Why This One Practice Could Change Your Life
All too often, we spend years with our heads down. Working away, doing the things we’re “supposed” to be doing. Going to college, getting a job, working our way up the ladder. It’s what we’re told to do, isn’t it?
I did those things. And it took a major event in my life before I looked up and realized I wanted something more.
Waiting until something happens though before looking at where we are, isn’t the way to go about it. We get too caught up in moving from day to day just going along doing what we think we should be doing and never taking stock of if it’s really where we want to be.
I’m a corporate escapee. Or is a nicer term drop-out? I gave up political correctness with corporate though, so escapee fits nicely.
A major health event in 2015 had me rethinking where I was in my life. I started to think then that maybe there was more to it, and I was missing something. I wasn’t sure I found my work all that fulfilling, and I spent most of my waking hours away from my kids.
The seed had been planted but took a few more years to take root.
At that time, I was working my way up at a company and doing freelance bookkeeping that I'd taken on years before when I was between jobs due to a layoff.
But after working my way up for six years and being told by superiors that my time for promotion was coming, the company merged with another one, and their leadership took over my department. And that was the end of the promotion talk. I was back at the beginning in that role.
That left a bad taste in my mouth, so I decided to jump ship and took a position with a Fortune 500 company. It was a lateral move but going from a non-profit (whether you consider a large heath care system non-profit is a story for another day) to a public company seemed exciting and I figured there would be different things to learn.
But it didn’t take long to realize it was the same job with a different company. And the same corporate politics. And corporate hierarchy. And the same someone else being in control of my schedule, hours, and income potential.
And the same worries and threats of job loss with rumors that the company would be bought out by a private equity company or move far away from my home to downtown Chicago.
It was amid the pandemic that the seed from 2015 began to blossom. The thought of spending the next 30 or more years commuting, being downsized, or working long hours for someone else just wasn’t appealing. Why was I doing this again?
I set out to get more bookkeeping clients and stockpiled a financial safety net. And then toward the end of 2020, I left. My coworkers thought I was crazy to leave my position without another “job” lined up. My family and friends may have even questioned my sanity although they never said anything.
It was scary and risky. But I was ready to redesign my life. I didn’t want to spend the next 30-plus years working for someone else.
I’ve pivoted a few times since I started my business (read more about my pivot here). I’ve learned so much about being an entrepreneur and finding my way to the path of doing work that serves others and fulfills me. And I’ve made mistakes. And I’ll likely make them again.
But I’m never going back to corporate. Instead, it’s my mission to see an increase in the number of women business owners.
So where am I going with all this? Let's circle back to the beginning. You don’t have to wait until you have a major life event to redesign your life.
Instead, take time to come up for breath. Assess your situation regularly to decide if your life is all you want it to be. And if not, figure out what you can do to fix it.
And if it's related to getting out of corporate and starting your own business or if you've already jumped ship and need help with a strategy to grow your business, I can help you.
Life is too short to do things that don’t make us happy. I’m a firm believer that we can make money doing something we love. We don’t have to sell our souls, so to speak, to have the lifestyle we want. We don’t have to wait until tomorrow to live a life we’re excited about.
If you think you’d like to be on a different path but just need to figure out a strategy to get there, srategy is my specialty.
Whether you want to be a corporate escapee or already are, I can relate. Get in touch and we can assess where you’re at and where you want to be and develop a plan to get you there.
Do you take time out to regularly assess where you are in life and if you need to change up your goals to do something else? I'd love to hear about it.
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