I stopped hating my job when I stopped listening to other people tell me that I should.
It’s safe to say that while many of us might not be doing that thing we love and there are so many articles and opinions about passion, jobs, and careers. Our jobs, be they temporary or not, allow us to provide for ourselves, support our wellbeing, and possibly even support our hobbies. So there’s a point where you may just want to turn off all the repetitive hate your 9–5 media chatter if you’re trying to enjoy your life while you work towards your dream.
I learned how to avoid coming into work with a losing attitude when I found out that the narrative I was sold wasn’t going to solve all my problems. My advice is to just stop listening to all of it.
Let me explain for the people in the back who aren’t aware of marketing tactics. We are influenced on a daily, whether we opening accept it or not, but unknowingly we can influence our habits and attitudes by not filtering and hearing things as they are. What does this mean?
This means, we just take in social media, new ideas, learning on Youtube, but don’t have that space in between to ponder on those new ideas, what we’re learning, and formulate our thoughts and opinions about something based on our own experience. Most of us just move on to the next video, the next piece of entertainment. When we do this, our opinions and attitudes are often influenced by what we watched even though, that wasn’t our intent.
When I began on this pursuit of finding “financial freedom”, I was watching all the videos about people quitting their jobs, working for themselves, starting a business, I suddenly felt influenced to think the same way. Even in the reading materials of MJ Demarco, the Millionaire’s Fastlane, learning that being an “owner” was being a glorified worker and the true point of freedom was making passive income through a business where your involvement was 0 percent was true freedom. It altered my attitude towards my life.
Getting told that passive income, 7 streams of wealth, working for yourself, being an entrepreneur, and having a side hustle was the way to be “free” like most of us are told, made it seem like unless we had those things then we couldn’t be happy or satisfied. But even more, we’re given the notion that leaving the job and working on our dreams is the solution to our unhappiness when in actuality we’re still working, stressing, and putting in 10x more time to building a dream while experiencing financial strain. At that point, it’s sink or swim, and for those who have swum and built out a life working on what they love, it’s oftentimes the dynamic and feelings change when there is money involved.
So why are we taught to look down upon the majority of the world who are working, a majority that includes us, even though that work we’re doing, happens to be a part of our purpose? Choosing to continue to eat up that narrative is what that eventually made me feel miserable within my position, instead of just being grateful and looking at my position with a frame of mind that there’s so much to learn. I would be counting down the days till I could quit. Could be my boss. Could make passive income.
These financial gurus that say that working in an office cubicle is not the way, who say that what YOU want is freedom, your time back, money to finance your wants and dreams and hobbies, are telling you to look OUTSIDE of yourself to find happiness. They do this because they know if you continue to look outwards and get external things that feed your selfish desires, you would be distracted learning the fact that you can be content without all of those things and they don’t make any money from that.
Unfortunately, this is what road I was led down. Looking outward for the next goal to accomplish, the next lifestyle to achieve, and chasing after something that was “told” would bring me the fulfillment I was craving, but instead it brought only discontentment for the here and now.
We could call it for what it is right there, comparison. But it wasn’t just comparison, it was a striving for something that at the end of the day wouldn’t be the answer to all of my problems. I know for a fact, I’m not alone in this thinking.
For individuals who quit their jobs to follow their dreams, there’s nothing wrong with it, I applaud it and I can appreciate that, but there’s this realness on the other side of quitting a job to pursue your job. That’s the fact that your job is no longer the blame for the unhappiness you experience in your life.
It’s marketed so many of us, that the answer to our problem — the problem they create of working a soul-sucking 9–5 job, of working for someone else’s dream, of being a part of a corporation that doesn’t care for you, is to sell you a better version of reality. But let me ask you this, how does concentration on those aspects help you at all in your career? How does meditating on the negative aspects of this narrative help you feel your absolute best daily? Make you strive to do and give your all in everything you do?
It doesn’t. They’re an emotional tactic used to get you invested in feeling like “oh man you’re right. I don’t like this and I don’t want to do this. ” Most of us aren’t cut out to be business owners from the start, most of us aren’t prepared to handle what’s to come for it, so some of us are fine being a part of an organization and doing our part within that. But whether this is something you truly want for yourself or not, I think that it’s crucial to be aware that there is no such thing as work and life balance. Part of your life is working. You are alive while you are at work, so you have a choice in what kind of attitude you carry while you’re living, even at work.
So when I mention filtering, I mean filter what you are watching ask yourself “how is listening to this helping my situation in life?” and determine what to do next from there.
Watching Alex Hormozi’s video hit home. He speaks on what it’s like to make 6 million dollars in passive income and regret it all. Part of our human experience is to work and that drives a lot of our “purpose” so while there is a delicate balance of wanting to reach the top of the entrepreneur ladder, wealth and 7 streams of income, free time, financial independence, seeking pleasure isn’t the ultimate answer.
Just as material things are sold to you, ideas can also be sold to you as well, and you’re using your time and effort to reach for something that ultimately may never fulfill you. The moral of the story is, learn to enjoy your now moment, instead of resenting, comparing, dispising the journey that you’re currently traveling down.
I wish you all the best!
Ciera
