How long could you live on what you have

How long could you live on what's in your account right now, with nothing else coming in.

However long that is, it probably explains more about your decisions this year than your job title does.

I know people earning a lot who can't imagine a gap of two months. I know people earning a third as much who took a year off to write. The difference wasn't the number.

Confucius was asked which of his students was most committed to learning and said Yan Hui. Then he described the man's life. A single bowl of rice, a single gourd of water, living in a bad lane. Other people couldn't stand the misery of it. Yan Hui didn't let it change his joy.

Three things, one word. One bowl, one gourd, one lane. And joy, unchanged.

The mistake is to hear poverty as the point. Confucius wasn't praising hunger. He noticed that the man didn't deform. He kept his shape.

That's what security actually is. Not a large number, but the knowledge of your own floor. If I lose this, here's how long I have, here's what I do, here's who I call. Fear lives in the not knowing, not in the amount.

Work out the number this week. It's usually smaller than the dread and bigger than you feared.

MOJOWAY is that kind of work. Knowing the floor you can stand on counts as self-knowledge, and it changes what you're willing to attempt, which is what growth actually needs.