The 4 Freedoms

“What is it that really motivates people…? It isn’t what most people think. It’s not money, and it’s not status. It’s freedom. This freedom comes in four different varieties, and when you become conscious of them, it has a tremendously clarifying effect on your thinking.”

    – Dan Sullivan, The Strategic Coach

Freedom is the Ultimate Goal

In our role as financial and wealth planners, most of our conversations with clients are centered on planning for the future and helping clients to achieve their most important financial goals. These discussions usually revolve around reaching some level of financial security to meet family responsibilities, to retire and plan for old age, and to pass along money and assets to future generations. In most cases, our clients are looking for help in reaching their “number” – that level of wealth or net worth that will ensure that they will be secure in achieving the financial goals they hold most dear.

For many people, the achievement of their “number” means that they can finally be “done” – they can stop working and retire, secure in the knowledge that they have achieved freedom from the hassles and stresses of work and life’s daily responsibilities. However, we have noticed that many of the most successful people have a different vision, one that centers on financial success as a means to achieve freedom to spend their time and money to live an even more exciting and meaningful life, and not just a life in which they are “done” with the world. This vision of freedom to is harder to define, but we think of it as a condition which actually consists of several layers of freedom, which collectively can empower us to live our very best and most fulfilling lives.

Financial Freedom is the Gateway

Author and business coach Dan Sullivan has developed a conceptual model, which includes 4 different layers of Freedom which are important to quality of life.

Most people work very hard so that they can achieve the first layer of freedom, which is Freedom of Money. There is nothing wrong with this pursuit, in fact, our firm is dedicated to helping our clients secure their financial freedom and reach a state of mind in which they are free from money worries. In short, Financial Freedom means that money is no object for you, and you can make decisions without consideration of the financial cost. Achieving financial freedom can be the key first step to living a truly great life, but it is only really the first layer, a gateway to other more important and gratifying layers of freedom. Freedom from money concerns is important, because it can afford you freedom to pursue the other important freedoms of life:

Freedom of Time

• It has been said that time is actually the world’s only truly scarce resource. No matter what family you were born into, how smart or successful you are, or how much money you have, we all only get 168 hours every week, and ultimately, we are all faced with the reality that we can’t make it out alive –there will come a day when our time on earth will run out.
• Your happiness and fulfillment in life will largely be a function of how you spend those 168 hours each week, and the extent to which you get to choose the activities and interests that will fill your time. Freedom of money is important, primarily because it allows you a greater degree of choice and control over how you spend your time.

Freedom of Relationships

• For most people, human connections and relationships are of primary importance, and a significant part of our sense of fulfillment and meaning. Most people would count their loving relationships with friends and family as among their most cherished possessions and a source of great happiness and meaning.
• Unfortunately, many of us may also have relationships in our lives which do not support and nurture our happiness and sense of meaning, but which we must maintain due to career, financial, or other requirements and responsibilities.
• Freedom of Relationships means that you have reached a point in which your freedom of time and money allow you to focus your time and energies only on those enjoyable relationships which support and nurture you, leaving behind those relationships which drain you or drag you down. It means you are free to constantly surround yourself with the people you choose and leave behind those you don’t.

Freedom of Purpose

• We have found that the achievement of one’s Core Values and sense of Purpose in life is the most powerful driver of human happiness and fulfillment. Those with a clear sense of purpose are directed, energetic, and at peace with their lives and the world around them. Without a clear sense of purpose, people tend to lose direction, clarity, and energy, and often the quality of life and self-image will suffer.
• Unfortunately, many people make money and career success the only purpose in their lives, only to find that they end up with all the money they could ever need, but they no longer have a purpose. Financial freedom can be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, financial freedom allows us to choose our purpose, and to spend all the time, energy, and money we wish in the pursuit of that purpose. On the other hand, just because you have money doesn’t mean you will have purpose – you must exercise your freedom to choose what is important to you and put in the effort to make it your purpose. It is important to choose a purpose that is bigger than money.
• The ultimate layer of freedom is the freedom to use your money, time, energy, and relationships in pursuit of a purpose that is most important to you, and which nourishes and fulfills you.

Freedom comes in four different varieties: Freedom of Money, Time, Relationships, and Purpose.