led is part of the reason you were able to do this workshop for them.

Yeah, no, exactly. And I think that's a really, you know, kind of gets back to the Buddhist philosophies that you were talking about before. Like our attachments are what causes the most suffering. Like when we, when we're craving something or push trying to push something away that we don't want, it causes us quite a bit of suffering. But when we are open and adaptive to how, how life comes at us and we're not so attached to a particular outcome in a particular way, it's,

It can make all the difference, right? And it can just allow us to move with a little bit more ease. Recently, I've been like having a real life experience of this, like I'm putting together this group coaching program and that requires selling people on the program, despite having been in sales my whole career, more or less.

It's very different to be selling yourself and something that you're creating rather than like Google's ads, for instance. That's a lot, a lot easier to sell. But I...

I've noticed myself, like my mood is very much dictated by some, how some of these conversations go. And I realized like, sometimes I'm like trying to, I felt very much like I'm trying to sell people, but the more I just kind of relax and like, is there a fit here? Like, I want to help you get clarity in this moment in however I can help you. And if I can connect you with people that can help you,

move towards your vision, wonderful. If what I'm creating is a good fit for what you're doing, wonderful. But I'm very much noticing myself like, I really want this to happen and I'm trying to make it happen. And I need to just remind myself to just relax. It's okay. That's why I'm purchasing financial independence in the first place. I don't need to make money doing this. I get to do this and I'm

happy to be doing it. And yeah, I want to make some money because I want to build a business that I can move into, but like, I don't need to force it. And I certainly don't need to like act all salesy and not that I was, but it just, that was the feeling. You know, the one thing on your five stages of fire, I mean, I guess one thing I'm curious about is do you think everyone goes through the becoming a fire person stage three, the identity stage? Have you, I mean, you've talked to a lot of people. I got really obsessed with it and I, I'm like,

shouting from the rooftops, you can do this too, you know? But like, does everyone do that? As you say that, probably not. There are probably like any number of people who have retired early that are not part of the financial independence movement. And like, they're just hanging out doing their own lives. Yeah, I guess there are people who've done it without even knowing about FIRE.

That's fundamentally what happened to me, but I got really intellectually interested in flyer. I had hit 25x without even knowing it until I met Pete and JD. I think there are probably people who

Who don't go through this identity phase. But I think, you know, one of the most interesting comments that came out of that breakout session was someone mentioned these five stages. They've experienced other times in their lives, like when they got their first job, went to college for the first time and they were freshmen in the dorm. Like this disbelief, this celebration and this sense of identity and then a disillusionment and then like moving on.

That is the cycle we go through in life with anything new. When we claim something new, we have an identity and then we realize this is not everything I'm all about. And then we have to keep on learning and growing.

Yeah, no, it's a good, a really good point. It is like a cycle of, of any big change in our life we have to adapt to. And, you know, if it's a good change, we get really into it and then we, you know, we're not as into it because it's not so new anymore. And then, um, we need to continue on. And so you help people do this inner work.

I guess, what are the, if someone's finding themselves here, you know, maybe they are in the dysphoria phase, right? They're like, ah, this is not everything it was meant to be. Like, I thought it was going to be, I'm not where I think I need to be, whether they're, they're fire already or they're in their career. And they've like, ah, this thing I thought was so great. Like, actually I'm kind of over it. Like, what are the practices or the techniques that you recommend people practice?

do to do this inner work? First of all, I would say I've talked to Jordan about this, and I think everyone in the group that we were in together agrees. Just because you go through these five phases doesn't mean like you don't want to do it. There's nobody I know who has fire that's like, oh, I wish I didn't like save enough money so I didn't have to worry about money anymore. So I just want to put that out first. This is something we you all want to do. And I would suggest maybe the easiest way to put it is it's not the end all be all.

Like it is just a stage on your path. It was never the goal.

I actually talk about this in terms of psychedelics. I actually do some psychedelic coaching. A lot of people want to think that psychedelics is transformation. Like, oh, I took a psychedelic and I'm now transformed. I'm really healed. And I fundamentally do not believe that. I believe that psychedelics or financial independence or anything major you do is a gateway. And then afterwards, you go through the gate and you have to keep on walking the path.

I think you're absolutely right. And that's kind of how I, in the tagline of the podcasts, like create a life you love and make work optional using mindfulness, envisioning financial independence. Like the goal is to create a life you love the how and the tools that you have to do that are mindfulness to know yourself, envisioning to get clear on what you want.

and financial independence to pay for it, to make it so that you can have the time and space to do the work, to figure out what you want. But the ultimate goal is to live the life you want. It's not financial independence for its own sake. Are there any particular practices, whether reflection, journaling practices, or mindfulness practices that you teach to people in your programs that help with this inner work?

Carl Jung once said that he didn't have a single client or anyone who came to him in the second half of life who did not achieve what they needed to achieve without finding a spiritual outlook on life. I think that's what happened to me, like finding spirituality and whatever you find as your own spirituality was a critical step for my own growth. Fundamentally, you know, mindfulness or Buddhism or Christianity or Islam is

Essentially understanding intimacy with all things. There's something deeper within you than what we typically think of as, quote, you. And it connects to everything in the universe. However you can actually find that spirituality, I think, is...

really what I help people with. And does it look different for each person? I would imagine, but I think it looks different for everyone, but it's Richard Rohr, Father Richard Rohr, who's a Franciscan monk and the leading, it's the most famous American mystic alive today. He said, we're all fingers pointing at the same thing. And do not mistake

the finger for the moon and i think the moon is under like the surrender of your ego surrender of your personal identity into something greater yeah i yeah i think there there is a fundamental realization for i don't i speak for myself like in doing this practice right and meditating in practicing mindfulness and cultivating more mindfulness in my life i've started to realize that like

I'm not necessarily the thoughts that I'm thinking, the stories that I tell myself, even the body that I'm in necessarily. Like I am,

connected to everybody else and everything else. And we're all impacted by each other. That can be scary, but also can be comforting. It takes a load off. I mean, it's getting back to the ego. When we think we have to change the world and we have to do all these big things, it can feel like a lot of pressure. And when I can realize I'm just like a human being, like everybody else, just trying to get through the day and do the best I can and make mistakes and learn from them, like

It's a lot easier. It's a lot less pressure. I feel like we put so much pressure on ourselves. This idea of purpose, and I know Jordan has evolved about his ideas around purpose even after he's written the book, but like

One of the things we talk about in America is like, oh, you gotta have a sense of purpose. And like, if you don't have a sense of purpose, there's something wrong with you. And I just fundamentally don't believe that. Purpose is just another one of those fingers pointing at the moon. And purpose is another way to let go of your ego and like serve. But it's not the only way. Yeah, we talked a lot about he has these ideas of big P purpose, right? Like, we're just like, I got to

change the world. I got to do this humongous thing that's going to get all this attention. Or I can just like

be a little more patient with my kids, or I can do this thing that I love that brings people together just because they love doing it too. He calls it the purpose anxiety that we face where it's like, ah, we got to have this big purpose. And it's like, no, not necessarily. Like if you want to fine, but if it's causing you stress and making you feel like you aren't enough, like probably there's something missing that you're, you're trying to fill a hole with this thing. You know, we talked a lot about this idea of enough and like feeling enough.

just as we are. We do a lot of things. We try to achieve financial independence, achievements in our career and our life to feel like we are enough when in reality, we are enough the second we were born. We can always come back to that. - Yeah, I think the way I put it is, really, my coaching and my teaching is really about people

looking at their not enoughness, internal not enoughness and how it manifests out into the world. Not everyone's willing or ready to look at their internal not enoughness. Nope.

And I think, like, how do I put this? Not enoughness is part of the human condition. I think we need to be gentle with ourselves. And, you know, I'm skeptical of any personal growth or Instagram influencer that can tell you, like, they have a solution for your not enoughness. I think it's something that you walk with, what Jung would call your shadow.

before I started meditating, I was completely unaware of my non-enoughness. And the way it shows up for me is I always feel like I'm doing things wrong and that there's some right way to do things and I'm certainly not doing it that way. But it hasn't gone away just because I became aware of it. It's still there. And I think that mindfulness where it comes in, it's like bringing a kind, curious awareness to yourself, whatever's coming up in your mind and your body and your external environment, and then choosing, okay,

awareness and choice, aware of what's going on and choosing how do I want to move forward? Is this useful is a question that I found very helpful. If this is not useful, I can just let it go and then keep moving.

And so I don't think it's ever going to go away. It's just I'm going to get better at noticing it and being less controlled by it. It's like the Byron Katie questions. Is it true? How do you know it's true? And is it useful? It's like, is it is it true? Is it really true? And is it useful? I think. Yeah. OK. Or like, what would who would I be without this? I think it's one of her questions. So, yeah.

She's always a very interesting person to hear speak. And I've like watched her do the work as she calls it with people live. And it's always pretty funny to watch because, you know, like this stuff is just like below the surface, you know, so totally. Yeah. All right, Douglas. Well, let's switch gears now into what I call the mindful fire final four.

So the first question is about envisioning. And so I generally ask people what aspects of their post-fi life they envisioned beforehand, but you've already told me that you didn't really have too much an idea of these things, pugs and the spiritual work that you're doing. I'm curious, are there any inklings of what's your vision for the future? You have this life where you can do whatever you want. What's your vision for the future?

This year, I started a podcast, the School of Financial Freedom podcast. And what I did is I took the 30 lessons in my Financial Freedom 1 course, and I'm interviewing former students. And I've had students for the last eight years. And each episode is one former student talking about one of the lessons and how they've applied the lesson and what they're struggling with and how they would explain it to someone who hasn't taken the course. So I'm halfway through that. It's funny because I did not think I was going to be a podcaster. I didn't think...

I was really good at talking or thinking out loud. I think of myself more as a writer. But doing that podcast has given me confidence that, oh, I can do this. And so, again, following my curiosity, I'm starting a second podcast. And the second podcast is called The Three Vows. The idea of The Three Vows is taking the traditional monastic vows that are found around the world, like Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism, Taoism. It's just interesting that they all have

similar vows. And I think these vows are, again, fingers pointing at the moon. But the vows are poverty, obedience, and chastity. And I know most people do not want to live in poverty, obedience, and chastity. Yeah, I'm good. But yeah, right? But are there ways that we can translate those things? There's wisdom in those three things for modern day life. So I translated them into the vow of poverty is the vow of voluntary simplicity. The vow of obedience is the vow of integrity.

And the vow of chastity is the vow of devotion. So I'm beginning to explore those three vows in people's lives. And the podcast is just going to be interviewing people, famous and not famous people, how they've lived according to their own vows and how living by vow has changed their lives. So that's where I'm moving towards. That's very cool. Yeah. When you first told me those three things, poverty, obedience, and chastity, I didn't really...

I didn't really understand, honestly. But I was like, you know, as you were talking about it just now, it's like, yeah, there's a simplicity to all of these. But yeah, integrity and devotion, it makes sense. You know, you're

But yeah, each one of them has a simplicity to it. You're removing a lot of ambiguity and choice. If you're obedient, you're just doing, you're following the rules. If there's poverty, options are limited. And then chastity, obviously you're removing a very complicating force from life that causes quite a few problems. Well, it's funny because I think of all of these things as ways of limiting your ego, which is what we're really talking about. Yeah.

And those are really aesthetic, extreme ways of limiting your ego. But I think there are ways to actually be mindful of your ego through voluntary simplicity, integrity, and devotion. It's interesting because people freak out about chastity, but chastity just actually literally means devotion. For example, are you married, Adam? I am. So when you took wedding vows, that was a chastity vow.

It was actually a vow of devotion to the person you married. The vow of chastity is just agreeing that like, I'm going to surrender my own selfish desires because of this person or this other thing. That I'm saying is more important. More important than just following whatever I want in the moment. Very cool. Thank you for sharing that. And I think we'll definitely link those new podcasts up in the show notes as this publishes.

The second question, Douglas, is what piece of advice would you give to someone early on their path to financial independence? I think the key is understanding that there are three stools to it. The three stools are how much you earn, how much you spend, and the difference is your savings. The third one is how you invest. And all three stools have to work.

Right. And most people are good at least on one stool. Like some people make a lot of money, but they don't save anything. Or some people are great at budgeting, but they have not really maximized their earning potential. And even when you do all that, if you don't invest your money, you're never going to get anywhere. So my advice is for someone young is you got to be good at all three stools and focus on the ones that you're not good at. And quite frankly, the ones you're not good at are probably the places where you're

the greatest potential for personal growth. Yeah, there's probably something that you need to confront that's keeping you from being better at that. If that thing wasn't there, you'd already be good at it. Very good point. Yeah, definitely. The things that we aren't good at or we want to avoid are definitely the areas we probably need to look at a little bit more closely. All right. The third question, Douglas, is what piece of advice would you give to someone getting started with meditation and or mindfulness? Mm hmm.

Well, it's funny, like I am not a good meditator, not a good mindfulness person. So I have many friends who have done the hard work of doing the mindfulness because no one ever thinks they're good at it. Right. And I would say there are many paths to God. Mindfulness is a path and you may find another path.

be open to different paths and different ways in accessing that. It is funny. I have a question back for you. Like one of the comments I've heard is,

with American mindfulness and meditation is the people who are most attracted to it, people who are generally kind of emotionally avoidant. Thoughts on that? Interesting. I don't know. I think if you're doing it with the spirit of it, you're confronting the emotions. But at the same time, the emotions are going to come up. Like for me, like the

Awareness of wow, there's like this inner critic that's just like talking shit about myself 24 hours a day. Wow. Like that's tough to look at. That's tough to realize. There's these stories that I have that can happen. It's likely to happen. Sometimes it's nice to just like, as I describe it, like our minds are like a snow globe constantly being shaken up and agitated and mindfulness and meditation, like setting the snow globe down on the table, allowing the snow to settle and

So you can see more clearly what's inside. Sometimes it's nice when you're in turmoil or whatever, like you're feeling strong emotions just to kind of like set that snow globe down and be like, I'm going to put this down for a little bit. And so I could see, you know, some people using it as a outlet to just not look at some things. But I think that ultimately the practice itself is going to bring those things up again and again and again until you actually look at them. Beautiful. Yeah. Thank you.

I've kind of experienced both in my own practice, but...

Yeah, go ahead. It's comparing it to like, I don't know, people who go to church, which is a very interpersonal experience. You know, meditation is a very individual experience. That's true. Okay, the last question, Douglas, is how can people connect with you online, learn more about your new podcasts, the course that you offer? You know, where's the best place for people to go and learn more about what you're working on? Yeah, I think there are three places to find me. First of all, my own personal website, which is douglassoy.com. That's Douglas.com.

tsoi.com and that's where i offer spiritual direction and financial spiritual coaching i write on substack douglassoy.substack.com but the the substack is called money meaning it's an intersection of personal finance spirituality so that's douglassoy.substack.com and lastly you can find me at schooloffinancialfreedom.com where i teach financial freedom one and two which is a

two-month course and cohort with other people where you learn the basics of personal finance and the inner work that you need to achieve it. And you can find the School of Financial Freedom podcast on any of the major platforms like Spotify or Apple podcasts. Very cool. Well, I will link all of that up in the show notes. And I'm sure a lot of people will go check it out because it sounds very interesting and quite

similar to what we talk about here. Yeah, same realm. Yeah, super grateful to be on this podcast because we're just so aligned in the way we look at both fire and mindfulness. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with the audience, Douglas. All right. It's good to see you, Adam. Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Mindful Fire podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, I invite you to hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this. This

This just lets the platforms know you're getting value from the episodes and you want to be here when I release additional content. If you're ready to start your Mindful Fire journey, go to mindfulfire.org and download my free envisioning guide. In just 10 minutes, this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. Again, you can download it for free at mindfulfire.org.

Thanks again, and I'll catch you next time on the Mindful Fire podcast.