Several years ago I was offered a job with a base salary of $250k.
Perhaps that’s not a lot to some people. But at the time, it was a lot to me and it represented a massive pay increase.
Yet I turned it down.
Because the travel requirement would have been far too disruptive to my fitness and wellness routine, among other things.
And that’s one aspect of my life that I hold sacred.
In world where preventable physical ailments and mental unwellness is running rampant, I’ve seen it as increasingly important to stand firm on my principles and make maintaining my health a non-negotiable.
We are products of societal conditioning
When I reflect back on my life, I realized that I, and basically everyone else, grew up in a system that subconsciously conditioned us to pursue the accumulation of financial wealth at the expense of the very things that make the human experience worthwhile.
We’re told to get good grades so we can get accepted into a good school, only so we can land a good high-paying job.
We spend the first 20 or so years of our lives stressing over this rather than being present and appreciating the beauty of life.
Then when we land our first job, we switch into optimizing for career advancement while deprioritizing other very important aspects of our lives.
We relocate to geographies we don’t want to live in
We spend years of our lives enduring grueling work commutes
We forget to maintain our minds and bodies
We strain our relationships with parents, children, and spouses
All in the name of boosting the resume, getting promoted, or simply doing what we’ve been told is the responsible thing to do.
These may be the cultural norms in our current society, but that doesn’t make them sensible or aligned with our better interests.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe we absolutely must do what we need to survive.
But we must also know when enough is enough. And there comes a point on the corporate ladder when one experiences diminishing returns on the financial gain.
At what point do we stop pursuing the next pay raise, the next promotion, or the next shiny new job, and start pursuing a life centered around the 4 core values essential for optimal living?
Family, love, friendship, and human connection
Spirituality and connection to a higher purpose
Mental, physical, and cognitive health
Meaningful work that you obsess over
Being able to draw the line is the first step to lifestyle abundance.
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” — Seneca
“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” — Lao Tzu
The moment I turned that opportunity down, I experienced a sort of psychological liberation from the golden handcuffs, and I redefined “career success” around the 4 core values.
I stopped pursing promotions, or the next job that would boost my resume.
Instead I spent years exploring different career paths that would enable me to live optimally, and that’s what lead me to solo-entrepreneurship via online personal brand.
Following this path has enabled me to completely redesign my lifestyle which is now far more abundant in the things that you simply cannot put a price on.
And I now see solo-entrepreneurship as THE single most accessible path for most people who also want to exit the traditional corporate system for a better lifestyle.
So if you feel like you’ve been jeopardizing your health, your relationships, your sense of purpose, then there’s no better time than now to break free of the golden handcuffs, and go into solo-entrepreneurship to design a better life.
This is the way.
Work directly with me:
Schedule a 1:1 Skills Monetization and Lifestyle Design consultation to work through an idea you’ve been thinking about but never acted on.
Lock in to build your solo-business and land your first paying client/customer in 6-weeks via The Private Members Network