TORRINGTON – As parents, often we pray to leave the world a better place for our children however a Torrington native, Lee Freeburg, wanted to leave a better child for the world. 

Freeburg set out with one goal, to leave his daughter an outline for a better life through a book of personal knowledge, “How to live a better life,” which has just been released on Amazon. 

Freeburg was born and raised in Cody and raised in Douglas. He resided in Torrington for five to 10 years, he explained. 

“I was a resident of Torrington when I joined the Navy in 2000 and went to boot camp May of 2000. I spent about eight years in the military. I went everywhere from Great Lakes, Illinois to Japan to North Carolina. I even spent two years in Italy,” Freeburg said. “It was super fantastic. I got deployed to Iraq in 2007 on a special explosive disposal team. I came home and got out of the Navy in 2008.”

Freeburg followed the path many retired military personnel do and he jumped into a public security role while he sifted through his life plan. 

“I’ve done a lot of different things. I’ve been in management positions, machinist shop, chief operating office for a company for about a year or so,” Freeburg explained. “I’ve held leadership positions in different companies and just kind of gained some knowledge and understanding of different industries.”

“In 2017, I had my first child. A little girl and I decided that if I wasn’t able to make it to see her graduate high school, what are some things I would want her to know to live a better life than my own? So, I went to my computer and I sat for about a month. I wrote this book specifically towards her, some things I thought she should know,” Freeburg explained. “I set it aside for a few years while I did some other things. You know, it was 2020 and the pandemic has happening.”

After the pandemic and a few other life challenges, Freeburg went back to his computer. 

“This year, something that most people consider a bad thing happened, I was laid off from a job which to me, could be a bad thing but it gave me time to finish this book,” Freeburg said. 

Freeburg has had his own struggles which led him to research topics for the book itself. 

“The battle is more of a battle of the mind than it is a physical battle,” Freeburg explained. “I think our education system is good. It has its positives, reading, writing, arithmetic, you know. But I think that we forget to teach kids the basics of living. There are some basic living things, you know, like how to make a budget.”

Freeburg explained after visiting with high school students, he learned most students had no idea what a financial budget was. 

“I think my parents were pretty frugal, but I don’t ever remember a time where my parents sat down and said, ‘Hey, let’s look at your budget.’ Not until I was an adult,” Freeburg said. “Even now, I have a budget and I still struggle to follow that budget. So, it was very important to me that my daughter understood just what money is and how it works.”

Freeburg also wanted to explain the true meaning of “love” to his daughter too. 

“We say, ‘I love you.’ The word of ‘love’ floats around a lot and I wanted her to understand what love is, what love really is,” Freeburg said. “I talk about multiple types of feelings of love, the choice of love, how to use love, where to love and when not to love and also how to identify ‘sex-love’ and ‘real-love’. I approach the subject of sex. I don’t dive deep into it I just cover the idea of what it is supposed to be, an intimacy building between partners.” 

Freeburg also talks about religion in his book. 

“There is a lot of religion in the world today but how do you know what religion is the religion for you and really what religion is about,” Freeburg explained. “I actually spend a few pages talking about everything from Islam to Hinduism and Christianity, things like that so the reader can have a broader understanding of what religion is.”

Freeburg discusses subjects like God, moderation and self-awareness and financial freedom. He believes in living with six defined principles; know thyself, love, the art of money, religion, the human in me and everything in moderation, all of which he explains in the book. 

“The first one is to ‘know thyself,’ or self-awareness. That is the first principle. We need to know who we are as a human, and what we like/dislike. The second principle is ‘love,’ again knowing what love is,” Freeburg explained. “The third principle is the ‘art of money,’ and money is definitely an art.”

Freeburg plans to add five more books to his series over the next few years which will all be available on Amazon.

“My goal is to write six books, with six chapters each. The reason I just kept it to six principles I guess, again, choice parlays I don’t want to overwhelm the reader. At the end of each chapter, there is up to ten questions that reflect back on the chapter and the reader’s life in progress. I wanted to keep it short so it doesn’t feel like a textbook but long enough that the reader will be challenged throughout the whole book.”