Some of you have reminded me how hard it is to give up the idea of a Job. Many of us don't have much of a network outside of the workplace. Most do not have access to health insurance outside the workplace.
I want in this post to tell you a bit more about these barriers. And to offer you a real hope that you can overcome them.
No Network - I worked for 20+ years for a financial institution. It asked all of me. I had no energy left for much outside of work at all. My family was hanging on by a thread and I certainly had no network outside my work. I had clients etc but no group of trusted friends who had things on their mind that I shared.
About 2 years before the bank and I parted ways, a good friend told me that all my signals were about how much I hated being in the system. This was a surprise to me! I was scared and angry to hear that. But after a few months realized that she was right. But what to do? I asked her if I should quit. She told me not to be stupid. "It's an institution Rob - they don't care one way or the other". Instead she advised me to create a new and parallel life outside the bank. I started to do a lot of public speaking about what I had learned about organizational design. I emerged in to the public eye as a thinker and not just another drone at the bank.
At the same time I was working on our healthcare costs at the ban. Why were so many so ill and why was this getting worse? So I began to get involved in the larger issues of health and I started to talk all the time with others who shared my concern. I did mini projects with them on my own time to help us make headway.
So one day the day of reckoning took place and I said the words that killed me. As I spoke them I knew that the bank would have to let me go. Of course they were very nice about it all - after all I was one of the boys - I was like the son who goes off the rails - still part of the club but you know the nutty one. They were very generous and civil.
The next day I started paid work with 2 of the people I had been working with before. I have never looked back.
I offer this story up to any of you who are feeling trapped "Inside". It's not a bad plan. You must create a real network with people who like and trust doing real things. Not your Facebook Friends. Real friends. Do just talking about stuff but DOING THINGS.
Now onto Health. I live in Canada and am blessed by living in a country where Health Care is not a barrier to free lancing.
But what I have learned now - all connected to my work on health at the bank all those years ago - is that we can have a lot of control over our health. If we live our lives close to our evolved design. That means eat the diet we are evolved to do best on. Have a social and work life as we are evolved to do best in. And to inhabit our bodies and the world as we are designed to do best in.
If we do this - we are naturally healthy, Of course a car accident is another thing. But most of the risk we have to day is from the chronic diseases of the modern world that DO NOT EXIST AT ALL IN TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES THAT DO LIVE IN HARMONY WITH THEIR DESIGN.
This is why I have my other site - The Missing Human Manual and why I work with the Pasteur of our time, Professor Michael Rose.
There is a huge body of science behind this statement. Much of the Food and Pharma world wants you to rely on them. Just as a conventional employer needs you to rely on them too.
Luther changed the world 500 years ago by telling people that they could trust that they on their own could find salvation and God. That they did not have to use the church as the intermediary. Until then all in Europe had taken it for granted that ONLY the church could save their souls.
Is this not the same? If we organize differently, we can work with people we love and trust to do the things we need and offer to each other the things that are essential to life. If we live more like a Free Lancer we actually live more like a Hunter Gatherer. We have 4 million years of experience hard wired into us and we instinctively know how to be this person.
If we do this, we have our health too.
We lived for 4 million years and had good lives without the need for a job. We got out food, we had shelter, we raised our kids, we entertained each other. We can surely find a new way of taking all mof this back into our own hands now?
We are smart aren't we? That is why I post these little gems showing people who are doing this - like urban farmers, 3D Printing, Pasture Farming etc.
I am not talking about putting on skins and living in caves. I am talking about using our ingenuity to use what we now know of how nature works to partner with her in gaining her help.
