“Security is mostly a superstition,” Helen Keller once wrote. “It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it…Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold…Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
Job security is a myth. Employees today are in a dire predicament. With developments in advanced technology, artificial intelligence and robotics, labor markets will continue to transform. This will lead to a net loss of five million jobs in the world’s leading economies by 2020, according to the World Economic Forum. The risks of employment are becoming more and more evident as conventional retirement plans fail, inflation continues to rise, and markets become riskier as everything moves faster.
Taking your destiny into your own hands and learning how to become independent through your own initiative, innovation, and tenacity, is ultimately the only security you have. As the noted essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote, “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
People often say, “I could never be an entrepreneur; it’s too risky.”
The truth is that being an employee and being controlled by market forces, your company, and your boss is far riskier.
Employers don’t provide guaranteed contracts of employment. People like guarantees, but really the best guarantee of a forty-hour-workweek is that you’ll never become financially independent. And if you do, it will be so late in life that you’ll have already forfeited much of your freedom anyway.
As the entrepreneur Randy Komisar wrote, “The most dangerous risk of all is postponing your dreams and betting you will have the time or freedom to do it later.”
The goal of the 5 Day Weekend is not security, but freedom. In the security mindset, you have neither freedom nor security. But in the freedom mindset, you achieve and enjoy both.
In his classic novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote, “I hate a Roman named Status Quo! Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantee, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that—shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
I want you to give yourself permission to shake the tree and alter the trajectory of your life forever.
In my next post, I will explore some of the caveats of 5 Day Weekend – such as its not being a get-rich-quick scheme. In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you about your goals: are you seeking freedom from the life you have to build a life you love? Thank you for sharing.
Secure your copy of the “5 Day Weekend” book. 5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich with Purpose [Nik Halik & Garrett Gunderson]
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