Self-sovereign life Ep.1
Episode 1: Simplifying life, increasing freedom and happiness
Let me give you a brief overview of my life. 250 days a year I traveled for business. I lived like this for a decade, in this pace. I've been to many countries. I've lived in many countries.
During this period, a major fundamental shift in my thinking crystallized and a new approach to life grew up.
I want to be quite specific, I am not complaining nor bragging.
I have never been a materialistic person. And in the early days of my business, I relied on many services and “status quo general consensus that all is ok” that make you vulnerable (as I see it in retrospect).
I'll give an example from business. I tried to optimize my life to diversify my bank accounts, have bank accounts and companies in different jurisdictions. Which I did. But the real struggle comes when you realize that it's not an ideal solution because you've become hostage to the FIAT system. You are so vulnerable. Many countries but with the same faults and a single superior system. When I started my business, bitcoin had not been invented at that time.
The first step is to get out of the "rat race". Many people are just hostages to the system. No vision, no ambition, they are just in the trenches, following the rules of the system that keeps them alive but not living. The FIAT system is at the top of the game. The whole rat race is based on being locked into a situation that is hard to escape from, or the exit cost is high enough to demotivate enough people to take that route. The system wants to get you into "bad debt" where you lose your freedom and "modus operandi". Your monthly salary (after tax) comes into your account while you have to organize payments for housing, loans, mortgages, food etc... (FIAT loans and mortgages can be quite a good idea when you DON'T need them and in a high inflation environment as your debt is "eaten up")
The most bizarre thing is that you pay for services, items or real estate with taxed money while you pay another tax from groceries with already taxed money and you pay real estate tax for owning the property you bought with already taxed money and on top of that you pay taxes like social security, and last but not least inflation which is in pure meaning tax as well. You will end up being taxed to death.
Thanks to my business experience and constant travels, I understood the flag theory quite well. I understood diversification, decentralization, benefits of multiple jurisdictions, privacy, freedom, etc. There are many aspects that you can leverage to your advantage. The one piece that didn't fit into this puzzle was only relying on FIAT system. It was a piece that was dragging it down. Later I came across bitcoin. It took me some time to understand what it could do not only for me, but for humanity.
After spending thousands of hours going down various rabbit holes I had a clue. It fit my theory and my way of life perfectly. My various bitcoin rabbit holes lead me to perceive bitcoin from various angles such as freedom, permission-less transactions, store of value, banking the un-banked, privacy and hedging against the system. And I know what I am talking about having a Cuban family and solving real problems that many people have no idea about.
The simplicity lies in the ability to combine various approaches to life where I can get the most freedom. I already had many of the puzzles of self-sovereignty in place and now with self-controlled money it created a complete picture.
Where can freedom and happiness be? This varies widely and may not suit everyone. But at least it's good to start thinking about it.
Provide what has to be provided to family. Happy family = happy life.
Do work that fulfills you and energizes you.
Have emergency stack (cash and bitcoin). This will give you freedom and calmness in case something bad happens and you don’t have to be in permanent stress.
If you don’t have any bitcoin get some. Get out of the zero. It's a great hedge against the system. Things tend to go wrong quite often.
Find your expertise and try to create a product/service that will help others, solving the need.
Live in multiple jurisdictions and take only the best from every single one. Ideally have more residencies, citizen ships. This eliminates downsides being rooted into one country with no other options.
Relocate your tax domicile to the country with low or zero taxes.
World-schooling is a great way of learning.
No material things fixation. Material things won’t deliver long term happiness. It’ll just cost you money.
Use ideally bitcoin or cash where you can to protect your privacy.
Awareness of spending habits. Have it under the control. Spend less than you earn. You want to be cash-flow positive.
Invest monthly what you have left over and do not immediately need.
Get back to roots of p2p trade. Create local economy with your peers, friends and in the environment you live in.
Don’t over-complicate set-up with unnecessary things/services. You want to find sweet spot between having enough freedom while not having excessive complexity that cost time, energy and money to maintain.
Maintain your privacy at maximum possible level. You never know what future holds.
Did it help or do you like it? You can send some sats to stallion@walletofsatoshi.com or to bitcoin lightning LNURL: lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpd3kxjmmwavy8ja
