Help! I Don’t Want To Work For A Living


I Don't Want To Work For A Living

I don’t want to work for a living is the result of a mindset where you are stuck making money doing something you hate. Doing what you love AND getting paid well is the ultimate dream – not sitting around doing nothing.

“I don’t want to work for a living” is one of the most common complaints that most middle age people seem to have.

It is one of the big things that draw many people to the law of attraction and the idea of achieving financial freedom.

If you are stuck in a job that you dislike or even hate then the idea of having millions and just lounging around spending your days doing only things you love is very appealing.

The brutal truth however is that this will not bring you happiness either. When we feel stuck doing something we dislike, the mind likes to wander off to a place that makes us feel good.

For many people it is a beach with a brightly coloured drink in one hand. For others it is on a mountain top with no people around while for some it may even just be their sofa at home.

While your mind may have convinced you that this is how you want to spend your days, the reality is that it is only an escape. I have experienced this first hand.

After just 2 days on the beach I started getting restless.

Boredom sets in and you start thinking about things to do. Ultimately it is not the fact that you don’t want to work for a living.

It is that you REALLY want to do something meaningful and fulfilling with your life.

Ultimately you want to do things that you love AND be able to meet all your financial obligations while doing the things you love.

Sitting on a beach doing nothing will bring you some relaxation but it does not bring you joy, fulfillment and a sense of purpose.

Only when you find joy, fulfillment and a sense of purpose will you truly be happy. Doing “nothing” is the fastest way to die. You may not die physically but you will die mentally and emotionally.

If you are thinking, yeah that all sounds nice but I don’t want to work for a living. I just want a ton of money and chill.

I want to urge you to move beyond that level of thinking.

It is very superficial and usually just your mind’s knee jerk reaction to a current job or career that is not in harmony with who you are.

The Real Reason Why You Don’t Want To Work For a Living

You may think that the reason why you don’t want to work for a living is because your job sucks, your boss sucks, the pay is bad or the commute is horrendous.

You may think that you don’t have enough time with your family, not enough time for yourself or that you are always tired and feel drained and even depressed.

These are all perfectly valid reasons why you may not want to work anymore.

These are all in fact symptoms and the underlying cause is the fact that you are not doing something that you love.

You feel (and are) obliged to “make a living” and your formula for making a living is based on doing a job that you dislike or even hate.

Most people spend all their efforts in trying to make a living and they end up never having a life.

As long as you are stuck in a job that is unfulfilling and not aligned with what you love or even what your purpose in life is then you will always be seeking an escape.

You will always be stuck on this idea that you just don’t want to work and you just want to chill and ‘do nothing’.

The real secret is to start shifting your energy and your attention to doing something that you love; something meaningful and fulfilling.

Even if you have no idea what this is yet, it will start to shift your thinking away from the idea of doing nothing and on to ideas and opportunities that will guide you to finding something meaningful; something you love and something purposeful.

We live in a western culture where people follow career paths based on what they think the financial rewards will be. More than 90% of law students only study law because they believe it is the safest option to find a “safe and secure” job one day.

A 2019 Gallup poll has shown that only 15% of people are engaged at work. That means that 85% of people dislike their jobs.

Considering that you spend one third of your life working and one third sleeping then it leaves very little time to find happiness and to enjoy life.

Why Do You Work?

If you have to be honest with yourself, why do you work? Well, we all have to live and we all need to earn money to meet our needs. Working is one of the most popular ways to earn money and it is a post-industrial formula that works.

If you are working only because it pays the bills then you will most likely crave some sort of fulfillment outside of work.

If you think I don’t want to work for a living then you probably want to make money without working. Is this possible?

Yes! Many of the richest people in the world do not work for money. Some have investments, some own businesses while some even inherited a lot of money.

Working is one of the worst ways to make money. As long as you exchange hours for dollars you will always be a slave to the clock.

Why Should You Work?

The ultimate goal is not to ‘have to’ work just to earn money but to WANT to work because it brings you joy and fulfillment. Your ‘job’ should be something you love doing. It should excite you to get up early and keep working late.

It should energize you and make you feel like there is a sense of purpose in your life.

We have mixed things up badly in our modern culture. We are so set on having a career and doing work as a sense of duty or to chase money just for the sake of it.

We have forgotten to place value on happiness and having a sense of fulfillment.

Almost everyone who is doing what they love would say something like “I can’t believe I am getting paid to do this”. When you are doing something you really love then it will not feel like work at all.

But what about the money?

Yes, money is important but working is NOT the only way to earn money. Anyone can learn to invest or start a business or find a way to monetize their talents and passions.

Theodore Johnson worked for the UPS and never earned more than $14,000 a year. He learned to invest early on in his life and by setting aside 20% of everything he earned he amassed more than $70 million.

Working does not have to be the main source of your income. Working in a job only because it brings in money is a recipe for unhappiness.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan and guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

– Jim Rohn

You may still have to have a job, but the sooner you can divorce your job from your income the better.

What if your job was something you loved and something that you would do anyway and the earning of money was something separate from that?

This requires a gigantic shift in mindset for many but by starting to make this shift you can start seeing opportunities and start changing course in your life.

Understanding The Law Of Compensation

Understanding the Law of Compensation is really important when we start looking beyond just a job to make money. In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay entitled “Compensation” which lays the groundwork for the Law of Compensation.

The Law of Compensation states that you will always be compensated (paid/rewarded) in direct relationship to the value you add and to your contribution.

The real key idea I want to highlight is that your compensation does not always come from the source where you add the value. Another way of saying this is that the value you add to your workplace does not always lead to a reward from your workplace.

Most people do just enough not to get fired.

They then proceed to b!tch about how bad their work environment is and how badly they get paid. The top earners in any workplace or marketplace are those who add more value than anyone else.

The truth is that you get paid THROUGH your company/work but your compensation in life comes FROM the value that you add to other people’s lives.

5 Steps To Break Free From The “I Have To Work For a Living” Trap

The trap that almost everyone steps into is that they think they have to work for a living and that this work has to be ‘hard, boring or something they hate’.

This is the absolute worse way to ‘make a living’.

You do not have to work for a living if the work you are doing is something you love, something you are passionate about and something you would have done regardless of whether it brought in money or not.

The idea of having to ‘work’ – where work is something you are not passionate about is a disease that will eventually take you down.

When you think ‘I don’t want to work for a living’ what you are really thinking is that you would rather do something you love, something that comes easy and naturally to you AND get paid very well doing it.

This is not only possible but something that we are all entitled to.

Here are 5 steps to help you reach that point where you can truly love what you do and make a great living doing it.

1. Love What You Do

Doing what you love ‘for a living’ is certainly something that most people aspire to. Doing what you love has another side to it and it is called LOVING what you do.

Even if you do something you love, you will always need to bring love to it. There will always be aspects of it that you don’t like as much which is why it is essential to inject love into everything you do.

You always have one of two choices. You can either do what you love or you can love what you do. Those are the only choices you really have if you want to be truly happy at what you do for a living.

The biggest secret to changing a job or career you do not like is to start loving it. This may sound absurd because you hate it, right?

By shifting your perception and starting to purposefully inject love into everything you do your world will change so fast it will make your head spin.

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.

– Arthur Christopher Benson

The Law of Compensation is universal and even if your changed attitude does not bring immediate results through your job, it WILL come through other areas of your life.

Starting to love what you do is something that is within your power and you CAN do it no matter how bad you may think you have it.

This is a change in attitude and attitude is everything.

2. Find Your Passion

What is it that you are passionate about in life? What is it that you can do for hours without getting bored or tired?

If you get $5 million tomorrow, how would you spend your time (after the holidays and the initial excitement)?

Whatever you are passionate about, you need to nurture and grow in your life. You may still be stuck in a job you dislike but nothing is stopping you from following your passions.

Most super successful people built their dreams while working jobs they did not necessarily loved. There is always the “night shift” – that time from where you get home until you go to bed where you can work on your dream.

When you are truly passionate about something you will find a way to do it.

If you don’t know what you are passionate about then simply start pursuing things that interest you. As you do this your passion will start finding you and you will feel drawn to certain things.

Do not ignore this. It is your soul calling you to your purpose in life.

3. Work For Yourself

Working for yourself usually implies that you have your own business or that you are self employed. The truth however is that you always work for yourself.

If you work only to satisfy your boss or do what is required because that is your duty then you give away all your power.

No matter what your job or who your boss may be, ultimately you always work for yourself. When you set a high standard for yourself and commit to always live up to your own standards then you always for yourself.

Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.

– Lou Holtz

If your mindset is to always do a great job – not to satisfy a boss but to satisfy your own standard then your life becomes inner directed.

As you start working to satisfy your own high standard you will quickly begin to exceed expectations. The Law of Compensation kicks in because you provide value above and beyond just what is required and your life quickly starts to change.

4. Improve Yourself

One big problem with the i don’t want to work for a living mindset is that it implies a level of stagnation. To pull yourself out of a job and a career you dislike you need to realize that you and only you can help yourself.

There is a really important concept that states: For things to get better, I have to get better.

If you want to improve anything in your life you have to get better in every area of your life. Pick up a book. Take a course. Learn something new. Develop a new skill.

Whatever it takes. Just don’t do nothing and hope things will change or get better.

If you focus on making yourself better then everything else tends to flow naturally. If you get better then your life will get better.

If there is a job you’d rather then start moving towards it by learning everything you can – even if it seems like it is a million miles away.

5. Remove All Toxicity From Your Life

So many workplaces are toxic with an atmosphere of animosity towards the very institutions that pay the people who are toxic towards them.

If you are involved in b!tching about your job, your boss or your company then you do not realize the damage you are doing to yourself.

This toxicity tends to permeate every area of your life and without knowing it, your energy gets lowered.

If you are full of toxicity you can not attract anything good into your life. The law of attraction makes it abundantly clear that your energy and your attention is what will determine what you attract into your life.

You may work for the worst company/boss in the world, but start by being grateful towards them. They are still paying you and helping you meet your needs.

You do this for YOU. Not for them.

Only through gratitude can you start shifting your energy. When you shift your energy you will start aligning with something better and through the law of attraction you will attract something better.

Most people remain bound in a job they hate simply because of their hate for the job.

Help! I Don’t Want To Work For A Living – Conclusion

It is startling how many people try to use the law of attraction to win the lottery. The idea of winning a lottery certainly does sound appealing. Coming into a large heap of cash certainly does plug a lot of holes.

Statistics have shown though that 80% of lottery winners lose it all within 3 years. Limiting yourself (and the universe) to a lottery win in order to break free from a job you hate is a really poor strategy.

There are hundreds if not thousands of ways the universe can assist you in connecting with something you love and still make all the money you desire.

Start by shifting your energy. Remove toxicity from your life, start loving what you do and be grateful – even if you hate the job you are in. In fact, you need to do this especially if you hate the job you are in.

Connect and reconnect with your passions and nurture it. Know that a job is not the only way to make money and that a job is often the worst way to make money.

Instead of working for a living, create the intention of working for a life! A life that you love and that you are passionate and proud of.

Neod

With a passion for spirituality, self discovery, and understanding this life, Neod spends his time musing about what is, what could be and what might come about. After writing for 20 years he's still growing, learning, exploring and sharing with love, joy and compassion.

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