I haven't posted much but thought I'd chime in here.
My wife had always had the slowlaner mindset; she believed that job is the best financial security. I didn't know this until I married her and after I read the TMF . I was so excited that she was the first person I shared the wisdom and hoped that she'd share the same enthusiasm. It was no where close though... Not entirely negatively, just neutral like "OK", "interesting".
When I told her what I want to live like in the future, to own businesses and have more freedom in my time, her reaction was similar to yours, "it's been done", "be realistic", "business is risky", "we're going to lose money"... and then she went on explaining how all the people she knew failed in businesses.
Determined to live my life the way I want, I continued my education and ignored her pessimism. I read a lot and whenever I come across exciting entrepreneurial stories of famous people, I shared with her starting by "hey do you know this guy," and she'll say "yeah", and then I begin telling their stories. To my surprise, she was into it! I learned that she enjoyed hearing stories of people's lives from hardship to success, to failure then back again to success. However, whenever I told her that I'm going to do such and such, her reaction would immediately fall back to her slowlane thought...
For one second I was doubting if it was the right decision to marry her. But it was just the slightest second. Because in the big picture, I love her dearly and the reason why I chose to marry her is because we get together so well. We respect each other a lot, and we enjoy each other's companion 24/7. I told myself that it's normal for her to think that way and that I'm the odd one out. But I'm also not giving up. So I decided to just feed her education bit by bit like I did before.
It was not until a day that she told me she loved knitting. And I told her, do you want to make that in a business? Why not put it on Etsy and try it? It only takes 3 seconds. She hesitated a lot because she kept thinking "it's not perfect... I just started... what if no one buys it?". But I ended up helping her put it on the website and one day, she got a sale! I couldn't believe how happy she was! And I was ecstatic because she told me, "I really like this! I like when people buy something I made".
Since I still have my full-time job, and I want to also pursue my fastlane lifestyle, my wife and I made arrangements such that certain evenings would be family time, while certain evenings would be no distraction so I can focus on moving a step closer to the dream we're sharing. Oh speaking of which, to get her excited, I asked her what she visions her future to be, what sort of life we'll be living, how many kids, where we live, what she really wants to do with her time, etc, etc. And then work backwards discussing what we need to do in order to reach that. She has since been extremely supportive of whatever I'm doing. Up to the point that a lot of uncertain moments I have, she actually cheered me up saying this exact thing, "just F*cking do it!"
My wife had always had the slowlaner mindset; she believed that job is the best financial security. I didn't know this until I married her and after I read the TMF . I was so excited that she was the first person I shared the wisdom and hoped that she'd share the same enthusiasm. It was no where close though... Not entirely negatively, just neutral like "OK", "interesting".
When I told her what I want to live like in the future, to own businesses and have more freedom in my time, her reaction was similar to yours, "it's been done", "be realistic", "business is risky", "we're going to lose money"... and then she went on explaining how all the people she knew failed in businesses.
Determined to live my life the way I want, I continued my education and ignored her pessimism. I read a lot and whenever I come across exciting entrepreneurial stories of famous people, I shared with her starting by "hey do you know this guy," and she'll say "yeah", and then I begin telling their stories. To my surprise, she was into it! I learned that she enjoyed hearing stories of people's lives from hardship to success, to failure then back again to success. However, whenever I told her that I'm going to do such and such, her reaction would immediately fall back to her slowlane thought...
For one second I was doubting if it was the right decision to marry her. But it was just the slightest second. Because in the big picture, I love her dearly and the reason why I chose to marry her is because we get together so well. We respect each other a lot, and we enjoy each other's companion 24/7. I told myself that it's normal for her to think that way and that I'm the odd one out. But I'm also not giving up. So I decided to just feed her education bit by bit like I did before.
It was not until a day that she told me she loved knitting. And I told her, do you want to make that in a business? Why not put it on Etsy and try it? It only takes 3 seconds. She hesitated a lot because she kept thinking "it's not perfect... I just started... what if no one buys it?". But I ended up helping her put it on the website and one day, she got a sale! I couldn't believe how happy she was! And I was ecstatic because she told me, "I really like this! I like when people buy something I made".
Since I still have my full-time job, and I want to also pursue my fastlane lifestyle, my wife and I made arrangements such that certain evenings would be family time, while certain evenings would be no distraction so I can focus on moving a step closer to the dream we're sharing. Oh speaking of which, to get her excited, I asked her what she visions her future to be, what sort of life we'll be living, how many kids, where we live, what she really wants to do with her time, etc, etc. And then work backwards discussing what we need to do in order to reach that. She has since been extremely supportive of whatever I'm doing. Up to the point that a lot of uncertain moments I have, she actually cheered me up saying this exact thing, "just F*cking do it!"