How to Escape the "Rat Race" Without Quitting Your 9-5

for years I felt trapped on a Relentless treadmill stuck in the grind working for someone else and allowing my job to Define my entire identity I have become convinced that the only path to Freedom was to quit the 95 Rat Race but after spending so long working for an organization and now also having seen the other side and experienced what it's like to work for yourself I've now realized that the real issue wasn't my job it was me and so in this video I wanted to share some of the hidden secrets that I've learned that

can help you break free and fully Thrive no matter where you work number one realize that you're not dependent on anyone when I worked for an organization I remember there was this one time where I was on a team call and my boss my direct line manager had a heated debate with someone else in the organization and that conversation became personal and after the call he wanted me to send an email to the other person he drafted it and it was emotional it was rude but he didn't want to be the person that it came

from and so I redrafted it and I told him I'm happy to send it but it a watered down version and it was more factual and he looked at it and he said I have to use the email that he drafted and his words were I'm not asking you I'm telling you those were his exact words and I remember in that moment I felt so stressed and pressured I felt like this person had complete control over me that if I didn't do as he said it would impact my pay my promotion it would even cost

me my job but looking back I realized that the real issue wasn't my job or my boss it was my own mindset I had created this narrative in my head that I was trapped with no other options and I was so attached to the security of this paycheck that I was willing to compromise my own values instead of realizing all of the other options that I actually had and I thank him now because I get to share this story with you and pass on what I've learned from it which is no matter where you work

never believe that you are dependent on any one thing or person but your current situation is not the only option that you have there are so many other paths and other ways to create the life and career that you want by the way if you like these kind of videos where I talk about what I've learned through my life experiences and what I'm learning on a daily basis and how that changes the path or the way I navigate life going forward then you'll enjoy my newsletter I send it out whenever I learn something new really

every week every two weeks and it's completely free the link is in the description number two find your Flow State there's this beautiful concept from the book flow and I love the philosophy behind this the author explains that we are living in one of two states one is when your challenge is greater than your skill and when you're in that state you're depressed you're frustrated you're disappointed your challenge is greater than your skill the other State or the other category is when your skill is greater than your challenge when you're at this state you feel

lethargic you procrastinate you become complacent and the people who I found who I speak to who feel like they have the most autonomy who feel like they are at the happiness are sitting in this perfect place of Flow State they feel momentum they're thriving they're in this state of flow where their skill matches their Challenge and so often we feel trapped purely because we've been doing what we know how to do for too long so even now if I only recorded YouTube videos it wouldn't challenge me anymore I've done it consistently for almost 2 years

but anytime I do something bigger harder more scaled up or that challenges me so I went live on television for the first time last week and that scared me a bit and it's those moments that made me feel like I'm growing you need a little bit of discomfort to feel free so any given time in your career ask yourself do you need to improve your challenge or do you need to improve your skill set if it's your challenge are you going to increase the scale of what you're doing the scope your level of responsibility it

doesn't mean doing something completely new it just may mean doing something with more detail or something bigger the key is to find that sweet spot where your skill matches your challenge by the way sometimes you might find something is really out of your comfort zone or that the skills required are far greater than what you think you can achieve and one thing you can do to close that Gap is to see if there are any tools out there to support you and that is where the sponsor of today's video comes in and that is grammarly

I use Gramm almost every day by default it's an AI writing partner designed to help you write better and faster and unlike any other AI tool I've come across Grammy Works where you work so you don't need to copy and paste between platforms and that has been a complete Game Changer the free version checks your spelling and grammar it offers you suggestions as you write and it includes AI features and then the premium version which is what I now pay for also predicts what what questions a reader would ask when reading your text and then

it helps you tailor your work to fill in those gaps up front so whether it's providing more context or offering solutions to a problem it goes above and beyond what you'd usually think to write it spots the gaps in your work it also has an app action function which lets you focus on your work without needing to switch between apps so for example grabbing a Google Drive Link for this important email without even having to open a new window or tab if you want to check out the features I've just mentioned you can check grammarly

premium by signing up using the link in the description number three fill your free time with work this is a really small mindset shift that completely changed the way I now think about work I used to think of work as something that dictates my life it took away from my ability to live the way I wanted to because what I used to do is carve out chunks of my tile work and then I just leave my evenings and weekends open and so inevitably those evenings and weekends would be filled up with more work because I

had nothing else planned and even when I wasn't physically working I wouldn't be doing anything else to distract me and so in the back of my head I'll be thinking about working then I thought what if I flipped this the other way around so instead of work being carved out first I plan my life first and then work can become the filler not the focus so since the start of this year I've started to plan my week ahead on Sundays and are pre-commit it to activities like classes social events reading or whatever and then work

would fill the gaps with purpose and productivity so for instance this week already I've got dinner planned on Tuesday with a friend I've got a sass of class on Thursday in the evening I'm working from a new coffee shop that I wanted to try out for a while on Thursday afternoon and I've booked in reforma Pilates during Friday lunchtime and now all my work will fit around this and I really recommend this doing it on Sunday before your work week starts pre-commit to activities for your personal life and the things that really bring you Joy

this way work becomes what you do in the slots that aren't already filled with life next we have a diversify your identity when we think of Google a lot of us think that it's just the world's biggest search engine but when you actually look into what Google's vision is is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful it's so much more than a search engine which lets Google Venture into various fields from AI to self-driving cars same thing with apple it started as a computer company but the vision of Apple is

to bring the best user experience to its customers through Innovative Hardware software and services these huge companies never tie themselves into anyone label or tie themselves to the thing that they started off with and it gave them the freedom to explore so many other things often we tie our entire identity to one thing and that is usually dictated around our job we think that our job title defines everything we can be or do and I've been there when I worked in banking I saw myself solely as a corporate professional my entire identity was wrapped up

in that role and for a long time I didn't see myself as doing anything else the idea of starting something new felt impossible because I confined myself to this narrow identity of being a corporate girl and if you label yourself too early and you pin yourself to this identity that is based on what you currently do it's very easy to then trap yourself into thinking a certain way and never giving yourself the freedom to explore other areas that interest you but you can be completely different things you can be a painter and a data analyst

you can be a yoga Enthusiast and a gamer you can be a writer and a chef you can be an accountant and a YouTuber so my advice here is think about who you are beyond your job title what passions or interest can you explore to broaden your sense of self in a way that doesn't make you feel trapped to one identity and finally my favorite number five there's so much conditioning that we have to always be nice and to tiptoe around other people's opinions but sometimes a real way to feel free and to not let

work take full control of your life is to not care about what other people think and do what is best for you for example say someone at your company asks you to do something that's a favor that's outside of your job description it's not exactly something that will help you get promoted it will help you pay and it's coming from someone who never does you any favors or helps you out in return do you do it well no you shouldn't and I'm speaking from experience when I started working at Deutsche Bank and I first moved

into front office I wanted to please everyone and just do a good job and I found it so hard to set boundaries with other people in the team there was another Junior person who' been working in the team for longer than I had who'd always ask me to stay back after she left and do these admin tasks that she didn't want to do these tasks didn't give me any recognition or any Glory I didn't benefit from them at all and the first time she asked I did it as a favor the second time I did

it as a favor and the third or fourth time I set my boundaries in place because ultimately your company will try to get as much out of you as you can and you are the person that needs to set these boundaries and there's a famous quote by brune Brown daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others the reason why I wanted to make this video is because earlier in this year I had this amazing sponsor approach me and they were going to work with me for

a huge amount but the caveat was that they would literally tell me what I had to say and when I had to say it word for word it wasn't coming from me and it made me feel back to where I was 5 years ago where my whole life was being dictated by someone else and I felt like I was being dependent on something else I didn't have full control over what I did and I didn't feel free and so if you're not careful it doesn't matter where you work it doesn't matter what you do you

can always end up not realizing that you keep building a cage around yourself that stops you from having control over the decisions you make quitting a 9 to5 isn't always an option but the other things that I've spoken about in this video setting boundaries doing things outside of work changing your mindset when it comes to who owns you these are all things that are fully within your control so I hope that helps if you like this video you'll also enjoy this video right here on millionaire habits that change my life thank you for watching don't

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