“Work hard and the world will be your oyster.” It was drilled into me from a young age that hard work equals success.
Growing up in what some would label as a working class family, money was often a limiting factor. The absence of which, acted as my fuel for years to come.
I worked incredibly hard, I was a straight A student at school (through excessive effort), as well as a whole host of extra-curricular achievements.
Volunteering and then working from the age of 15 onwards, I pushed myself through college and failed my first year from ‘working so hard’. My boss at the time would assign me 25 hours of work from my 0 hour contract alongside my 3 A Levels and AS Level which was a full-time course. I recall him saying “you either come in for the hours we book or you don’t come in at all”. I didn’t have a choice at the time, so I carried on working and studying; paying for my driving lessons throughout. This did impact my studies and I ended up re-sitting most of my first year exams alongside my second year ones and bought myself a car, graduating from sixth form with grades that secured a career route perfectly carved for me.
I worked incredibly hard.
And then one day, it happened.
After securing a training contract with a prestigious firm at 18, I Chartered as an Accountant at the age of 22. This afforded me a stable job, good pay, a place to call home and a reliable car.
I achieved the goldmine of ‘stability’ that many around me had been striving after for years.
And from my experience, I am here to tell you…
It’s a trap.
Deciding what you want to do with your life based on a job and the money it provides is a trap.
The idea of hard work equaling success led me to feel incredibly unfulfilled. Working long hours alongside studying on limited sleep and an excess of caffeine for 4 years of my life, I achieved the stability I desired but I still didn’t feel successful because I was burnt out and exhausted having achieved a dream that was not even my own.
I became “rich” (at least in my eyes) at the age of 22 and I noticed that money was only important when it wasn’t there.
As someone who knows the humiliation, embarrassment and shame money brings when you don’t have it, as well as the contentment and warmth that comes from giving, sharing and savouring the experiences it can bring:
Building your life around money is not how to find satisfaction and contentment. Building a life around joy, passion and love is how, and money will come as a result.
After all, I did the hard work… did it bring me success?
No, it brought me someone else’s idea of success. Someone else’s idea of stability and security.
So what am I doing about it?
Well… I’m in the process of selling the majority of my belongings and moving out of my apartment into a van full-time to travel with one of my dearest friends. I have sold my car and my primary vehicle is now my home too.
This is a leap into creating the life I want. Using my time how I please, being and doing in ways that bring me joy and allow me to feel fulfilled. Now that is what I call success.
And for those who want to know how I did this… the answer is incredibly simple.
I paced myself by planning toward something I wanted, putting in the steps I needed to everyday and I achieved it.
I made a decision, a commitment to myself that what I wanted was going to happen. No matter how many attempts, setbacks or failures.
And I kept doing it until it happened.
This non-bullsh*t approach applies to both; qualifying as young as I could to afford stability, and buying the van for our adventure to afford freedom.
You don’t have to have it all figured out.
You only have to know your next step, literally, the one that is happening right in front of you.
Left or right, to stay or to go, yes or no.
No one has it all figured out. We are all making it up as we go.
We are multi-faceted human beings, we are all incredibly different. We all like our tea and toast in different ways, some of us even like olives?!
There are endless things you can be and do. Go and find those that you like, that bring you joy.
Lean into your differences, that is where you will find yourself and your preferences. Become curious about what makes you happy and the rest will follow.
Base your next step to success on where you are now.
Big decisions are made up of lots of little ones. Figure out where you are now, where you want to be and work backwards to devise a bulletproof plan.
If you aren’t sure where you want to be, it starts with listening to what you want now.
Make conscious choices for yourself and your life based upon what you desire. This could be as simple as following your urge to order a certain dish on a menu, or acting upon a gut feeling about a certain situation, person or job.
Follow your curiosities, thoughts and feelings will in turn give you a better idea of what you want.
The life that you want is waiting for you outside of your comfort zone.
It won’t simply choose you one day, you must choose your own success story.
If you want something for yourself, make the decision that you will do everything in your power to make it happen no matter the challenges which arise.
If you don’t like something, use that as inspiration to find out what you do want and run toward it with all your might.
Devise a plan of the many possibilities of how it could happen and begin to work at it every single day, and it will happen for you.
It is worth saying that life will unlikely fall into place ‘how’ you imagined it, but it will happen for you.
I didn’t imagine I’d be leaving my corporate job before Christmas and that the first week of January I’d be sat in a partially empty flat with the computer propped up on storage boxes whilst I write for an online magazine…
I wanted to find fulfilling work, to work with people that inspire me and that happened the moment I made space for that change to happen. I wanted to spend more time with family and friends, more time outside in nature, more time being active. That happened the moment I opted out of living someone else’s dream and into living my own. I haven’t even set off in the van yet and my adventure has already begun.
Trust yourself. Trust that things won’t go to plan, that you’ll figure it out as you go and learn along the way. You will get there eventually.
Step by step it will fall into place and one day it will just happen.
You will achieve your goals and then, like me, you’ll choose something else to aim towards. You have plenty of shots at doing and being lots of different things throughout the years but you only have one life, so do things that make you feel good.
Start from where you are, start small and realign yourself with the direction you want to travel in life.
As someone who has recently made several in one go, you will never feel ready for any major life decision, so ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’.
I haven’t figured everything out, I don’t have a master plan, but I am working everyday to build upon where I’ve come from, to meet my own needs and to experience more joy in my life.
It’s a really exciting time to be alive.
I hope you find your joy and that all of your wildest dreams come true.
Don’t fall into the trap of spending your one life following someone else’s idea of success. You can create your own.
It turns out that the best plan of all is having no plan. As Pooh would say:
‘I always get to where I’m going by walking away from the places I’ve been’
Winnie the Pooh (from the film Christopher Robin)
In her memoirs, Chloe reflects upon her own experience of re-connecting with her body, expanding emotional intelligence for self-empowerment and stress management tools for the modern world.