CLUELESS REBEL

     If you hate your job this post has the potential to make your life almost instantly better. Will it?, that's up to you.... unless of course you've gotten attached to whining....    

     Hating your job is killing you. Plain and simple. Say what you want but it is true in many ways. The worst part about it's not the job that's killing you but instead your "hating the job" that is killing you. Sure your job may be toxic and over the long range could be dangerous but others have had worse and survived. The real danger though is in hating your job. When you hate your job your life slows down and time speeds up. Days drag on and weeks fly by. It is not a pretty picture. The hate creates stress, cloudy thinking, gets you making decisions out of desperation, frustration or anger etc. All of which usually lead to nowhere. It is seriously not worth it. The worst part is people that hate their jobs are hugely more likely to be stuck with them a lot longer than those that don't.

  It's Not Your Job You Hate... It's Your Life

     Let's face it most times it is not the job we hate it is our life. Hell a job is a job. People who think their jobs are their life should hate it but they are two different things. Once you figure that out then you can use the job for what it is and your life for what it is.

     Hating your job is like hating your sleep. That would be totally stupid after all we all need sleep. In fact we need as much sleep as we need job, about eight hours each. Sure not all sleep is equal. After all sleeping on a pile of rocks is not near as good as a Simonds Sleepy Sleezy Sofatop. Just like all jobs are not equal. Though if you have to sleep on rocks you make the best of it. You find a smooth patch, set one up for a pillow and whatever else. The same applies to a job. After all when you are sleeping on rocks it is usually during that "camping" phase of your life. When you have a lousy job it is usually during the "hard luck" or "bad money management" phase of your life. Oh and I hate to ruin your "special" situation but every successful person alive has gone through those hard times. Most a lot worse than yours ever were so get over it.   

     Sleep and jobs are just two essentials that you need in life. The trick is to make them the best they can be based on the position you are in. If you are camping sleeping is fun. It's just a challenge to figure out the best sleeping arrangement with the most amount of comfort for the least amount of work.

     The same applies to job. Sure your job might not be glamorous but it is still a job and you still get paid. The fun challenge is to try and figure out how you can get the most out of your job's money to move you along your path in life more quickly. That can also be fun.

     Now I admit this is harder to do when you are seventeen as your life is flashing before your very eyes at lightning speed. We've all been there if you are older. You know about that total panic you felt after realizing if you don't get a girlfriend this month you are going to be desperate and single for the rest of your life. That fades after a few girlfriends and you finally realize that hurrying never helps.

     So here's what you need to do. Slow dafuk down! Hurrying is for desperate people. Don't miss your own life chasing your ego's life because you will never catch your ego's life no matter how well you do. If you slow down all of a sudden you lose that frantic and desperate energy you once had. Once you do that you start to think a lot clearer. When this happens you start making smarter choices. You start spending your money in smarter ways that get you the most return on your spending. You will quit waiting for mom, dad, government or good luck to fix your life.

     You see most people think rich people get rich by getting high paying jobs. Not even close. Ninety nine percent of all "high paying jobs" people are just as broke as "lower paying jobs" people. The difference is only the price of their toys. A big lawyer driving the new Porche, with her trophy stay at home husband, and two point five kids is usually just two gold card payments away from the same spot on the street that has been glaring at you! Don't fool yourself with appearances. All a high paying job can do is make you "look" rich.

     How much money you make is not a factor in getting rich near as much as what you do with that money. If you go out and buy consumables like tv's, boats and jetski's then you might start to look rich but you will actually be working towards getting poor quicker than anything.

     Think about it you make $20,000 in pretax dollars, the mob takes $6000 of that in taxes... Leaves you with $14,000. almost enough left to buy that new lower end Kawasaki Ultra LX Jet ski. After robbing your kids piggy bank you are in. The next day after towing it off the lot you automatically lose at least twenty or thirty percent of what you paid. That drops it down to just over $11,000. Then use the thing for the year ( which is four times) and you would likely be hard pressed to actually get $8000 no matter what the salesman back at the lot told you.

     Thus in one transaction you went from $20.000 in pre tax dollars down to $8000 in "if you are lucky" dollars. All is less than a year. Start doing this with enough transactions and you will see how quick a high paying job is no different.  This is how fools spend.

     So whatz the trick? Well the first one is to love your job. But... just because you love it does not mean your are going to be stuck with it. In fact people who love their jobs rarely get stuck there even if they do stay. People who hate their jobs almost always get stuck there. I have seen this more than once.

    Just ask anyone who has a dirty job if they like it or not. If they go on about how they hate it I almost guarantee you they will be stuck there for years. And for the odd one that doesn't get stuck they will likely just move over to another job they soon hate and get stuck there also. After all they are the re-occuring element in each situation.

     You see when you do things that you love then your mind gets far more creative and comes up with way more ideas. You feel more confident and life starts to flow easily without effort or scramble.  

     So this is all nice but how defurk do you "love" your job if your job completely sucks? Well it is not that hard and a bit of a two stage process. In fact it is nothing more than a mind game. Find the good parts of it. If it is hard labor then you just have to focus on the fact you are getting paid to get tough. Believe me one board piling saw mill laborer could take on five muscle bound gym jocks without even trying. Work like that makes you seriously tough. Other guys with cushier jobs don't get that option.  

     If you are doing dull office work then make it a challenge to do it better than anyone ever has. Use your great "innovative mind" to come up with new ideas that could streamline it. Your higher up boss might get wind of your enthusiasm and move you up the ladder ten steps. Everyone loves enthusiasm because it is contagious and feels great. Believe me you won't look stupid!!!! In fact you will look out of place and not someone who should be doing that work. The other guy trying to act cool saying he hates his job just looks more the role than anyone.

     Once you let go of your ego motivation and start loving the job you have you will be amazed. Your life instantly starts to feel better. Your mind clears up. You feel more excited about the path you are on and the possibilities that could unfold etc. At the same time you don't care and are not desperate simply because hey... You love the job or life you have now!

     This leads to stage two. Stage two is where you sit down and finally decide where the hell you want to go with your life. No I mean really want to go. Not where your ego wants to go. This is a little trickier but not impossible. You just have to use your imagination.

     What I did with this is spent a lot of time seriously imagining that I had won the fifty million dollar lottery. I then tried to imagine what I would ACTUALLY do in life after that. This was a lot harder than you would think.  After a lot of reflection it dawned on me that probably the first two or three years I would spend stroking my ego by buying Harley's, airplanes, hot rods, hangliders, big houses and then bragging..., whoops.!...., I mean sharing... it on farcebook. Sadly though that would eventually wear out like all things do.  

     I once read that Sting the bazillionaire spends most of his day practicing guitar... WTF???? With all his money he could be driving around in his Lambo picking up chicks!!! This is what the ego always thinks but reality is always different than the ego perceives it to be. He seriously loves singing and playing guitar which is likely why he got so good at it!!! So this is what he does and not what some poor jock down the street thinks he should be doing.

     Eventually though after enough reflection I started to figure out what I would really want to do. Strangely it had nothing to do with spending money at least that much anyway. It was more about writing crazy shite like you see here or my Fly in the Microwave books, or welding up strange sculpture, or building another Harley project etc. This was all shite I could be doing without the millions!!!

     Most people are not much different. They think they need fifty million in the bank so they can finally focus on playing guitar. In reality though they just need the guts to start playing guitar!!! Once they make that choice they can start today!

     Either way once you figure out what you REALLY want to do then you just have to start walking towards that. The fact that you are not "there yet" won't matter as you will feel great knowing you are heading in the right direction finally!  

     You see when you go on a holiday the fun doesn't start when you "arrive there" the fun begins the second you decide to take the holiday. Right away you start planning and figuring out what you are going to need to get done. You are not going on the trip you are just planning but it is still a ton of fun.

     All this then causes the "attractive" nature of your anticipation to go through the roof. Working out in the gym takes on a whole new meaning. No longer are you just cracking a sweat but instead are prepping that six pack for some serious beach time. Slogging through Duolingo turns into something exciting knowing you are learning a new language. Which means you will be able to converse with the locals a lot better when you get there. Menial things all of a sudden become exciting steps towards the trip.

     This is the same as your life. Once you decide where you want to go in life the real fun begins. You don't have to wait till you arrive. That would be foolish since the day after you arrive you will just set a new goal and be back in misery again until that goal arrives. It's just not worth it.

     What's even better is you don't need to actually know how you are going to get there. That you will figure out as you go along.  

     Now it is the "WHAT DO I REALLY WANT TO DO" part that gets tricky but once you figure that out decisions in life get super easy. If you decided you are going to move to Alaska then shopping for swimming gear will be a low priority. Instead you will be looking for under ware, guns, a can opener, black fly spray, some wooden matches and a lot of dynamite for bulk fishing!!!

     It took me years to own up to and realize what I really wanted to do. I was close with my steel art but as much as I loved it I never could really imagine myself being happy breathing welding fumes all day ever day trying to keep up to sales. Fortunately I never had to do that as my sales were always sporadic but dramatic. My biggest sale was $24,000. The work that did sell which, actually, was a lot over the years sold to extremely enthusiastic buyers. That of course was a lot of fun but not that satisfying. Sorta like Chinese food... an hour later and you are starved again. 

     What made it hard deciding was the fact I really loved the crap I made. Hey when have you ever seen a real metal flaming steel chair!!! Not to mention some of the other weird pieces. On top of that the attention the work still gets is amazing. Though the day I realized I was done doing steel art, (after 34 years),  I was walking on cloud nine. I had absolutely no clue what I was going to do but did not care. 

    Four days later got offered a great paying extremely fun job!!! That high has not faded once in the last four years. The part that made these last four years really interesting was the fact that there was no champagne and caviar during that time. Instead it was working like a dog the whole time digging myself back out of the huge optimistic hole I had been digging myself into for the last 34 years!!!! Yet it has still been the funnest time of my life.. The reason of course being is I snapped out of my ego fueled delusional fog and got back on my path again. Have I arrived to where I want to be in life? Nope... do I care? Nope after all being on the path to it is as fun as it gets.. Even if I do arrive at some ego desired goal it won't matter much as it will just come up with a new one the next day anyway.     

     So back to what I was saying about deciding where or what you really want to do. Once you nail this decisions really do get hugely easier.

     It also means that your job right now is just a stepping stone on your path to Alaska. After all even going on holidays it is not all sunshine and lollipops. First you have two fed stops, one getting into the normal country which takes seconds and the other coming back into "freedom" which takes full on interrogation by armed guards, cavity searches, ex-rays and a big toothed dog sniffing every inch of you. Then there is the flight..., six hours of kissing your knees if you fly cattle class like I have. But you don't mind because you are going somewhere! This is the same as your job. You no longer mind it because you are now going somewhere. It is the lack of life direction that makes any job so bad. 

     So what you do is decide where you want to go in your life. Once  you nail that down with as much honesty and clarity as you can then start thinking of things you can or need to do to get there. Make a list of all those things and then start doing anything you can right now no matter how small.

     If you need fifty thousand then start figuring out how you can start saving up that money. Even if it is only ten bucks a month from your beer budget. Draw up a plan and then start on it. The sooner the better. Don't wait until you can "grand slam" fifty grand into the account as that will never happen and is only your ego talking. If you are serious then start with ten bucks a month. This shows you that you are serious!!!

     If you have not filed your taxes nowz the time to geter done. Start pouring through those receipts right now. The trick is to not wait until you can spend all day on them. Just decide to spend one hour a day. Maybe one day gather up the receipts. The next day sort them out etc etc. The same with your closets. Time to ditch all those bikini's, swim trunks and tubes of carcinogenic sun screen. The more of this crap you get done the more you free up your mind to attempt the harder more important things. (not that any one thing is more important than the other)

     Herez one of my gem stories. I wanted to start building reproduction Harley's. I figured I needed ten grand to start. So I did the logical thing. I went out and bought a thirty thousand dollar CNC machine so I could make enough money to justify starting that ten thousand dollar Harley project. That bit of stupidity set me back ten years on getting it started.

     Finally I got a little smarter and just started buying parts every month. At this point I have almost half of everything I need without even trying. I am a little behind now because I modified my plans a bit and bought a newer customized softail to tide me over until the panhead was finished. Now I am having a ball with that one also. Of course normally this would be a dead end consumer deal but since I took the time to figure out taxes a bit I have been able to turn it into a huge legal tax write off. One which I seriously needed. 

     Unfortunately the CNC machine was just a distraction from what I really wanted to do at the time. My logic got in there and reminded me that it would be a long time with the Harley project before I would see any return on the investment. Thus I talked myself into something more logical and fought it the whole way. Oh sure there were times it was a ton of fun but it took a lot of time and effort also with very little return on the investment. The extra ten grand I had to borrow to buy it took a long time to pay off. The extra 20k out of pocket took even longer to get back.

    The CNC machine was my ego coming up with a get rich quick scheme to get me the money I thought I needed. The truth is I already had the money I just had to start the project. Ego oriented ideas like this almost never work. The flow happens when you work towards what you love to do. The sooner you start planning that the sooner you can start doing that.

     Here is another secret most don't realize. Taking one step towards your real goal is ten times more satisfying and quenching than taking five hundred steps toward a goal you don't really, truly, honestly want. I don't care how much money is involved. The more steps you do take towards your real goals the more quenched you will feel no matter how small those steps are.

     Now this quenched feeling is what makes it hugely easier to put down that real goal to do something dumb...., like say your job!!! In fact the job will be like a break from your real goal so you can savor your real goal even more. Just like sleep also helps you enjoy your goals more. Hard to enjoy anything if you are half falling asleep.

     This is not much different from eating a gourmet meal. You don't gulp it down in hungry desperation and expect to enjoy it. No you savor it, put your fork down between bites, take a sip of the Apple Jack you served up, then slowly take another bite. This applies to a lot of things. Even music would be nothing with out the gaps of silence between the sounds.

The Winning Lottery Numbers

     My alien friends from the mother ship a few years back offered me the winning lottery numbers in exchange for my flame chair. They apparently know everything. I was like "yea right" where am I going to get another flame chair like that one!!! I am sure they think I am stupid or psycho or something.

     But after thinking about it for a while I decided that even if I did win the lottery I would be screwed. You see at the time I had not filed my taxes in a few years. I never owed money so was just being lazy. If I won the lottery the mob would have likely just seized my money until I filed. Then I realized I had a mountain of useless junk to sort out and get rid of before I could have moved and to win that much money I would have had to move. Plus because I actually like the crazy company I work for and the job I do I could not have just walked out on them one morning. After going over everything I needed to do before I claimed my winnings I realized it was not going to be easy. It would have taken me at least a month or two of very frantic hard work. before I could have cashed in that ticket!!! 

     Talk about torture having all that ego stroking potential sitting in a fragile little ticket while I scrambled with boring taxes and clearing out junk for two months!!! That would have been killer!!!

    Now sure if I hated my life and all the junk in it like most people I could have just paid and walked but that was not the case. I had some of the coolest impossible to find vintage stuff ever and did not want to let it go money or no money.

    But the point is the same, most of us have a ton of prep we could be doing now while we have more time than money. If we had a little more money now we would only be distracting ourselves more than we already are.

     Thus take advantage of the situation you are in now. Broke is a great time to get all those tedious things done and out of the way so that when the money comes in you are ready for party time!!!

Summary:

•      First slow dufuk down!!! Hurrying is most often just the desperate energy of losers that never gets you anywhere.

•      Then figure out how to love your job and life situation. Part of that solution is written here.

•      This will help get you into the moment you are in. The more you are "in the moment" the clearer your thinking will get.

•       Next plan out where the hell you want to "go" in life. This is where the fire starts to get going.

•      Once you have decided between Alaska or Mexico or say maybe Lawyer or artist then all you decisions in the moment start getting hugely easier. As will be sticking to those decisions.

•      This will likely mean you will have to start letting go of more and more stuff from you past. Which will be a lot easier as you now have something new you want to replace it with!!!

•      Will all this be easy..., nope..., not likely. Are push-ups easy? Nope but that does not mean being strong does not feel absolutely delicious. If you do start to feel bummed out during the process it will more than likely be for one reason. Your brain got locked into the destination again. When that happens it is always depressing. Mostly because when ever you finally do snap out of the destination all you see is your present..., apparently..., desperation. Just remember..., push ups hurt, that's just how it is. The path you are on will also hurt at times.
       The funny thing is though, once you stick to this mindset for awhile you will soon start craving the "burn" that doing push-ups or the work you need to do to get where you want to go gives you! Once that happens then you really start to pick up speed on your journey.

• Remember you only need to look at your destination every so often to make sure you are still on track and have not veered off. If you try driving your car to San Diego all while staring at San Diego pictures on your phone it will be a disaster. One car accident after the other. It will take you forever to get there. 
  

•      Also keep a close eye on how you feel. If you have a hard time waking up in the morning then it could be because you have not gotten clear enough on your dream. Or the dream you think you want is not REALLY the dream you want. Because believe me if you start walking towards your real dream you REALLY want you won't be able to stay in bed long after you first open your  eyes in the morning. Think Christmas morning as a kid vs Monday morning school....

Finally.... if you are having trouble appreciating your job for what it is check out this post....

To Hell With Gratitude