Jonathan Fields makes a great point in this post at Awake@TheWheel...
But, here’s the thing. I’ve been asked a bunch of times, lately, how smart it is to walk away from the “safe option” of working for someone else to start your own business or even begin to build some kind of independent career or leveragable reputation on the side in this economy.
Safe…SAFE? I want to scream, “Are you out of your mind?!”
Since when is the safe option handing over the keys to your career to someone else and hoping that, in challenging times, they’ll make the tough decisions in “your” best interest, rather than in “their” best interest?
I am joining Jonathan in his primal scream. As he says, he’s not just talking about going it alone. He’s talking about taking personal responsibility for the direction of your career, rather than blindly accepting that someone else calls the shots.
We’ve repeatedly been called brave* for some of the decisions we have made over the past few years. Allow me to set the record straight. We are not brave, because these decisions are IN NO WAY RISKY:
- Having a baby at home rather than in a hospital
- Empowering a child to learn without attendance at school
- Parenting in whatever manner is required to keep parent and child happy and healthy
- Saying ‘no’ to exams, accreditation and employment that is unfulfilling or joyless – and encouraging children to do the same
I speak from experience. I am not brave, which is precisely why, to modify Jonathon’s analogy, I don’t want to take risks by handing over the keys to my life and that of my child. I also know that despite what others would have me believe, I don’t have to. This gives me a significant advantage over the majority of people who are taught – and now teach - that this is life’s inevitability. Fuck inevitability. Passion, dedication, application, persistence, self-belief and continual, glorious learning; these things are required. Bravery? Not so much.
If everybody else is doing it, then it’s time to start asking serious questions about whether it’s really such a smart thing for you to be doing.
*Retrospectively, we’re also now often described as lucky. You can only imagine how we feel about that.
