Epiphany For The Day

I feel that at least once a week I have an epiphany: some idea I feel is so profound that it will change my life. I tell friends and family, and I think they will be amazed at how profound my thoughts are, but after about a week or two I forget about the epiphany. Anyhow, my epiphany for this week’s is this: I, like most other people, lack control of my life. I know, it’s a strange concept, especially since we humans have free will and the ability to make decisions, but I firmly believe that a large portion of the humanity is bred to accept the fact that they don’t have control over their lives and not even notice.

Two events occurred this week that made me realize how little control I have over my life. The first event occurred at the doctor’s office. While sitting in the docs office this week, I noticed a sign that basically informed me that I was obese. I immediately realized that I had to exercise and change my diet. So now, in addition to the project that I am trying to work on I must also incorporate the gym into my daily schedule. The second event that occurred revolved around a conflict of schedule between the company I work for and a class I was schedule to take, basically I have to make a choice between taking a class I am interested in and attending a work related event; what sucks is that this work related event is on a weekend, which is supposed to be my time. Anyhow, these events made me realize that our lives have to be planned around our jobs. More and more I am starting to believe that the only people that really have control of their lives, aside from the super rich, are entrepreneurs.

We employees have to arrange our lives around the 8 to 10 hours that we spend at work. Also, keep in mind that that 8 to 10 hours does not include commute time to get to work, which can almost increase your daily “work day” to nearly 12 hours. Now lets do some math, this math will help you understand why I reached my epiphany. Lets say we spend 10 hours that involved work, assuming we work for someone and not ourselves, we have to sleep for 6 hours (this is being extremely liberal with sleep, because 8 hours is what is generally recommended). Now we sleep for 6 hours, we spend 10 hours work related, there are 24 hours in a day, and 16 of them have already been accounted for. Heaven forbid you have a job like me where you sit all down all damn day, if this is the case you have to incorporate some type of physical activity in your daily life if you want to be healthy. Lets say the physical activity tacks on an extra hour a day. Now, 17 hours of your day have been accounted, there are 7 hours left. Before I go further let me also point out that this list assumes you do not children or a family at home. With the remainder of your day you have to take care of all your personal business, like dry cleaners, cooking, cleaning your home, having a life, etc, etc. Anyhow, my point is that all of your free time, exercise time, etc, somehow has to be arranged around your employer’s schedule.

Some employers claim to have a great work life balance initiative set in place, and I have been fortunate that the jobs I have had since college subscribed to the work-life philosophy, but when I really think about it they are still in control of my life. I can’t wake up one morning and think, “hmmm, I want to go to Paris for the week”, because as soon as I have that thought, I also have to calculate my leave balance, find out a good time to go with respect to my job. In essence, I have to ask for permission to take my vacation. Wait a minute, I have to ask for permission, I thought that nonsense stopped when I grew up. WRONG!!! Once we enter the corporate arena, we no longer have to ask our parents for permission we have to ask our bosses. Like I have said before, there is a heavy price to pay for being an entrepreneur, or being your own boss, but the pay off is that you don’t have to ask anyone for permission but yourself

I once asked my uncle, who is a pretty wealthy entrepreneur, what made him quit his well paying wall street job to work for himself, he told me, “because, I wanted to control my destiny.”