Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 80 of Working towards our purpose. And in

today's episode, we are going to talk about the truth of

leaving your corporate job. But before we get into that, we're

going to have our check in. So just take a moment and

check in with yourself and I'm going to do the same.

All right, so hopefully you got a second to see how

you're feeling today before we get into the episode. For

me, I'm feeling excited,

feeling grateful, doing a lot of

reflecting today. So today's episode,

the truth about leaving your corporate job. Today marks my. As I'm

recording, this marks my fifth year of leaving corporate.

And yeah, I've just been doing a lot of thinking about how

I used to be back then. Seems like a

past life and how I'm feeling now and what I'm doing now

and what I get to do. So feeling grateful for that.

Also a little nervous about this episode. I think

I did a lot of planning to try to get it right.

So, yeah, we're here now, so planning's over. So

time to get into the episode. So, yeah, it's been five years

since I left my corporate job and I was working in

the military defense contracting industry.

Worked for two major corporations in the state that I live, Connecticut.

And that's what I went to school for, mechanical engineering. And

then after 2020 of sitting home

doing my side business and my corporate job for a whole year in my

apartment, not leaving, I finally made the decision to

leave and to try to pursue other things. And,

yeah, this episode's going to be

about how I've changed, I guess, since leaving

corporate. And. And the negative things that corporate, I think could

incur on somebody who's there. And I do want to

have a little disclaimer about this episode first, that

I believe everybody has their own path and that's up to you to decide.

So I don't want to make it seem like

if you don't work, if you work a corporate job, then you're a bad person.

I don't believe that at all. I just believe for me that this is true.

And I can only speak from my experience. And,

yeah, I'm going to try to not talk too negative, but also

sort of talking about the truths of what corporate life did to me.

So, yeah, if you're not into, like, if you're not on the fence

of thinking about your corporate job and maybe getting out of it, then maybe this

episode's not for you. But yeah, from here on out, not going to be making

any more excuses about Hating on corporate.

But yeah, I just want to draw that line because I'm not diminishing people that

do. I don't want it to come. That's not. My intention is to

diminish people that make other choices than me because we all make our own

choices and everything's different for all of us.

But this is hopefully meant

my intention with the episode is to inspire possibly somebody who

is on the fence, who is me five years

ago, six years ago, when I was afraid to make a change and

sort of just confused by everything I was experiencing at corporate.

So hopefully it'll be helpful. But I do

have like four reasons that I want to get into

as to why I think corporate life, the corporate lifestyle,

holds you back. But before we get into that, I do want to be like,

not just talk about the positives of leaving corporate, but also what are the

hard things I've experienced since leaving a corporate job? And

we'll get into that first because I think the list is shorter.

But yeah, obviously not a steady paycheck. That's something that's

difficult. It took me a long time to

be okay with not valuing

my life in a monetary sense, which is what

normal corporate job intends on

not intends. But that's kind of like how you value a corporate job. How much

money do you make? And making more money is a good thing and making less

money is a bad thing. So I kind of had to do a lot of

work of reworking my belief system around money

and not valuing myself with money. Certainly made less money.

Since I've left, I think

something else to discuss and to talk about is

I think maybe there's a romanticized version of having your own business

and thinking you can work your own hours and work whenever you want. And

though that may be true, I think you certainly have to work

very hard first to get to that point. So it's not

about working less hard.

Certainly, I guess the intention for me would be over time to work less hard.

But I think the difference is that you get to work hard

for the things that you believe in and the things that you like

and the things that you're passionate about. Whereas at a corporate job, you have to

work hard for somebody who's telling you what to do. And that never really aligned

with me. I never really liked being told what to do.

So for me, it was hard to do things that I was asked and to

not understand why I was doing them and then to also be told to work

hard at those things that I didn't understand. So that was difficult

in the corporate world. But it doesn't mean once you leave, you're not going to

have to work hard. You still have to work hard, certainly.

So working hard. What was the other thing I said?

Right. So not steady income. You still have to work hard. And then the

third, I think hard part about leaving corporate is the

benefits thing. It's. And you do get,

when you're at a corporate job and you have a steady paycheck

full time, you get benefits usually, which is something at least

when I was there five years ago, you didn't really have to think about. You

just contributed part of your paycheck and you didn't have to worry about

benefits. You just had this plan that covered most things. And I've

been, knock on wood, pretty healthy. So I don't have any major

medical needs other than therapy. So I never really had

to worry too much about that when I was working my corporate job. But then

when I left. You do have to think about getting benefits by yourself.

So it is annoying. You do some cases have to

pay more for benefits or pay what seems like a lot for benefits,

but I think it's just part of the sacrifice that

you make for the lack of comfort.

So it's not impossible. Like, like there's, in my

state, there's Connecticut, there's a state program where you can

go and like say how much money you make and if you don't make that

much money, they help you out and it's not as expensive. But I think

benefits in general, just for everybody, even who people who are working corporate jobs now,

it's, it's really tough and it's kind of just the climate that

we're in. Hopefully one day that will get better, but I think

it's just a necessary evil if you decide that benefits

are for you. Of course you can go the not

benefit route and not have benefits. But I guess I look

at benefits sort of like insurance. Like, you know, if I were to get into

a major accident or something, I want to make sure that I'm covered and

not going to like hit bankruptcy. But that's my philosophy, not going to get into

that. But benefits are also tough. So those are the hard things.

Having to fend for yourself on benefits, not steady

income. And you still have to work hard. But that's not really a negative

thing, I don't think. But I just want to clear any misconception.

So. Okay, let's get into the meat of this episode,

which is these four I've really tried to Condense

all the negativity that I got from a corporate job into

four categories. Four things that I think

is really hard was hard for me in corporate

life. So first thing

is the biggest and easiest. It's really hard to be. I found it

really hard to be my authentic self in that setting

when I was in my corporate jobs. There's a lot of,

like, homogenous culture, and you want. Everybody's got to kind

of do the same thing. And usually I was like, grouped with people

in a cubicle. There was four people or a room. And

I don't know, it was weird that all those four people kind of just

did the same things. And one person would buy a car, and then another person

would buy a car, and one person would get into this, and then the same

person would get into this. And I don't know. Not that that's a bad thing,

I guess, but it certainly didn't really

encourage individuality and being different. And

much like in school and growing up, you're sort of made

fun of for being different or for wanting something different or

liking something different or acting in a different way. So that was

something that I always really struggled with. I never really fit in.

And I wrestled with the idea of like,

oh, well, maybe the way that I want to do things isn't good enough.

If everybody else here is doing it this way, maybe I should just be doing

it that way. So that always kind of left me in a state of confusion,

and I didn't enjoy that feeling very much.

And since leaving, I've been given more freedom to try to explore who I am

and to try to find who my authentic self is.

And I'm still learning that and I'm still working towards

that. But I feel like I'm able to do that a lot more freely

now that I am not in the bounds of a

corporate culture.

And along with that independent thinking, there's been so many times

where I thought about a problem in a different way at my corporate job

and it was discouraged or looked

down upon or being like, I would always get the response, just do it. This

is the way we do it. Do it this way and be quiet. Go

to your desk and just do the job. So thinking independently

was also kind of discouraged, which is kind of crazy to me

because I don't know, why

wouldn't we use our own individual minds to come up with problems

creatively? But yeah, anyways, independent thinking, not

really encouraged. Again, my experiences.

But another thing that I think is really

problematic in corporate culture is not

speaking up when you see something wrong or when you think something

is wrong. And that kind of brings me to

the other point of this power dynamic. There's always a power dynamic

between your boss and the employees and the boss

and the boss's boss. And I think that encourages you to

not speak up when you think that something's wrong

because you're always afraid of losing your job because of that power dynamic. You're afraid

of making somebody mad, pissing somebody off, and

not getting a raise. And it's just,

it encourages you to just be quiet and to not use your voice. And

just one example I think I've talked about before, There was a case

where I worked with somebody who was

very not fitting in with the group. And they

made fun of him all the time when he wasn't there. And one day he

was outside on the phone crying and they were all making fun of him and

nobody said anything. And I thought it was ridiculous that

they were making fun of him for being hurt. And it

was so hard for me to say something to my boss that

that was like a kind of a wake up call for me. I was like,

wow, it was so hard for me to say, hey, I think what you're doing

is not right. That, like, I don't know, it just

shows the pressure that you're under to just fit in and to just keep

quiet and do what you're supposed to. And. And, you know, I think

in that specific case, when they were making fun of this kid, the other

coworkers, maybe they didn't want to, but they just, you know, kind of

egged the boss on because he was doing it. So it just creates this,

like, group think that I think is not helpful, especially if you're

trying to identify problems and you're, you know,

there's systematic issues with companies and, you know, I think

that's sometimes why you see like these huge catastrophic

failures is because there's a lot of yes men. And if there's a boss

that's really egotistical and nobody wants to say no to him,

then it can just create lots of issues down the line.

So, yeah, I think that part of that is

just the fear of there's somebody above me that's more powerful and I

don't want to upset them. So that whole thought process,

I think, is really problematic. And I never really agreed with that.

So that's another major, I think, hindrance on trying to be your

authentic self. And then, let's

see. So a couple more things on

this topic. I think I touched on it before,

but just almost being shamed for being different,

which, I don't know. That's so odd to me now to

shame somebody for being different than you instead of being

intrigued and celebrating differences. So that's,

again, problematic. I always felt like my voice

didn't matter, so that was pretty tough in trying to find my own voice. If

I felt my voice didn't matter at all,

then I almost treated my own voice that way that, oh,

whatever my thoughts are, they don't matter. And I certainly have a. A

history of that. So overcoming that was pretty difficult

and in my case, just not possible in a corporate job.

So that was really something that I had to work

once I left to try to overcome. And then the last thing

is just mental health. I think mental health is being talked about more

in corporate settings, but I think it's still such a taboo of,

oh, this person's taking a mental health day. Okay.

There's just a lot of, like, not seriousness around

it. At least there was when I was there. You know, I guess I haven't

been there in five years, so I have seen positive changes,

at least outwardly. So I'm not sure what it feels like in there anymore.

But. But I do think that it's. It's really

not encouraged to think about your mental health, and

I think that that's a bad thing. So.

Second thing, the second reason that I think corporate life holds

you back is that you're always living in this constant state of fear.

And I kind of got into this with the last one, but just

that power dynamic, you're always in a state of fear of trying

to not do something wrong or trying to not upset your boss, so that way

you can keep your raise. And it just.

For me, I was always in a constant state of, oh, I hope I'm not

doing something wrong. Because even if you were doing something

that you thought was right, another person can come along and be like, no, you're

doing this wrong. You should be doing it this way. And there was just never

any sense as to why we were doing things

I felt. And, yeah, it just kind of keeps you in this constant state

of fear. It keeps you in this fight or flight mode. It keeps you anxious.

I remember, even if I did nothing all day long but sit in my

cubicle, just sitting there, nervous that somebody was going to come

yell at you for not working, makes you exhausted at the end of the day,

Even if you're trying to do something else after you get out of work,

it's like sitting there Tensed up

all day makes you exhausted by the time you get home.

And that was something that I was always kind of dealing with.

The fear of money I think really comes up. There's this

idea that everything revolves around money. I remember the last

job that I was in, everybody was just trying to make their

401s the biggest they could possibly make them because that

means they could retire two years earlier or five years earlier or whatever it

was. And there was just this constant state of

oh no, the market's down now I can't retire as soon as I thought I

wanted to. And just the fear of not having enough, not

hoarding enough money and that's always,

I don't know, I don't think that's a helpful state to live in, to

live in a state of fear. And I think the biggest thing is

just having that fear present makes you

closed up. And it made me feel closed up.

So. You know something that I was thinking about today as I was

reflecting about how I felt five years ago versus now, I feel way more

open. And I know that's a broad term, but

now, and I'll try to articulate it now, I feel

that there's anything that I can go do if I want to do it. And

I know there's going to be people who don't think that it's

true. But I believe that if I want to

work on something, I can figure out how to do it if I want it

bad enough. And back then I, I remember just

being so caught up in not thinking I

could do anything. I didn't believe in myself when I went to leave

corporate. My side job or

my side business that I started that I eventually went full time or tried to

go full time with was basically the only other

thing that I knew how to do. And I

didn't think of anything else. I didn't think I could leave my corporate job and

start something completely new. I didn't think I can leave my corporate job and

pursue a passion music that I was into. I thought

that I had to

it just closed minded thinking, only thinking that there was one option.

And now I think

I don't think like that. I think way more

openly. I can think like I can go make a business

with fermenting vegetables or I can go make a business with

music or I could go make a business doing content stuff.

And I feel more capable at what I can do.

And I think that's only possible because

I left that environment, that corporate environment of

just constantly living in fear. And I think

Living with less fear makes you more open, and it makes you more

willing to see possibilities, to see connections, to see the stuff that's right in

front of you, to see what you're good at. Yeah,

I think. I don't know if I articulated that very well, but

I think just being more open, feeling more open, feeling like I

have more possibilities, which is a good feeling to have

because we all have so many things we're good at and so many things we

could do if we pursued them. So, yeah,

that's the second one is living in fear. I live in a lot less

fear now that I have left that job, and I've had time to.

To think about what that means. So the third

thing that I think corporate jobs steal from us is our creativity.

I've been so much more creative since I've left my corporate job.

I never released any music up until

I think 2023, which is still a couple of years after leaving my corporate job.

But I have more time for it now. I have more

time to be creative. And I emphasize how important that is to

me. And not only just creative

things like music and writing, but also just thinking more

creatively. Like I said earlier, I think difference in

thought isn't really valued in a corporate environment. And

that leads you to be less creative. It leads you to think, well, we have

to do it this way or we have to do it this way. Very black

and white. And since

leaving, I've been able to focus more on creativity and put

more energy into my creativity. And

it's been something that's taken me pretty far, I think. And now I have this

opinion that creativity is such a

valuable thing. It's one of the things that humans

are given as

this talent, this inherent skill. We are all creative. I know people

who think that they're not creative. It's this amazing thing that we're able to do,

but so many of us don't or aren't allowed to be

creative or to have creative expression. And, yeah,

it's like almost magical creativity. Like, if I'm sitting down and

I have nothing, I start with nothing. I pick up my guitar, 30 minutes later,

I have this song that I just created that I pulled out of somewhere. And

yeah, I think my opinion of creativity has changed.

I don't think of us as being good at creativity or

not being good at creativity. I think of creativity as this endless well

of goodness that you can tap into

if you allow yourself. But when I was in my corporate job, I

never allowed myself to really tap into that I did a little bit of music

stuff here and there, but I mostly

turned off my creativity valve, where now it's like I'm opening it, it's wide

open, and I can have ideas all the time and I can be

creative. And, yeah, it's hard to value

creativity, I think, because it doesn't necessarily have a

tangible good or

monetary value. So it's hard to value creativity.

But, yeah, it's so important to me now, and it wasn't back

then. So I think that being in a

corporate environment kind of steals your creativity from you a bit.

So that's the third thing. And then the fourth thing

that I think is

corporate environments, corporate life kind of steals from you is your

time. And this one's the last

big one that. It's just. I think back

now to how much time I spent sitting in a desk pretending like I was

working and trying to make the work that they gave me

last. And I don't know, it didn't seem like

much at the time, I guess, but 40 hours a week

is such a huge amount of time. And I never had a job

where I needed 40 hours to do my job, but I had to be there

for 40 hours. And that's just

such a disconnect. And I think time is one of our most

valuable things. We can't get it back.

We're not promised another 10 years. We're not promised

anything. Right now is all we have. And

the idea of postponing your happiness until retirement or

postponing your freedom until retirement till 40 years down

the road is just. I really don't believe in that. I really

don't believe in hoarding a bunch of money and then

saving it and then having fun when you retired, because that's not promised.

You don't know that you'll be there. I mean, how many times have you heard

a story of somebody working a job and first year of

retirement, they died out of nowhere. And not to be morbid, but

that's a possibility. And I don't know, I don't want to

hope that how I am now will be in the

future so then I can enjoy myself in the future. It's like we can enjoy

ourselves now. We can do the things that we care about now. We can put

energy into what we believe in now. So,

yeah, the idea of the corporate job, everything's always postponed. It's like I have to

be at my desk between 9 to 5, 8 to 4, or whatever.

I have to postpone everything. And I was always finding myself postponing stuff. And

I think the time where this

really sort of was right in

my face of like, oh, I have my time back now

is something that's irreplaceable was when I interviewed my brother

the second time and he was talking about how

when our aunt was in the hospital passing away,

he was at his corporate job and he was just like so frustrated that he

was stuck at his desk. And I was able to spend time with her,

which ended up being like her few last weeks, which we didn't know at the

time. But because I had a flexible schedule, I was able to spend time with

her. And when he relayed that to me during that podcast,

I was like, wow, I almost took that for granted

that I have that luxury of time now. And

what else is more important than the people that we care about and loved

ones? And I don't know, I've had experiences and

heard stories of people not getting time off for funerals and

just crazy stuff like that and not getting time off because,

you know, I don't know, there's just nothing more important than people

and the people that we love. So

like, I don't know, it felt like my corporate job was

always more important, like I always had to be there regardless. And I

don't have that anymore. I have so much more flexibility to

go and do the things that I, that I find important. And

if I need to not work one day, I can, I can do that.

It's not a perfect world. And sure, sometimes you have part

time jobs that get in the way, but that's the thing. I think with my

part time jobs, I don't value them as high as I used

to value a corporate job. It's not my life. It's a way to

accrue money. But if I get fired tomorrow, that's

fine, I'll go find another one. And I don't have this, there isn't

this power over me like there was with a corporate job.

With a corporate job, it's your only income, it's your everything. And

to have to not be chained by that

anymore is such a

feeling of freedom, I think for me. And

yeah, I'm just forever grateful of that. And

having your time is, is really important. And

I guess I'll leave that at that. So those are the four, the four things

that I, you know, this is my rant of an episode of why I think

corporate jobs are bad. Corporate life is detrimental to

us. But again, this is my opinion, this is my experiences.

You know, I don't, I don't think anybody that doesn't agree with me is

a bad person or anything like that. So. But in conclusion,

I guess just to run over the fourth reasons that your job

is holding you back, your corporate job is holding you back. The first one being

it's hiding your authentic self. You don't feel free to have your

authenticity. Second is you're living in a constant state of fear. At

least I was. Third is stealing your creativity.

And fourth is taking all of your time. And

in conclusion, I think I want to make a couple more points that I have

on my notes here. Yes.

So I think the last thing I want to say is if I'm trying to

speak to somebody who's in that environment and wanting

to leave, I think the biggest thing I can say five

years later is that the hardest thing by far

was just making the decision and leaving. And

it didn't feel like that when I was in it. It felt like the hardest

thing was like, how am I going to make money? How am I going to

have a business or support myself? But really,

just making the actual change was the hardest thing. And

sure, I've had lots of ups and downs, and they were all

learning lessons. They weren't a negative thing. It helped me

learn more of what I want to do with my life, what I want to

do with my time, how I value my life,

finding out what my voice is. So it hasn't

been negative. So the hardest thing was actually

just making the decision to leave and doing it. So

I wouldn't suggest making rash decisions, but

sometimes it's like, if you can just get yourself to do

the thing, then everything else kind of becomes a little bit easier. So

once I got myself to just leave the environment, everything

changed. My perspectives on things changed. Like,

nothing was the same again. So the brain that I was using when I was

in corporate, it was like all those thoughts were not even

valid because I didn't know what it was like to leave yet. And

by leaving and not being in that environment, it opened

a lot more possibilities up. So I think

that it seems overwhelming. It feels overwhelming. But

focusing in on just what can I do to actually make that

change, I think is the most important part and then kind of

facing the rest of it when you're. When you're there and.

But yeah, you know, that's my opinion. And I think that that's what I would

tell my old self. That's what I would tell my, like,

petrified version of me, like, quitting my corporate job over the phone

during COVID I would Say, like, this is the hardest part right now. This

is why it feels so scary, is because this is the hardest part. And then

once you make this decision to pivot your life down a different path,

it becomes more joyful. And

not to say that there's not going to be hard times, there will be. But

you're doing it for a reason now. Whereas when you're in

a job working for somebody else and you don't understand the reason why you're doing

something, that's just the biggest sense of

detachment from yourself. And

yeah, I just. I do believe that. And

I had one other note here, but I don't want to get to it, so

I think I'll end it there. And hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully it

wasn't too preachy or ranty. I tried to

not look at it as like a complaining thing, but more of like, how

are these things that are making me want to complain? Like, what's the actual reason

as to why I think it's bad? So hopefully I was able to articulate that

well and hopefully it was helpful. Last

thing I'll say, I forgot to mention in last episode, I have a

free guide that you can download with the link in the

show notes to help you soften your inner critic. Because I feel

like that's been another big lesson

that I've learned is how hard I am on myself. Since leaving that

corporate job, I've realized how hard I am on myself and how that

holds me back. So if you're struggling with that, hopefully this guide can help you.

But I'll leave it at that. I will see you next

week. And yeah, I

think this episode went kind of long. I have no idea what time I'm at

here, but thank you for listening. Thanks for sticking with it and

I will see you on another episode real soon. Take care.

Sa.