We get it… starting an online business can be scary and somewhat intimidating! And this applies 10x when there are kids in the mix.
But, surely its a little exciting too.
As a result most people get started with an outlook they think is ideal… they say… “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Surely, the worst that can happen is, it doesn’t work out. But then if you never try, you never know. Right? …
Let me share with you why living life thinking this way could lead to a life where you are feeling that you haven’t really lived at all.
Before we had kids, we had dabbled in our own businesses… never together I might add, but that never seemed to come about for some reason. We kind of just lived our lives in the same manner that everyone else was. We studied hard, got good jobs, got a couple of dogs, bought a house, partied with our friends every weekend and spent all of our extra money on…. well… who knows what on? Life I guess.
As I said, we dabbled in business but it was more for the fun of it than anything else. Any extra cash was just considered a bonus which in most instances, was spent on holidays.
Then, after getting married and not long before we decided to actually try for kids we hit a point where we started to wonder if thats all there was to life?
I remember saying to someone that we lived in typical suburbia. Each night when I drove home at 7pm, all the cars were parked in the driveways, all the porch lights were off and you could see the tv flickering through the window! I remember thinking… WTF! How did this happen? How does so many people get to the point of doing exactly the same thing as everyone else they don’t even know?? We are heading down THAT road… THAT expected road…
At the time, THAT road was appealing. Everyone else was on THAT road. In fact, we were running a little behind our closest friends. And, you know what, I was feeling over ‘lining someone else’s pocket’ so to speak, slogging my guts out each day.
So, what did I do?
I thought, stuff this, Im going to apply for a nice cushy government job! A job close to home so I can ride my bike to work. A job where I get ‘flexitime’… oooh time to go pay the bills or go to the bank if I need to. Oooh and I will actually get paid for the hours that I work! Plus, when we have kids (which I knew wasn’t too far away…. because we were on THAT road), I would get paid leave!! Yay!! What more could you ask for, right?
Well, guess how long that lasted… actually surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly, the average amount of time people were sticking with a job at that time… 2 years.
Anyway, with impeccable timing, I found myself a new job in a law firm that was awful (that’s a story for another day) and quickly moved on to a more reasonable job that paid ok and still had well.. reasonable conditions…. Yay!
Then..Wait for it…. 1 week after starting this job I fell pregnant! Oops. (I mean Yay!)
So where was I now? Well, I was pregnant with no chance of paid leave!
So, what’s the point of this story?? Well, for all those years that I was heading down THAT road, I had no plan and no real destination in mind! All I ever thought was… What’s the worst that can happen? We are fun, young, smart people. If we can’t do it… no one can!
Well, the worst that can happen is you end up falling pregnant a week into a job, leaving you with no paid leave and no job to go back to.
My point is. You have to have a destination. You have to have a plan of how you are going to get there. You have to be calculated and be prepared to put in the hard yards to design your own life, not just wait around thinking “what’s the worst that can happen?”
You know the real worst thing that could happen in my life… I could wake up one day when my kids are grown and have moved out of home and then realise I am still on THAT road. A road that leads to the same life as everyone else, the same life that didn’t seem to cut it before I had kids and certainly doesn’t cut it when its back to when we were fun, young and smart… minus the young of course. 🙂
I am determined to get off that road. And I will also note that I have never been happier than now, as I have a plan and I know my destination!
If nothing else, this is a declaration to anyone who will listen. I will fight till my last day to get off THAT road and instead enjoy a road where I live life my way and by my rules. I don’t care how many traffic jams or bumps there are on the road, my destination is now clear. I am getting off that road.
So, who’s with me?