The act of quitting means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting – whether a job or a habit – means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams. – Pico Iyer, British-born essayist and novelist

If business is your thing, there are two types of folks out there:

1. The Masses: The person who is content with the 9-to-5 lifestyle, earning a consistent paycheck, working for someone else (low ambiguity, trades time for money).

2. The Non-Conforming Entrepreneur: The person who cannot be contained in a 9-to-5 lifestyle that no amount of money, perks (free bad coffee and Friday Jeans Day!), and “stable” future it offers will ever keep one of these creative, energetic and brilliant minds (high ambiguity, trading time for money is a concept we highly dislike).

Which one are you?

There are benefits to be gained from either avenue and I can tell you that I’ve done both. What I’ve learned is I am someone that cannot be managed and dislike corporate bureaucracy, an insane amount of red tape and micromanagement, water cooler gossip and incompetent people that seemingly can never get fired. You may feel the same way too.

This is not to say all corporations are evil, out to get you and should be done away with immediately.

What this is saying is people have a choice of which path they want to take in life.

Do you want to follow the masses, affording yourself an even-keeled, average, run-of-the-mills life? Yes, you will most likely see your next paycheck, the one that comes every 2 weeks. But what you give in return is your life. Never forget that.

Or do you want freedom, a life that will oftentimes be more ambiguous than not but will afford you so much more flexibility, autonomy and will never have a cap on the experiences you can take away from life nor the money you can potentially earn?

Many of you who are reading this will say, Well yes, dammit! I want freedom!

But then you sit there in your gray, dust-filled and paper-filled cube, staring at the clock on your desk phone or on your computer, and count down the minutes until you run out of there at 5:00 p.m. sharp. Just to come home, collapse onto the couch and escape into a fantasy-reality that is your TV. And then the vicious cycle repeats itself. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year.

You’re scared, but so was I.

You can quit all this, you know. You can seriously alter the course of your entire future based upon a most freeing and scary decision you will probably ever make in life.

I cannot tell you what you should do with yourself if and when you quit your day job. That is up to you, and only you, to decide.

Listen to your heart. What are your passions and dreams in life? What have you always wanted to do/be but never had the time to do/be it because you were so busy doing work you hated?

What I can help you is with the psychology behind quitting your day job. Giving you ample inspiration, real-life experience and know-how from someone that did it not just once, but twice within a span of 2 years (both with major corporations in the U.S.).

You’re reading this because you want something.

You read this blog because you want something. You want to learn how to be minimalist from someone who is living and breathing that type of lifestyle. You don’t come back to read this if you realized I was just a minimalist wannabe who don’t practice what I preach and secretly goes shopping every weekend buying things which I don’t need.

You read this blog also because you want something more from your life. More happiness, more freedom, more peace, more authenticity.

Well, guess what? I want you to quit your day job.

Quit. But only if it is something you know you should not be doing. And deep down within your soul, you already know the answer.

The answer, for most, is you never wanted this life for yourself. You look in the mirror and see nothing but an empty shell of your former self. Dark, hollowed eyes match the dark, hollowed soul that once was a vibrant, enthusiastic one, looking forward to all of life’s gifts. But now, you just wish it to be over. You go to work but you’re never really fully there. You come back home, and yet again, you’re never really fully there.

What has happened? What is going on?

Face your dreams.

Why have you ignored the broken dreams which you’ve so adamantly crushed in your very own hands? Do you say it’s because this is what life dealt you? A poor hand? Just bad luck?

Or do you justify to yourself, saying all the while, that this is the only way to a decent retirement and life thereafter?

But what if your life ends sooner than when you’re ready for retirement? You cannot outline the course of your life, as much as you try. No amount of 1-year plans, 3-year plans, 5-year or 10-year plans will ever account for the sudden happenings of life as it was meant to occur.

A car accident. A skiing trip gone horribly wrong. A malicious cancer that envelopes your entire being and deprives you of the abundant years of your life you should have been left with.

Sure, these are physical deaths. A death is a death. In the end, you will die.

You’re slowly killing yourself.

But do you forget that your emotional and spiritual self needs to be attended to as well as your physical body?

You’re killing yourself by being in a place in which it pains you to stay in. You are already dying, day by day, every minute you stay in a job you hate.

Don’t continue on a self-destructing course just because everyone says you should. They are all headed for death too. They just want company when they drive off the cliff. To bring you with them in the pits of daily heart-wrenching misery. Misery loves company, right?

Well, they’re all wrong.

They do not know what makes you come alive. And frankly, they don’t know what it feels like to be alive anymore. They do not know what makes you want to beat your head against the wall, to cry out in incredible agony over a beautiful life unfulfilled. They simply do not know and will never understand what it feels like to be dying like you’re dying. A life in which you want so badly to change, to get out of, to escape its icy grips of an ill-fated seal of premature death.

You feel yourself dying. I know I did. So much so that I had to change something and it had to be drastic. It had to be now. And it had to be done.

Now, you’re faced with 2 options:

1. Stay on course. You continue on this miserable course out of irrational fear that should you do something out of the norm, you will be scorned, laughed at, ridiculed and never accepted back into society ever again.

2. Exit immediately. You immediately make the quickest exit coming up and alter your destination forever.

You choose.

But remember, in the end, it is not the things we did in our lives we regret the most. It is the things we did not do which pains us upon sudden memory of a precious life unlived and unfulfilled.

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A hard-slap-to-your-face-pee-your-pants-funny eBook I’ve recently read is Ash Ambirge’s You Don’t Need a Job, You Need Guts. This book will kick your ass and make you do incredible things with your life. Go get a copy of it today if you know what’s good for you.

Let’s crank up the excitement and freedom in your life, shall we?