Each of us has a story we could tell about how we ended up where we are today. Parts of that story is probably a blur and others we can clearly see the path, choices, opportunities and challenges that led the way. Each of our stories will have sad and happy parts, bittersweet moments and even big moments. While all of our stories are different we all share in similarities . We each have grown, learned, became wiser and more experienced and we became who we are as a result of all these experiences too.
When it comes to how we spend our daily lives these small experiences mark the progression in our life story. A large part of that daily life is our work and what we do for a living. We spend a large part of our life working and that means a large part of our time is centered on the work we do every day. Yes that job you’re doing right now is more than a paycheck when you consider the impact it will have on your overall life story. That job or career is influencing how you will live as well as who you are. It is indeed a pivotal and vital role to your life story.
Are you proud of what you do for a living?
Are you excited to tell others about it?
Would you recommend it to your children as their career?
Would you mention it in your story at all? Would you say you spent 40 or 50 years working in a career you loved, doing work that highly inspired you, rewarded you and made you feel alive?
Yeah me either.
Thankfully a large part of my work story shifted the past 3 years when I started working on a new business while I work full time. I can’t say this was a lifelong dream but rather something I found and it awakened something in me that I didn’t know was missing. Like most people I still work in the corporate grind, earning a paycheck and vacation hours, investing in the corporation’s 401K retirement plan. I knew I was burned out in my career. It was a career I am thankful for but it wasn’t something I aspired to do the rest of my life. Those days I felt depleted and stuck. It was necessary to earn a paycheck but I was feeling the need to start a countdown on when I could retire. How soon before I could do fun things in life and not put up with snappy full of themselves bosses just interested in their next upward move, feeling the constraint of doing more with less because of corporate budget cuts each year and constant concern over stability? Could I win the Powerball jackpot and not have to go another week?
When I started realizing the potential in my business I noticed something profound immediately going on around me. Every where I looked people were feeling just like me. We were going through motions doing what we were told to do and praying for time to pass where we could be free. This was just the part of adulting where you did your 40 hours a week and muscled through it. There is no such thing as loving your job. In fact jobs are not expected to last but 3 years before you’re off finding another one. You just do what you need to and punch out at the end of the day hurrying off to pick up the kids, prepare a quick meal and get ready to do it all over again the next day. We are all dreading Monday and wishing for Friday because bills don’t pay themselves right?
As a result of that mindset and condition in which we work we not only cheat our life story but we quietly pack up our dreams! We trade our a large part of our precious time saving up for time we can take vacations to make memories. We let go of being inspired and creative to get our jobs done to expectations set by others. Even our performance is subjectively measured by others in those jobs! We put our interest and energy into our children to do well in school telling them they can be anything they want in life and praying they find something they love to do as a result of good grades and high school performance. I know very few people who love what they do for a living or that wake up inspired for it being Monday morning. We give up so much because we think there isn’t anything more than this to life.
Quite the epic adventure to our life right?
Can you even imagine waking up on a Monday morning and not dreading what lays ahead of you that day?
Could you see yourself living a life where you craved the work you did because it inspired you so much?
I truly believe we were made to do great things in our life through work we do but most of us don’t find that opportunity to have that experience. Instead we are beaten down by corporate jobs that have relentless fear, intimidation and limitation imposed on our time, creativity, talent and even how we think, act and dress every day. Our story in life becomes a hobbled together tale of events where we save up vacation time and money to create experiences we lack in every day life. We give up so much just to say we live today but are we really living? Or are we just paying bills for a lifestyle we wish we were enjoying more?
Why do we wait until we are retired to live the life we want?
Why do we put off our happiness or sacrifice our time and talent doing things that don’t inspire, innovate or make our lives or the world at large better?
I get having to pay the bills and living in a good school district for your children but why do we stop at that?
Why don’t we dare to create the situation where we wake up smiling and happy it’s Monday and we get to work on things that uplift us and those around us?
Maybe having your own business isn’t a dream you have but if it could open that door where you could create, inspire, feel free, not dread Mondays or experience a new type of life you don’t have now wouldn’t you be curious? Wouldn’t you want to see how that could feel in your own life instead of how it feels now? Imagine your life story including this proud beaming smile when you talk about what you did for a living and how you stood on your own two feet to make that happen. Imagine enjoying your lifestyle and having claim to your own time and talent to do incredible things with each and every day!
Yet we often don’t seek out these opportunities and we discourage our friends when they have potentially found a way to achieve those things. Take for instance your girlfriend who signs up to sell a direct sales product. She’s asking everyone she knows to look at her items and she’s being seen as annoying, pushy and overzealous. Here she has just opened a small crack in a big heavy door to look at the other side of life. She saw potential to live life differently and got very excited. It filled her heart with joy and motivation she has not felt in years in her regular job.
Instead of cheering her on, encouraging her and supporting her many of us avoid her, laugh at memes about direct sales desperation and wait for her to come back to “normal.” Most direct sales businesses will end within 3 years as a result. Your friend will give up and go back to living dreading Mondays and praying for Fridays. Yes normal indeed.
There is no easy way to break the cycle of changing our daily work story. All the good advice on podcasts, personal development trainings and more will tell you just don’t give up. Stay consistent and focused. Turn your hobby into a dream business, sell products or invent something all means you can invest in you and a dream that could dramatically change your life. I believe the best and truest advice however is to simply start. Dare to dream and dare to try something. Dare to go against the tide of how we’re “supposed” to work and live and find out what it means it live on your own terms. Support your friends who are brave enough to go first too.
If you’re curious and ready to explore what this could mean for you I invite you to take my free New Business Leader Survey. The beauty of changing your life story is you can do it while you work full time and truly make it all your own to fit your needs, interests and budget. https://forms.gle/3pc5NxfM14bwmY2i7
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