when i look back at the pictures i took throughout 2018 and 2019 i look happy i look like i'm having
a good time and on the face of it it seems like i had a pretty good year but what you're seeing is
a facade a showing misrepresentation intended to conceal something unpleasant you see i graduated
from university just a few months earlier i moved from a small town in the uk to amsterdam to work
in the finance industry and it didn't take me long to get a job about three weeks and i landed a
nine-to-five corporate job in finance and at first it was actually okay my colleagues were awesome
the job paid well a lot of opportunities to progress up the ladder and the city itself was
incredible almost magical but there was something not quite right i would wake up in the morning
and have this sinking feeling in my stomach because i knew i had to get ready for work and
this feeling was most intense on monday mornings and it gradually eased as the week progressed
until friday came around and of course on friday i would always be looking forward to the weekend
it was hard work though i would commute to work in the morning on the train while working on my
side business i was starting open acrylic glass poster company at the time so i'd work on my side
business in the morning for an hour then i'd work my nine-to-five job then at 6 p.m when i arrived
home i'd spend another four hours or so working on my side business but it got to a point where i was
living for the weekends and it was almost like a disease having to live through five days of misery
before i could actually live my life on saturday and sunday i knew that as soon as i started living
for the weekends and not actually enjoying what i'm doing then it's time to change direction and
i'd watched enough gary vaynerchuk videos to know i knew at that point i had to get out i'm blown
away by people celebrating the end of the week it breaks my heart my friends like live for friday
night like they know they get to eat like monday morning is the worst so in may 2019 i handed in my
notice it was one of the most difficult decisions i had to make because it really was good money
a stable income and what's weird was it wasn't even a bad job it was this weird paradox where
i actually kind of liked the job itself but i just wasn't happy working there and looking
back maybe it had something to do with freedom at high school where we had to attend school
from 9am and couldn't leave until 3 30 p.m maybe in some ways i felt controlled i felt trapped
incidentally high school was the last time that i had that sinking feeling on sunday nights and
monday mornings like i just didn't want the weekend to end monday mornings getting out of
bed and getting ready for the day was just awful and i'm sure many of you can probably relate to
that feeling but interestingly at university i never had that problem not even once throughout
the whole three years of my bachelor's and maybe thinking about it it's because i had
more freedom a lot of university was independent studies so we'd have maybe two or three hours
of lectures a day and then the rest of the day we were expected to study by ourselves independently
so i'd study at coffee shops in the library at home at a friend's house i would study pretty much
everywhere and i loved that freedom of being able to plan the day however i wanted with just two or
three lectures in the day that i had to attend but what i did for the rest of the day was entirely up
to me and so working the nine to five office job i had this same feeling of being trapped like i had
very little control of my day i had to wake up at a certain time arrive at the office at a certain
time do specific tasks that were given to me and it was just felt like someone else was pulling the
strings over my own life but then i was stuck with this dilemma where i really don't like giving up
i just keep going and going and keep fighting and i obviously wasn't happy with this job but at the
same time i felt like if i quit this job i'm just giving up and not giving it a fair shot so i kept
going and i kept working there for a year and eventually it happened i decided to quit so i
left my corporate job and i made my side business my acrylic glass poster business my full-time job
and it was extremely difficult at first living in amsterdam a relatively
expensive city with a side business that was barely even earning any money it wasn't easy and
it took a good six months before things started picking up but leaving the corporate world was
one of the best decisions i ever made i've never been so fulfilled with my work and as cliche as it
sounds i wake up every morning actually excited to go to work and throughout school we've kind
of been trained to work monday to friday and then have saturday and sundays as our day off
but for me i like more flexibility than that so i'll work seven days a week from monday to sunday
but some days i'll take it easy i'll spend a bit more time hanging out one day or maybe if i'm
having a bad day or feeling more tired than normal i'll take it easy that day so i'm always working
to some extent every day but my work is integrated into my life because i love my work i love what
i do and i wouldn't have it any other way i don't feel like i need the weekend off to relax because
he's like well relax from what relax from doing something that i love so not too long ago i was
reading a thread on reddit and it was titled how do you get out of bed every morning just to go to
a job and honestly it was incredibly depressing but it represents how much of society views work
so the highest rated comment with 11 500 upvotes said honestly i think we've been taught to think
a career job is supposed to be fulfilling give you purpose and satisfaction blah blah blah
eventually you realize that's bs for 99 of the world and most of human history a job just pays
the bills what you do outside of it is when most people find meaning and i really can't articulate
how much i disagree with this post work doesn't have to be something that makes you miserable
it's very simple if you don't enjoy your job then do something about it you spend a third
of your life working life is too short to waste it doing something you're not passionate about
and i really want to use this platform and the following that i've built up on product sealant to
get that message out there because i think that is so so important you don't have to continue
doing something that you're not passionate about and i understand you might have responsibilities
maybe you have kids maybe you have your parents to support financially or maybe younger siblings to
support you maybe you have a mortgage to pay for every month and i get it money is important money
is what makes the world go round so i wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone to just quit their
job with no backup plan but consider spending a couple of hours a night on a side hustle like i
did consider pivoting your career consider looking for a job that might be marginally more tolerable
i guess this whole video can be summed up in one sentence if you're not happy do something about it
when you're spending more than half your life working it's important that what you're doing is
on point and i mentioned that in high school i had an absolutely miserable time i suffered massively
from procrastination i suffered from depression my grades were terrible i just didn't want to study
at all but i've lived both sides of the coin after leaving high school i studied and i researched
exactly how high performance students are able to consistently perform at the highest level
what are they doing differently what separates them from the rest of the class and i implemented
that knowledge on myself i went to university and i graduated with a 4.0 gpa and i've now made it
my job to consolidate and teach that knowledge in my transform your grades in 30 days course
you can click on the link in the description and i'm offering personal mentoring and guidance
every step of your way through your 30 day challenge so if you take me up on the offer
to help you out and level up your studying i look forward to working with you very shortly