Are you happy?
I mean Truly happy?
Not the so-so way..the pretty much happy…
Do you feel GREAT? Or well…no bad?
Most people are not happy…just look around.
They complain all day long living in a place they hate doing something they hate, surrounded by people they, in the best case, would like to kill. They live an empty live, no emotions, just a 9-5 to pay the bills and die with a nice fake gold watch on their wrist received from colleagues (who hate them back!).
Back to you: do you have a choice to be happy or miserable?
Yes you do.
I am happy by choice and I can easily show you how you can be as well without winning the lottery.
Let’s assess where you are first…YOU ARE:
Living in a place you hate doing something you hate
If you are here you are in trouble my friend.
But don’t despair…. the two good news are:
- Almost all of us at some point were here
- It cannot be worst than this (smile)
You can be here for three main reasons:
- You are lost and stuck..you simply does not what to do to change your situation.
- You know where you are and you also know you must escape from here but for the time being you think it makes sense you stay here because it is an investment for the future (e.g. you are learning something or you are making a huge amount of money)
- You are scared to move (you know kids…I will never find another job…the mortgage…the dogs…bla bla) simply throwing away your life.
Living in a place that’s ok doing something you hate
You are a little bit better off here, you might like sometimes the place and maybe your family likes it more than you.
So every morning you drink the poison of a miserable job surrounded by miserable people.
Days in, days out.
Even if this situation on the surface seems a little better than the previous one, this is the most dangerous place to be because you have (or you think you have) something potentially to lose if you want to take the jump and change your life.
That’s the category where I estimate 80% of people fall especially people who decide to stay in their hometown or Country (the infamous comfort zone) to compromise with a crappy lifestyle
You don’t wanna be here my friend, believe me.
Living in a dream place doing something you hate
A rare category.
Usually in a dream place it’s difficult to do something that you really hate just because the only fact that you live in a paradise makes everything look better.
I guess that someone at minimum wage in Honolulu is more happy than the same folk in a suburb of Chicago or Detroit in February, right?
Besides, usually in a dream place the nice jobs are not abundant, have you ever noticed that most of the jobs are concentrated in ugly and expensive places? (maybe because otherwise people have fun instead of working!)
I guess 1% of people fall in this category that can be even more insidious of the previous one (you really want to quit your job in sunny San Diego even though it pays 8$/h and you starve?)
You don’t want to fall here either because…. you want to be in the next one:
Living in a dream place doing something you love
That’s where I want to bring you and your ultimate goal.
To achieve this you need:
Financial independence
or
Doing something you really love
Honestly…I disagree with the mantra of “Do what you really love and money will come” that is in every motivational book, blogs, social etc.
While I do believe that in the same job you can make more money if you like what you are doing, I don’t believe that simple following the passions will translate in financial independence.
I know hundreds of teachers, philosophers, artist of different genre, average athletes who literally starve because their job is not paying them enough.
Following your painting passion will not make you next Pablo Picasso nor studying philosophy the next Socrates, nor playing guitar the new Jimy Hendrix.
And be sure you have talent at it, passion is not enough…you must be exceptionally good.
Watch out my fellow reader…it’s more complex than how the hundreds of motivational books want you to believe.
You MUST be sure you have all three attributes below:
- Do something that you love
- Where you have an exceptional talent
- Where the money are
If you are lucky enough to love an engineering or software job and be good at it there are good chances that you will get some serious cash.
If you love being a teacher you might be happy with your job but be realistic on your earning expectation, there will be low…unless you are a teacher in a top university (exceptional talent & money).
Last but not least: doing something you love as a job can quickly turn you passion in hate.
I like the colorful way MJ DeMarco put it in his 11-poverty-traps.
Let the solved problem guide you. After you put your solution to market, what does the market echo back to you? Assess. Adjust. Act. Rinse. Repeat.
As for this entire process, it should be fueled by your internal passion for freedom, autonomy, achievement, or whatever else motivates you — the manner of the work is a by-product of those passions. As Marc Cuban says, to hell with follow your passion — follow your effort. Of course, WTF does Marc Cuban know — he’s a billionaire and your broke-blogger-buddy (the one who says “do what you love”) rakes in $353/mo arbitraging Adsense, yea, keep listening to him.
In other words, what does the market WANT AND WILL PAY FOR?
I indeed met people turning their cooking passion in opening a restaurant or becoming a chef and now they simply hate cooking and they are doing it now only because of money, it became their job.
They had to sacrifice the creativity of cooking to meet the margin goals of their business restaurant…cutting corners, cooking fast for hundreds of people with cost effective ingredients vs taking a whole afternoon to cook for a family of three.
Or people with the passion of photography who now every day shoots hundreds of vacation memory pictures daily of families sunburned in a resort with the background of a fake pirate ship.
Far from the dream of becoming the next Robert Capa right…?
The Takeaways?
Remember the ultimate goal is happiness, freedom, family and health.
- IF you are stuck in a job you hate you cannot be happy no matter how you pretend to be and you are not free.
- IF you are able to free up 8-10 hours a day from that job you are getting back your live so you must be happy.
- IF you do something that you love you are happy, free and healthy.
So…again…our primary goal is
Financial Independence
TO
- be free from jobs you hate
- be able to do what we really love
- leave in a dream place
If you are reading this blog you are stuck in point 1…let’s move together to point 2…and 3…
You have no other choice right…?