Look for a mission in life not a job.
“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Oriental proverb
A career has a path where education and experience leads to growth in value and pay. A job can be any place you go to receive a paycheck to pay your bills. People enter careers with an eye on the future while jobs are usually taken just based on needs for money in the present moment.
Why do most people work at their current job? For the majority they simply took a job because it was available, they knew someone that worked there, or their family got them their job. A small minority of people mindfully choose what they are going to do for a living and where they are going to work.
Too many kids go to college not knowing what they want to do, this is not unusual but the sooner someone decides what they want to do with their life the earlier head start they will have over their competitors. The kids that start pursuing their lifelong passions in sports or music when they are 5 years old have a decade head start over 15-year-olds that start in high school. One of the reasons the top performers in history did so well from Mozart to Tiger Woods was that they did not get a job, instead they chose a lifelong passion and pursued it with all their time and energy from childhood.
We all have something that we have been energized about and drawn to our whole life. Games we played as a kid, creative things we did as a hobby. Some of the first careers we thought about as we were growing up. Our answer to the question “What would we do every day if money didn’t matter?” can help us get closer to that answer. We must figure out a way to design our life where what we do for money is what we like doing anyway, either at the beginning or as our goal to navigate into as we set up a lifestyle where we can pursue what we really love to do for a living. In this day and time it has never been easier to monetize our passion as the barrier to entry has been lowered across every industry with YouTube, Podcasts, Instagram, Social Media, websites, Amazon, Etsy, Google, Phone Apps, and Zero commission investing and trading. There is a way to monetize your passion.
- Don’t just look for a job, decide what you would enjoy doing first and find that type of work.
- You don’t have to take a job with a business, and you can create your own business and cut out your boss as the middleman.
- Your freedom for what type of job you must have has a lot to do with your current responsibilities, debt, and monthly bills but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
- If your path to financial freedom must start with a job, then focus on a career path not just a job so you can increase and multiply your income as your experience and skills increase.
- The sooner you can set yourself up doing what you love for money the easier it will be to achieve financial freedom as it will not be difficult to put in the effort, energy, and time to be successful.
A big part of financial freedom is to be able to get up every morning and do what we want to do for a living that day. As we start out in life our opportunities are wide open before we have the responsibilities of mortgages, car payments, debt, spouses, and children. Our freedom to choose what we do each day with our time decreases as our monthly bills increase. If we can do what we love from the start, we can make our life a whole lot simpler.
If you find yourself trapped in a job you hate, there are many paths out of the situation.
- Create a plan for financial independence by a set date. You limit the time you will spend in this job through maximizing earnings and minimizing spending on a set timeframe. You will be able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. You will create more purpose for your work.
- Start saving and/or investing aggressively. All your saving will go into the stock market or high yielding bonds so you can speed up the process of growing your net worth and having enough money to leave your job as soon as possible.
- Start a side business. Do you have a skill you can sell for a premium to customers or clients? Can you monetize any of your hobbies? Can you start your own thing when you are not at work using any of the many monetizing websites like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Thumbtack, Takl, etc.?
- Do you want to create any digital cash flowing assets like websites, books, eBooks, audio books, or eCourses?
- Have you ever thought about a cash flowing business-like rental properties, vending machines, car washes, or laundromats?
If you currently love what you do already then congratulations, you already have the primary part of financial success! If you hate what you do, then it is time to start developing your exit strategy.
Find something you are passionate about and then figure out a way to make money doing it. If you are going to spend 40-50 hours a week working, you may as well find something to devote yourself to that you are passionate about. You will need passion to do the hard work needed to break through obstacles and get to the finish line of financial freedom. Having a job you hate is not the path to success.
The goal of financial freedom is not to sit around and do nothing, it is to have the freedom to get up every day and do whatever you want that brings meaning and purpose to your life.
This was excerpt from my new book ‘The Working Dead’ available on Amazon Kindle and in Paperback.
