I was with one of my oldest friends just the other day – she called me because she wanted to talk as she had come to a very important realisation.  On the surface she has it all, great job with a good salary, the recognition and respect from her colleagues, manager and company, a good career progression and great prospects.  But, and this is the biggie – She realised that in having the great job/career with a good salary etc. that her employer just about owned her life.  She was a fully paid up member of the rat race and now she realised this she wanted out.

She no longer felt she had control over what happened in her life & because she was working such long hours she felt like she lived at work.  She no longer had the time or energy to enjoy her money, she did not get to spend quality time at home being just herself or even with her family.  She was expected to not only do her own job but then had to often cover for colleagues, or had to drive long distances to attend meetings (in her own time) or ended up spending the precious time she managed to get at home planning something else for ‘work’. 

In short the money she earned very quickly began to look like a pretty duff deal for all the hours she spent working jolly hard.  This realisation did not happen overnight it was more like a slow dawning then one day she saw the big picture.  When she did see it she felt submerged a bit like she was drowning and did not know how to swim to the surface because of the weight of the water on top of her and the weights were pulling down at her feet. This was the point she knew she had to change & she said to me ‘I am ready to change because this is my life & I want to begin to enjoy it and own it as mine!’.

I know that this is no isolated case as every single week I speak to people who are now ready to move their lives to a place where they ‘own’ it & ‘enjoy’ it – they want to quit the rat race.  By taking that first decision to change the hardest part has been done because the mindset has been changed at a very deep level and the energy to commit to change is now there. Once the realisation hits then there is no going back and you just cannot wait to move forwards to the change and all that it brings with it.

Brigitte Mehr is an internet Marketing success coach specialising in Marketing Training & Education

Quitting the rat race was never an option for my parents generation.  My father worked for the same company for over 40 years and this was not unusual.  In their day people stayed loyal to the same company and worked seemingly happily for many years.  The fact that someone else seemed to own their life was an accepted fact of life. They knew what was expected of them and they happily complied.  After the years of the war with all the scarcity and lack this created they were grateful for a good steady job, a salary and 20 days paid holiday per year.  They and so many others felt a genuine loyalty to the company that provided them with this bounty that their parents never had.  

I never remember hearing either my parents or their friends talking about  being ‘sick of the rat race’ or wanting to leave the rat race they just talked about years of service and genuinely looked forward to the pension at the end.

However, each generation moves on from the last and what was the norm for our parents now looks positively prehistoric to us.  Our generation has been limping on the tail end of this system for a number of years. 

We have broken free of the constraints that our parents gratefully accepted. Yet growing beneath this ‘freedom’ has still been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction, a feeling of a lack of fulfilment that slowly germinating and growing.  It is not necessarily a feeling that can be identified and ‘labelled’ but a slow and insidious movement gathering momentum. 

It begins as a feeling of knowing that there has to be more to our lives but at the same time a feeling of helplessness because we know changes need to be made but have no idea how or where and this creates  fear.  A fear because we earn money from  ‘jobs’ to pay  bills and support our loved ones and the very thought of not being able to honour these commitments is often enough to send us scurrying back to the office on Monday morning banishing all thoughts of change – for a while at least.  Then the feeling returns and each time the voice gets a little bit louder and a bit louder until one day it is shouting in your ear and you can no longer ignore it.  

The rat race is a controlling machine creating a population who are generally too fearful and too exhausted and too dependent on it to find the energy and courage to break free. However, let’s not forget that some people would not want to break free as they feel comfortable and safe in their lives and routine.

However, the recession we are currently experiencing has become a catalyst for thousands of people  to actually break those rat race bonds.  Admittedly the initial decision to break the bonds may not have been theirs.  However, this can be seen as the golden opportunity to assess their lives and look at what they truly do want to be doing with their lives.  They were probably sitting wishing they could leave the rat race when they were employed and now this has been forced upon them it feels scary and out of control which is understandable as by being a victim of the recession the decision was made for them.  Now they get the time to sit and really think, and ask themselves the question do they really want to go back into the dependence, routine, drudgery  of a 9 to 5 job again or is this the chance they had been praying for to sick of the rat race forever. 

Golden opportunities are not always initially presented as this in the first instance, sometimes we need to look at the situation we find ourselves in and find the opportunity sitting there waiting to be discovered.  This is the opportunity they deep down wanted where they could actually take the reins and take control for what may actually be the very first time?

Taking back that responsibility for you own life and fortunes is the first step to becoming an entrepreneur.  The rat race is no longer accepted to be the norm because the age of the entrepreneur and free enterprise is here. 

There are now more people than at any other time searching for a way to earn their own living.  Home based businesses are booming and with the age of the internet and the online global market place it has never been easier to take back control and create your own life.  Working 9 to 5 in an office is rapidly being replaced by flexible and part time hours working from home. 

There is no recession on the internet because that is the preserve of the big stupid companies that we allowed to control our lives for far too long.  The internet is alive, dynamic and constantly evolving in a way old fashioned dinosaur companies never could. 

The opportunity to create the life you maybe dreamed about whilst sitting in your rat race office is here and you only have to take action to claim it as yours.