Your Job is Killing You

Maybe I’m different. I’ve been accused of that before on more than one occasion. For some strange reason, I have wanted my own business for as long as I can remember. Deep down I had some hidden drive to want to do better and stand out as “Accomplished” in some sort of way. Is there some sort of “Entrepreneur gene” that I don’t know about yet? Maybe those guys working on the Hadron Collider will start working on that one next after they’ve narrowed down something on that “God gene.”

Correct me if I’m wrong but this is still America, isn’t it? Some will debate me on that one, and I probably wouldn’t put up much of an argument with them either. During my more impressionable years, I was shown the greatness that this country had grown to be because of amazing and brilliant industrialists and philanthropists like Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, George Westinghouse and Richard Mellon Scaife.  Where are they today? We have all heard the likes of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, but where are the entrepreneurs next door? It’s like they’ve all disappeared within the last decade. Is it any wonder that unemployment is at an all time high?

I think it’s because of the “follow-the-herd” mentality ingrained in us in school. We’re never truly taught how to succeed. Entrepreneurism is a subject long done away with, unfortunately. Is it any wonder why most people expect to fail if they open a business?

 We’re constantly told that in order for us to succeed we must first get an approval paper signed, stamped and delivered at the ground-breaking cost of thousands and thousands of dollars from an accredited University. A paper that says that we are now fully capable of doing what we are told and we know how to regurgitate information. We are told that this is the only way to get a decent paying job. We are told that a great job comes with a fantastic benefits package and all the trimmings.

After we’ve done what we’re told and have met the approval of family, relatives, friends and teachers, we are now deemed worthy of an Entry-Level job with pay far lower than the debt we acquired to get there in the first place. We now have a career that we enjoy (hopefully), but the way most companies are run nowadays, you won’t see your first raise and vacation day for at least another 365 days. When the raise does come, it’s only enough to increase your taxes or add an extra hamburger value meal to your day and not much more.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), there are several common occupational related diseases including  Hearing loss, Acute pesticide illness, tendonitis, mental health issues, heatstroke, poisoning, freeze-bite and respiratory conditions just to name a few. In addition to these we can place increased anxiety and depression near the top of the list. This is also does not take into account hazardous duty jobs in both the public and private sector. It’s almost as if you pledge your life and soul to the company and not to our families or even ourselves. You trade it all in for a bag of peanuts at the end of the week. And most of that never sees the light of day. All this and forty plus hours a week away from your wife and family, who could want anything more?

  

Americans now are scared to step out into the Chapel Perilous (a place of infinite possibilities and personal change that is the next step to the risk of the unknown). They are anxiously waiting to dump their entire paycheck into a machine in a casino for the chance of “Winning Millions” but they haven’t the foresight to countless other ways of doubling or tripling their earnings.  They have been so dumb down and terrified of stepping out of line and moving away from anything that remotely looks like security, they have all but forgotten who they are, who they were and who they were meant to be.

I can hear what you’re saying now. “Chris how are we supposed to support our families if we’re busy trying to build a business? At least with a job I have some financial security.” WRONG. If you should’ve learned anything from 2008 and beyond, it’s that there is no REAL security, let alone financial security, unless the government has ordained you “Too Big To Fail,” and even if you work for one of those mega-corporations, don’t think that you’re necessarily gonna be on the receiving end of one of those doled-out bonuses. In fact, that ought to serve as a lesson to everyone about just how chaotic life truly is. Chaos, risk, change and personal evolution are all inevitable.

“Well hey what about all those businesses that fail? I don’t want to open up a business and fail. I’d rather just keep my job and earn my pay that way.” Okay. So, say you do fail. Who cares? Educate yourself. Get some good training. Multi-million dollar businesses aren’t made overnight. Plus, if you haven’t failed at least once, you’re probably not trying, which is even worse. There’s a saying “Flowing water never grows stale.” Keep moving. Keep experimenting until you get it right. When you get it right, you’ll know. Do Olympic athletes just quit after the first time they fail? No. They train. They perfect themselves through thousands, even millions of repetitions before a competition. Plus you shouldn’t look at your failures as just failures. They are actually opportunities for you to learn from and improve upon the next round.  That’s how you get better. That’s how you learn to do it right.

So how far away are you from your first million dollars? How far away is your next vacation? Did your boss ever get around to buying you that new home you always wanted? And exactly how large was that last raise you got…if you got one?  And, by the way, how’s your health these days?

If you are like most Americans, you are still working forty plus hours a week, for what is now seven months out of the year, just to pay off the government.  If you’ve been working since your teen years, and you are in your thirty-somethings, you’ve got about fifteen years of solid steady work experience behind you, plus a college education (and all the debt it carries), an apartment or home with a hefty mortgage, a family, car note, cable bill, insurance and a litany of other black holes that manage to quash your prosperity daily.

I would like for everyone to own their own business at some point in their life. It’s not impossible. Granted, some will have the right stuff to make it all the way and some will not.

 I think Gene Simmons of KISS put it best when he said, “The idea that anybody in their twenties or thirties would ever think about taking a vacation before they’ve amassed fame and fortune is a wonderful idea – FOR LOSERS, Not everyone can climb Mount Olympus; somebody’s got to wrap fish.”