The primary promise of Financial Independence isn’t just “not working.” It’s about getting away from the emotional rollercoaster of other people controlling what you do and how you feel. It’s about emotional immunity and control.

If you are human, we all have some painful inflection points in life. A past relationship that broke trust. A work situation that turned sour. Maybe a layoff. A broken loyalty. A guilt that you carry for something you did. These past wrongs leave a scar. They may have been buried and not dealt with. They become a big part of you.

I have them. Some are old. Some are new. Some are large, and some have shrunk with time. But they are still there, never far. They can be dug up easily. They can influence decisions made today without us really knowing they are part of the reason.

The oldest scar that still causes me suffering is over 16 years old. It still burns when I think about it. It’s been so long I had to look up how old it was.

So today, I am going to look at some of my biggest wounds from the past and how they affect me today.

The first one that I carried for many years I have put down and moved beyond. It is a typical one for most: the first serious love who breaks your heart. Mine broke up with me on my birthday. The amount of doubt and fear I had about who I was and about dating again impacted me for years. It was heavy on me for any other relationship I might have. It destroyed my confidence and trust.

Somehow I eventually ended up dating the same girl again 3 years later, but the trust was never the same. How could it be? We dated on and off again for 5 years before it was finally over. Fear had us keep coming back to each other. A relationship built on fear will never move forward.

And I am over it. We were not right for each other. We are friends to this day because we were able to put down the original pain and move beyond it. Getting back together for a visit actually helped me realize it was wrong for me. My life is so much better today, and she was an important part of my growth. It’s a memory, but not a bad one. I embrace it as part of who I am.

The 2nd is due to guilt: that I was not deserving. I solved a large problem, likely the largest of my career, for a Fortune 500 company. It resulted in me having my own small company. I was rewarded very well for it. But internally, I didn’t think I deserved the reward. I solved the issue with brains and not effort. Somehow I equate reward to effort, likely because of how hard my dad worked.

I am mostly over this one. It can still instill fear in me that someday someone will call me out for lack of effort. It likely was a seed planted from my childhood. It still continues somewhat today. It likely is part of what they call imposter syndrome.

The 3rd is likely my biggest burden, and I still carry it. I was working at a startup that was up-and-coming. I had built a team over 5 years and had built up a supplier base for our product. The startup went through the typical highs and lows of winning and losing on a daily basis, and it became a big part of who I was at that stage of my life (I was in my early 30s).

Five years in, the CEO of my main supplier changed. I had worked with this supplier for 8 years, over multiple companies, and knew the entire management/ownership team of the company. We had built trust. I presented to this new CEO what my start up business was. He was 1 month into his new CEO job. The day after our meeting, he called the main investor of my startup, a friend of his, and asked for my job.

And he got it. Friendship goes a long way in the business world. He joined my company, where I was tortured for 6 months. They could not get rid of me until he knew what he was doing. It would have been easier if it had been an overnight change and I had been let go. Somehow it got worse in those 6 months. His ethics, surprise, surprise, were non-existent.

I stayed because I had put blood, sweat, and tears into this company. I loved it. I loved my team. And it was gone because of someone’s friendship and blind ambition. I always wondered if I would have swerved if he tripped in front of my car. He left 1 year after joining the company, 6 months after he fired me. I helped build the company from scratch. He destroyed that for whatever gain he thought he would get. Rumour has it he wanted the CEO role and they wouldn’t give it to him. The amount of damage he did in 1 year to that company took 3 to 4 years to reverse. I often wonder if he was getting kickbacks for moving the business to a different supplier that were also his friends.

For that scar, I have gone through all 4 stages of Fear, Anger, Hate, and Suffering. I have pulled back from suffering, but there is still lots of Anger and Hate. To this day, I obviously still carry this one. He took something away from me that I cared about. This one obviously still burns.

The last one is leaving my last Death Star. I expected it. But what affects me today is the fear of what people think about me there. I liked lots of my peers and coworkers. By getting fired, I fear I am being judged for what I did while I was there. I completed what I was asked and set out to do. But over a year later, I still get angry when I hear them making changes to my former team. Hate surfaces for my ex-CEO for getting rid of me.

This one will go away with time. It still surprises me at times how strongly it comes back, but then it fades pretty far into the background. In the end, I am forgetting that I was actively looking to leave. Getting a healthy severance package and a new job was a blessing. But do you think fear lets me see it this way?

Fear of how others perceive me is one thing I do know I don’t want to go into retirement with. My work identity is a big part of who I am.

So we all carry scars that hurt us. People that have hurt us that we have not forgiven, and that includes ourselves. The inner voice still plays these wrongs over and over, not letting go.

The villains from these stories are still causing us harm, still causing suffering and that is now our fault. Wrongs that are many years in the past still have power over my emotions. They still cause me to be on the Dark Side when I think of them. If I don’t deal with them and let them go, the villains are still winning to this day.

Do you think any of these villains ever give me 2 seconds of thought? No. I guarantee some have even forgotten my name.

So why do I give them any thought? Why am I giving them any power? It just hurts me in the end. It is part of human nature to focus on the bad. If we could just switch it to focus on the good, on the successes, our life would be so much better. It would be so enabling. Emotions, negative or positive, affect how we approach decisions in our life. If we don’t let go of the negative ones, then it’s our own fault for holding ourselves back. We are suffering.

If we can change the stories, change the soundtrack in our subconscious to what good has happened because of these events, we will be able to move on. To move forward.

Put down the burden. Forgive and look at the positive sides of the wrongs. Only then can you move on freely without an emotional debt.

Financial Independence buys your time back, but only self-awareness buys your peace back. And ultimately, that is what we all are searching for.

P.S. John, you know who you are, please do not trip in front of my car. Okay, maybe just put a foot or leg in the way would be good.

It really is You vs You