Is it true that CEO sold a company with a valuation of hundreds of millions to open an inn in Lijiang?

Financial freedom, an overused word, is regarded as an "ideal of life" by more and more people. Once upon a time, many people's dreams turned into a city far away from the hustle and bustle, finding a beautiful place to open a small shop, playing with photography and all kinds of flowers and plants, without any fuss, complicated work, Ding Bai and talking and laughing with literati.

Financial freedom is like a poppy with attractive fragrance, which makes people flock to it from generation to generation.

Sell the company with a valuation of hundreds of millions and open an inn in Lijiang.

I know a listed boss in Beijing who sold a company with a valuation of hundreds of millions in the first year of listing. He said that now that he has money, he can finally live an ideal life.

He has worked hard every day for ten years, and sleeping for five hours every day is a luxury. On weekends, others stay at home with their wives and children, and he is on a business trip.

"In War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression for 8 years, I have been fighting for more than ten years, and my waist has long been broken."

At that time, the dream that supported him to persist was: listing the company, selling the company, and finding a place with beautiful scenery to live a life without troubles and pressures.

So as soon as the company went public, he immediately changed money and took his family to Lijiang. I bought a house with a yard, spent more than two million yuan to decorate it, and bought a SLR and painting tools, ready to live a good life in my mind.

At first, I could see the state of his hair from time to time in my circle of friends. Today, I drove to Erhai Lake to take pictures of my family. Buy a car full of fresh flowers and plants tomorrow and plant the yard by yourself. Interesting friends I met in Lijiang, fresh experiences ... I open my circle of friends at work every day, and I will sincerely envy him when I see these living conditions.

Who doesn't want to get rid of a job that they don't like, wake up naturally every day, then eat a nutritious breakfast, read and drink tea, and don't rush to do something they like?

It's just that the ideal is full and the reality is often cruel. And our ideal life is always somewhere else.

Less than two years later, this friend returned to Beijing. His spirit doesn't look as good as when he worked late for many years. He gained weight, but he didn't gain weight in a happy life.

"That kind of life really can't go on. It is better to work. "

Talking about life in Lijiang, he said it was fine at first because it was fresh. Anyway, I have money, so I can do whatever I want. I opened two inns in Lijiang, and I found someone to take care of them. I'm basically not worried. I wanted to learn photography and painting, but I bought something to play with for a few days and put it on hold. It is said that the most comfortable thing in Lijiang is sunbathing, but it is the same after a long time, except that the skin turns black and people don't have wings.

The main reason is that life suddenly has no meaning and no expectation.

"I don't even know what I'm living for. I'm almost depressed."

In the past, as soon as I opened my eyes every morning, things to do swarmed in. Meeting, dealing with emails, planning ... endless work is exhausting. But in Lijiang, I wake up every morning and open my eyes. My mind is empty and I suddenly don't know who I am. What is the purpose of staying here?

The life that I once wanted to escape turned into another appearance and bound myself again.

Life has nowhere to run.

After my friend returned to Beijing, he started his business again. He said at least he doesn't work for money now. Although tired and busy, his headless fly finally found the fulcrum to support his life.

In fact, there are many people like him.

As the former helm of Vanke, Wang Shi was addicted to travel and beauty after financial freedom. He left the company to travel to Tibet, climb mountains and explore, fly paragliders, ski and fall in love ... Even Pan Shiyi made fun of him: "Wang Shi resigned, but he is still very young. Compared with Murdoch and Buffett, these entrepreneurs who are still working hard are still young. He is young and still in love. "

Although he resigned as chairman of Vanke, Wang Shi did not really fade out of people's sight. He is now honorary chairman of Vanke's board of directors and honorary chairman of Vanke Public Welfare Foundation. It is difficult for a person who has tasted fame and power to really fade out and become a detached ranger.

In previous interviews, Zhang Chaoyang often complained that he was very tired and unimaginable. He said that he had experienced too many things since he returned to China to start a business, and even had to endure insults. As a result, Zhang Chaoyang began to take a back seat and let himself relax and "heal" between yachting, fishing and mountaineering. As a result, Sohu is also filled with a lazy wind, unable to keep up with the pace of the times and being thrown out of the first-line camp of the Internet. Zhang Chaoyang, who said he would "retire", immediately gave up his previous ideas and came back, vowing to "recreate Sohu".

For these entrepreneurs, the wolf of conquest is born in their blood. They have an insatiable desire for power, social value and existence. If there is no opportunity to create social value, even if they are economically free, they will still be unable to make up for their desire for power and self-realization, and will only consume themselves for a long time.

Therefore, many people in their forties who came out of the institutions or enterprises around them did not choose to retire and enjoy their old age, but chose to devote themselves to another wave of entrepreneurship and continue to spend the rest of their lives in a heavy workload.

Zong started his business at the age of 44 and founded Wahaha. Chu Shijian started his business again at the age of 75, planted oranges, and became famous all over the country as "Chu Orange", once again making himself a legend. Further afield, Huang Zhong mixed with Liu Bei at the age of 60, Jiang Ziya became prime minister at the age of 80, and the Monkey King followed Tang Priest to learn Buddhist scriptures at the age of 500.

From ancient times to the present, these entrepreneurs or military strategists clamoring for wine are just a temporary feeling when they are tired, and their existence time is only a moment.

As Haruki Murakami said: "If you like nature, you can persist, but if you don't like nature, you won't last long."

Young people who don't want to go to work

Unlike those middle-aged people who dare to pursue an ideal life after realizing financial freedom, young people now have begun to live without a job in their twenties.

According to the Survey Report on Salary Adjustment in 20 17 released by a large job-hunting website in China, in the past three years, the turnover rate of fresh college graduates has been rising, with the turnover rate of fresh graduates in 20 16 as high as 26.5%. In addition, the turnover rate of employees in first-tier cities is 4. 1 percentage point higher than that in 20 15 years, which is 22.4%.

From "the world is so big, I want to see it" to "taking a month off for acute procrastination", more and more young people are tired of working and avoid working. Even if you don't have the economic ability to achieve financial freedom, you are free to resign or start a business.

In addition to the current young people's family economic burden is light, spoiled from childhood, the more important reason is actually confusion and anxiety.

"I feel suffocated as soon as I enter the office every day."

These are the original words of my former colleague Xiaomei. For her, going to work is a waste of youth and time. Why should great youth be wasted in front of the computer? In Gao's words, "life is not just the present, but also poetry and distance."

So the first thing Xiaomei did after she resigned was to travel abroad. From Xinmatai to Tibet and Xinjiang in China, life is on the road every day, which she thinks is living. However, Xiaomei, who has been traveling for half a year, is still very anxious. This time, she not only had no money, but also lost her job. Waiting for her is next month's rent and a pile of bills. Going to work is very painful, and not going to work is even more painful. Travel is for fun, no matter how far you go, you still have to face great pressure as long as you come back. Because temporary escape can't really solve the root of the problem.

Different ages, the same anxiety

Middle-aged or young people, the root cause of confusion and anxiety is actually that we don't know what we really want.

Photography, painting and traveling are all beautiful things to look at. But in the process of learning and doing, there is still no lack of boredom. If you don't like it from the heart, you will naturally get bored and give up.

I know a boy who is a resident author of a website. He takes tourism as his career, and then writes articles about travel strategies and publishes them on the website. The monthly income is calculated according to the number of published articles and reading. He spent more than half a year running around the country, so he broke up with his girlfriend who had been in contact for many years because the other party could not accept that he was not around all the year round.

You see, even if you really do a job that is interesting in the eyes of others, life may not be satisfactory.

We look forward to what we yearn for, just because it is far from our own life, and we add many filters to it, making it a beautiful thing we fantasize about.

We all yearn for the distance and hope to live a paradise-like life without troubles. But in fact, what we want to escape is that life is trivial, boring and meaningless, but no matter what choice we make, it is impossible to escape from life itself.

Ayn Rand said that in order to do things well, first of all, you have to like doing it, not the result.

If you regard financial freedom as the result and purpose, you are doomed to be disappointed. Just as you set a monthly salary as your goal, you will feel miserable 30 days before you get paid.

Why do humans work?

Squeeze the bus and subway every day, go to the company, turn on the computer, and sit for one day. Repeating the mechanical life, gnawing at our body and mind. Hair loss, greasy, anxiety, if not for money, what are we going to work for?

In TED's speech video "Why Do We Work", "Thought Technology" is mentioned.

Adam Smith, the father of the industrial revolution, believes that human nature is lazy and he won't do it unless you make it valuable. And the way to make it valuable is to reward them through incentives, which is the only reason why they will do so. So we created an industrial system, which is full of this wrong understanding of human beings, but once this production system appears, people have no other way to operate it, and they can only do it according to Adam Smith's ideas. The example of work is just one of them, which is used to illustrate how wrong ideas create an environment and finally become a reality.

In other words, we work for reward, and reward is a value system created by human beings themselves. It is our thoughts that influence our views on work and life.

When more and more people begin to yearn for rural life, even if they have never experienced it, it is a beautiful life in his imagination, which is expressed by words, sounds or images through ideology, so people will gradually accept this concept. Even if country life is not what you need at all.

Similarly, when everyone is explaining that work is only for making money, then the meaning of work becomes a single thing. When we touch it, we will naturally get bored. If you happen to be doing a job you don't like, the emotion will be even stronger.

Our humanity is what we create, not what we find. We designed this system so that people can live and work in it. Our value system binds us, but we must believe that only we can break through this value system.

If I can design another system for my work and financial freedom, why can't I have more positive ideas, such as "This job is just what I like", "The income from this job can make me sleep in more every day, which can make me energetic" and "Financial freedom can make me realize my dream of being a writer when I was a child"?

We work hard, not just to "work hard"

Financial freedom is a means to achieve an ideal life, not the ultimate goal.

Just like the famous fable, rich businessmen and fishermen lie on the beach in the sun. If the ultimate ideal of a wealthy businessman is to bask in the sun, he could have achieved such a life decades ago.

Li Xiaolai explained that financial freedom means that through the primitive accumulation of money, you can have more choices and stop working for money.

If every departure is only for the destination, then every "effort" will only become "tolerance". Our times exaggerate the value of hard work. A director's film is terrible, but because he spent a lot of time and energy, because he worked hard, we should forgive his film failure? A star has no acting skills and talent, because he works hard, so we should accept the embarrassment he brings us on the screen?

Does hard work mean "sacrifice and endurance"? The workers on the assembly line work more than ten hours a day. Don't they work hard? If the effort is only to flaunt the understanding and affirmation that you deserve, then it is wrong from the beginning. We will find that the destination we are trying to reach is not as beautiful as we thought. We are feeling the inspirational person who struggled for 18 years before sitting with his classmates for coffee, but forgot that his original starting point was wrong, so he certainly won't feel happy. Comparison and comparison will make us more confused and at a loss. After 1995, some people have already made an annual salary of 10 million, and they also started to be CEO after 00. There will always be someone better than you. There is no upper limit to the so-called success standard.

Just as we strive not only to achieve financial freedom, but also to have more time to do what we want.

We can often see an indifferent temperament from some craftsmen. They seem to be immersed in the things in their hands. No matter how much money or praise they get, all they have to do is do their job well. In this process, he got the happiness he wanted.

But have you ever thought about what your life ideal is? Just to sit with my classmates and have coffee? Or trying to endure the present life just to achieve financial freedom? Or simply don't want to go to work and stay at home? What about financial freedom? After ten years at home?

Write it at the end

This reminds me of an episode in The Legend of Wulin. Tong Xiangyu is bored and confused because she has no goal in life, so she has been looking for goals for herself, but these goals can never be achieved, so her confusion will never end. She didn't find what she really liked, just looking for a goal in order to find a goal.

When you stop looking for the purpose and meaning of life, your life really becomes meaningful. Born to be human, we are like walking on a long and endless wasteland, not knowing when we will get lost or what will happen.

Work, like the flowers and fruits we picked along the way, will eventually turn to dust with time, but it once brought us either a beautiful or boring aroma or a sweet and sour taste. When we keep running to the finish line, these things left behind by us will tell us the meaning and value of our existence and represent my existence.