Life After Financial Freedom: Why I’m So Much in Love With My Life
A few years ago, I came across the Italian phrase dolce far niente.
It means “the sweetness of doing nothing.”
I loved the concept but felt like it was far… I wasn’t there yet.
For the past twenty years, my life has been movement.
Work.
Deadlines.
Meetings.
Product development.
Business trips across the world.
Raising a child.
Growing.
Building.
Creating.
I was always doing something.
Even when I was resting, my mind was working.
I spent decades building a career that I genuinely loved. I worked in an industry that allowed me to be creative, solve problems, lead teams, travel internationally, and contribute to products that reached millions of people. I was fortunate to be successful. I earned a good living. I was respected. I continued climbing.
At the same time, I was raising my son.
I was learning about health.
Learning about nutrition.
Learning about business.
Publishing books.
Building side projects.
Investing.
There was always another mountain to climb.
Then last October, something happened.
I left my corporate career.
I was happy and loved that job.
I left at the peak of my career.
I was succeeding.
I was earning a high income.
I was still being recognized and appreciated.
But I had achieved financial freedom through investing, and for the first time in my life, I had a choice.
So I chose freedom.
What surprised me was not leaving my job.
What surprised me was what happened afterward.
I expected to fill every minute with new projects.
I expected to work nonstop on my businesses.
I expected to stay just as busy as before.
And I did for the first six to 8 months.
Then, something completely different happened.
Life slowed down.
And I fell in love with it.
Today, I wake up without an alarm.
I make my simple black coffee.
I sit in the sun on my balcony.
Sometimes for an hour.
Sometimes longer.
I watch the morning unfold.
I listen to the birds.
I think.
I reflect.
I do absolutely nothing.
Then I work.
Maybe for an hour.
Maybe for two.
Sometimes for three or four.
Most days, I work between 2 and 5 hours. (Occasionally, 8 to 12 when I am in the momentum.)
That’s it.
After that, I go for a walk.
I read.
I write.
I spend time learning.
I enjoy the day.
The Canadian summer feels especially magical now.
The days are long.
The sunlight stretches into the evening.
There is no rush.
No pressure.
No endless list of urgent tasks waiting for me.
For most of my adult life, I was operating in survival mode without even realizing it.
Not financial survival.
Life survival.
The constant pressure of responsibility.
The pressure of performance.
The pressure of schedules.
The pressure to always be productive.
For years, I thought that was normal.
Maybe it is normal.
But normal does not necessarily mean natural.
When I look around now, I often wonder if this is how human beings were always meant to live.
Not lazy.
Not inactive.
Not disconnected from ambition.
Just calm.
Present.
Unhurried.
Connected to life.
Connected to nature.
Connected to themselves.
For the first time in decades, my nervous system feels quiet.
That may be the greatest luxury I have ever experienced.
Not designer handbags or beautiful shoes.
Not five-star hotels.
Not business class flights.
A calm nervous system.
Nothing compares to it.
What’s interesting is that I spent years collecting beautiful things.
I love fashion.
I love design.
I love beautiful objects.
I built collections of designer handbags and shoes.
And today?
I still appreciate them.
But they don’t hold the same importance.
Something shifted.
The things that excite me now are completely different.
A healthy body.
A peaceful mind.
A long walk.
A beautiful conversation.
A homemade meal.
A meaningful trip.
An energy-driven, peaceful, and well-decorated home.
Time.
Time has become the most valuable thing in my life.
For years, I wanted freedom.
I thought freedom meant money. And to a certain extent, it does mean money.
Then I thought freedom meant flexibility.
Now I understand freedom differently.
Freedom is waking up and deciding how your day unfolds.
Freedom is not having your calendar dictate your life.
Freedom is being able to sit in the sun for an hour without rushing.
Freedom is having enough space to hear your own thoughts. (This is where creativity flourishes)
I think many people spend their entire lives chasing things without realizing what they actually want.
I wanted success.
Then I achieved success.
I wanted financial security.
Then I achieved financial security.
I wanted beautiful experiences.
I experienced them.
And after all of that, I discovered something unexpected.
What I wanted most was peace.
Not excitement.
Not status.
Not an achievement.
Peace.
There is something beautiful about reaching a stage of life where you no longer feel the need to prove anything.
You simply get to be.
I didn’t expect this stage to arrive in my mid-forties.
I thought it would happen much later.
Maybe in retirement.
Maybe in my sixties.
Instead, here I am.
Still relatively young.
Still healthy.
Still curious.
Still ambitious.
But no longer rushing.
And perhaps that’s what makes this season so special.
I still have dreams.
I still have goals.
Elegant and Driven continues to grow. I love working on it every single day.
The home decor side of the brand has taken off in ways I never expected.
Instagram broke out this month and has taken off.
The website continues to expand.
New opportunities continue to appear.
But growth has its own timeline.
Some things cannot be forced.
Some things need room.
The beautiful thing is that I no longer feel the need to push constantly.
I plant seeds.
I nurture them.
Then I allow them to grow.
That approach seems to work far better than exhausting myself trying to control everything.
The same is true in investing.
I enjoy researching companies.
I enjoy understanding trends.
I truly enjoy investing.
But the market does what the market does.
The businesses grow.
The investments compound.
Time does much of the work.
There is a lesson in that.
Some of the best things in life grow quietly while we are busy living.
My son is almost seventeen now.
That reality is impossible for me to fully process.
For years, my identity was deeply connected to raising him.
His academic growth and emotional growth.
Activities.
Schedules.
Responsibilities.
Today, he has his own life.
His own interests.
His own dreams.
His own world.
As it should be.
We spend less time together now, because he is becoming his own person.
Watching that transformation is both beautiful and bittersweet.
I know that in about a year, he will likely leave for university.
And with that, an entirely new chapter of my life will begin.
Even more freedom.
Even more flexibility.
Even more space.
Part of me is excited.
Part of me knows I will miss having him at home.
For now, I still want to be here.
Even though he is almost an adult, I want him to know that home is still home.
That I am still here.
That he still has support.
That he still has someone cheering him on.
But I can also see the future beginning to take shape.
Earlier this year, I went to Bali.
It was one of the most beautiful trips of my life.
Not because of luxury or sightseeing.
Because of how I experienced it.
Slowly.
Without stress.
Without rushing.
Without trying to squeeze ten experiences into one day.
I wandered.
I observed.
I absorbed.
I simply existed.
For the first time, I truly understood the difference between taking a vacation and living.
That trip gave me a glimpse of the future.
I can see myself taking two or three trips like that every year.
Especially during the Canadian winter.
Exploring different cultures.
Learning about food.
Learning about history.
Learning about spirituality.
Learning about people.
Not racing through destinations.
Experiencing them.
There are still so many things I want to learn.
Psychology.
Healing.
Spirituality.
Meditation.
Ancient wisdom.
Food cultures around the world.
The history behind how different societies lived and healed.
The more I learn, the more fascinated I become.
And the beautiful thing is that now I have time to explore those interests without rushing.
If someone asked me today what success looks like, my answer would be very different from what it was twenty years ago.
Success is not a title.
Success is not an income.
Success is not a luxury purchase.
Success is waking up excited about your life.
Success is liking the person you have become.
Success is feeling at peace in your own home.
Success is having the freedom to spend a morning in the sun.
Success is having work you enjoy and enough space to enjoy everything else too.
Sometimes I think about a question.
If I could go back twenty years and start over, what would I do differently?
The answer surprises me.
Almost nothing.
Because everything I experienced brought me here.
The marriage.
Motherhood.
The career.
The successes.
The challenges.
The travel.
The lessons.
The growth.
I would not erase any of it.
In fact, when I think carefully about it, I realize something even more interesting.
The life I would have created if I had started over 20 years ago is remarkably similar to the one I am living now.
The difference is that now I have the wisdom to appreciate it.
And maybe that’s the entire point.
Maybe we spend the first half of our lives building.
And the second half is learning how to enjoy what we built.
Today, I am deeply grateful.
Grateful for the work I did.
Grateful for the opportunities I had.
Grateful for the freedom I created.
Grateful for the years ahead.
Most of all, I am grateful for this feeling.
This quiet feeling that arrives when everything finally settles.
The feeling that says:
You made it.
Because you created a life that feels like your own.
And if there is one sentence that captures this season of my life, it is simple.
I am so much in love with my life.
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