82,200 Hours. Your Job Or Your Life.

How much would I have to pay you for 83,200 hours of your life? 

What could I offer you right now in order for you to give me that amount of time from your existence?

What could I offer you to hand over to me nearly 5 million minutes of your time?

What if I offered you one million dollars? Two?  How about three?

Here are the conditions of the offer:

• You must spend these 83,200 doing something that you don’t (really) like doing.

• In addition to these hours, you must also give me your true life’s purpose. In exchange for my money, you have to give up the possibility of you ever reaching your truest aspirations that are in essence the core of your identity.

• You will have a 100% chance of ultimately regretting your life once you are on your deathbed.

• You will be guaranteed to live with envy of others for the rest of your life.

• You will be guaranteed to have unwanted stress for the rest of your life.

• In addition to all of the above conditions, one day out of your week (Monday) will be terrible and you will dread it. So that means roughly 50,000 hours out of your life that you will never, ever, look forward to.

• I get to tell you what to do during the duration of these 83,200 hours, and you will have no choice but to do what I say, or the deal is off.

• Lastly, when you are done with your 83,200 hours. I get to take back 40% of the money I gave you and Ill spend it on what ever I want. I may even spend it on things that are in exact opposition to your core values and beliefs.

Do we have a deal?

Sign right here __________x

I think many of you by now have caught on to my analogy. If you are working at a job you really don’t like, just for money to spend on things you really don’t need, I think you are trading your life away, for peanuts.

An offer of 1.5 million dollars, along with all of the stipulations it comes with, is based on a calculation of 40 hours per week and a base salary of 50 thousand per year for 40 years. This, to me represents the timeline of a young adult working until they reach retirement. There are many people who will never make that kind of money, yet they still accept these terms and conditions.

Now this is not to say that jobs in and of them selves are bad. I have a job; for now, I have to have a job. However, I don’t plan on having one for the rest of my life. There are a select few people out there who are in a career that is truly engaging for them and is aligned with their highest purposes in life, but to me, those people are few and far in between. What I see mostly are people who go to work every day, for the majority of their life, and they have no idea why. You see them driving to on the freeway to work every Monday. Their faces are all scrunched up; you can see the agony in their expression. They have to get jacked up on coffee in the morning, and have a couple drinks when they get off, just to cope with it all. Whether it’s the corporate paper shuffler, who deep down knows what they do for a living has no meaning, or the fast food worker who cant see any other way to make a living than flipping burgers, the expression is the same. I think it’s sad, incredibly tragically sad, that many people trade their mystical, abundant, wondrous lives away, for money.  A piece of paper; its actually a piece of paper. The meaning given to it is all based on a collective agreement we made on its importance. 

Now I know what some of you are thinking; I can hear the excuses coming from a mile away:

• How am I going to support myself?

• How am I going to take care of my family?

• People who daydream all day aren’t practical.

• You have to be realistic.

Some of you don’t even realize how you sound. You should trade in your bed for a coffin because you’re already dead.

I have a solution for all of your excuses and all of the obstacles you see ahead of you. I have a way to get you unstuck from the illusory trap that you’ve created for yourself, and for your life.

Think.

That’s all.

Think.

You say all of these circumstances are in your way, but have you ever actually even thought to a possible way out of it all? I’m not talking about a passing thought; a wishful thought or a flimsy idea of wanting better. I’m talking about sitting with yourself, alone, in silence, and really thinking about what you want to do with your life, what you are truly passionate about. It may not come to you at first but I truly believe that all we are, all that reality is, is an accumulation and manifestation of our own thoughts. What’s real is only real to you, because you’re the one who thinks it is. You don’t need to be smarter, more talented, or more gifted than anyone else to be a success. As long as you have a purpose in life, something that you know you are destined to do, and you achieve it, you are successful. 

If you could ask a genie for the best life you could have, not a perfect one, but the best one, one where you get to live out your days doing what you want to do, what would it be like?

Would the steps toward reaching that life involve anything that you are doing right now? If the answer is no, maybe you should be thinking about what you need to be doing to turn that into a yes.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer or a speaker; I love expressing my ideas and myself. Writing this article is one small step on a journey that hopefully leads to the life that I’ve always dreamed of. What steps are you going to take?