Flexible Working Life

This a guest post by the wonderful Nacie Carson.  If you haven’t already, I suggest you visit her fabulous site and learn about The Life Uncommon.

Authenticity and The Life Uncommon

Earlier this year I did something a little drastic: I quit my corporate job in finance to work full-time as a freelance writer.  My time in the rat race had taught me many things about myself and my life goals, the most important of which was that I did not want to spend a single second more denying my passion for writing because I was afraid I couldn’t support myself with it.  I had taken the corporate job for no other reason than the promise of financial and vocational security, and after only a few months of work those reasons weren’t enough to overcome the creeping, guilty feeling that I had sold out.

After months of pseudo-self-destructive attempts to mask this discontent with lots of eating, spending, and drinking red wine, I decided I needed to do something dramatic to turn myself around.  So I began squirreling away savings, freelancing part-time, and working on addressing the mindset that allowed me to veer so far off course.  I picked my last day in the rat race, known to me as my liberation day, and impatiently began to tick the days off my calendar.

Suddenly the day came and I was liberated to work for myself, be my own boss, and pursue my passion.  It was a new start, a new life, and I was kind of in shock it had actually happened.  The whole transition had been really easy, my finances weren’t upset at all, and I was getting back to being a person I recognized.

When I shared my liberation news with friends and family, the inevitable response I got was “wow, I can’t believe you did that, I am so jealous, I would love to quit my job!  You are so brave – I could never do that!”
This response perplexed me, because when I asked them what was stopping them from doing something similar, they would mumble something about bills, mortgages, or student loans that needed to be paid – I had financial obligations too (rent, credit card bills, living expenses) and I had made the transition, so what was the problem?

It occurred to me that the reason I had been able to make the transition so smoothly was because I had taken time to sit down and lay out a game plan that included provisions for financial security, mindset adjustments, and goal setting.  I had spent time visualizing what I wanted out of the transition, what I wanted my new freelancing life to look like, and how practically I would accomplish each of these things.  I didn’t just quit my job one day, I followed through on a carefully laid plan that was full of contingency options, backup strategies, and safety-nets.  There was no way I could fail, so there was nothing to be scared of.

As soon as my career as a freelancer had officially started, I sat down and outlined in detail every aspect of the plan that had helped me go from miserable corporate worker to ecstatically self-employed writer, and then I expanded it to make it applicable to fields outside of freelance writing.  I divided the concepts into three distinct sections, and wrote the entire process as the ebook, The Life Uncommon: How to Leave the Rat Race, Pursue Your Passions, and Succeed Financially.

I truly believe this book has value for everyone, regardless of specific situation, especially the first section, “Identifying What You Want.”  Too many people wander through life trying to achieve what others have told them to achieve, be it family, peers, or society.  We amass money, vocational power, and lots of shiny stuff just because we think this is what we should be doing, then spend hours upon hours wondering why we still aren’t happy.
How can we be really happy when we live inauthentically?  When you are following someone else’s life road map, you aren’t going to get to your own unique destination.  Authenticity is the key to deep internal happiness, and that means personal and vocational authenticity…working just for a paycheck doesn’t count.

Now I’m not suggesting you need to live penniless and poor to find internal satisfaction – heck no! – I am saying if you open your mind and really look at your options you will find you can achieve financial and personal success doing what you love.  The world is full of possibility and the scope and range of the internet has created opportunity for just about every entrepreneurial effort you can think of.

Change is scary and intimidating but I promise you it isn’t as menacing as it seems, and what is waiting for your on the other side of the transition is well worth the effort.  I named the book The Life Uncommon because each one of us has the ability, skills, and power to live in a way that is unique and meaningful to us – uncommon to the rest of the world, and authentic to ourselves.  There is no greater satisfaction than being who you are, inside and out, personally and professionally.

Ben Stein once said, “The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.”

So then there’s the big question: what do you want?