whose none of the saying if you do a job
you love you’ll never work a day in your
life
raise your hands quite a few of you it’s
a great saying right it’s so
heartwarming to think there’s a job out
there that you can choose that will mean
a lifetime of happiness I’m here to tell
you that that quote has got it all wrong
at the age of 24 I quit my nice safe
respectable job as a pharmacist to
pursue my dreams of building my own
business lissa study guides
lissa study guides provides high school
students english and literature tutoring
and three years on we’ve helped tens and
thousands of students I can now safely
say I’ve been lucky enough to have
achieved more than I ever thought I
could but there are many many days where
what I do feels like work us Millennials
we get a bad rap and it’s not hard to
see why nearly half of the baby boomer
generation stayed at their jobs for
longer than 20 years yet a millennial is
expected to have seven different careers
during their lifetime and up to 30
different jobs with a generation
characterized by short attention spans
ADHD self-importance bordering on
narcissism privilege coming out of our
ears and bellies full of $17 smashed
avocado but what’s even more different
is the environment we’ve grown up in due
to government initiatives in the 90s
we’ve grown up to messages that improve
self-esteem so messages like you can do
something you love or be all you can be
every night we read on our news feeds
about some young teenager who’s
developed a swanky new app and has made
them a millionaire overnight everywhere
I’ll friend share highlight reels of
their lives so we see the beautiful
holidays they go on the new expensive
car they’re just bought and the gorgeous
house they’ve just moved into but what
these news feed stories don’t say
what they self-esteem programs during
tell us is that there is no silver
bullet job out there that’s going to
keep us constantly happy there’s no
magical job out there that’s going to
make you feel like you’re not working
you know the one I’m talking about the
one where you say to yourself if I could
just be a blogger and travel the world
or if I could just build my own startup
and sell the company for millions if I
could just do this and be paid this that
would make me so happy for me the
romanticized illusion of becoming my own
boss meant working from the latest
trendy cafe diving away into the night
and waking up whenever I wanted to
but that illusion has well and truly
worn out don’t get me wrong I love what
I do and I’m really proud of the company
I’ve built but let’s rewind back to
Valentine’s Day 2017 I’ve been able to
almost triple the number of people in my
team in the prior two months growing
from a team of eighteen shooters to a
team of fifty the company was the
biggest it at ever beam with customers
bursting from the seams I should have
been so happy sorry proud in the morning
my boyfriend surprised me with a bunch
of roses and we were looking forward to
a romantic date I can tell you that it
was not the date I signed up for you
know what happened instead I spent the
entire morning crying I broke down
because I felt so overwhelmed and tired
tired of feeling chronically unhappy
with what I was doing tired of wondering
why everything felt like work when I’d
been promised happiness and tied because
I couldn’t understand why I was so
unhappy despite achieving my goals the
truth is when you do a job you love it
will eventually feel like work because
our happiness doesn’t last a lifetime
psychologists call this the hedonic
treadmill in a
adding to this theory despite major
negative or positive life events like
becoming your own boss humans tend to
return to a baseline level of happiness
so that friend who’s traveling the world
vlogging or your other friend who just
bought that expensive new car well their
happiness levels will eventually sink to
baseline true humans are always needing
more and it’s not a bad thing because on
the flip side there are people in jobs
that make them deeply emphatically
unhappy they often feel utterly trapped
so much so we’ve invented a term for
this phenomenon called the golden
handcuffs describing a job that chains
us to it with its stability these jobs
feel like work through and through and
there are means to an end to power our
hobbies to fuel our weekends and to fill
out our superannuation nest
so unlike happiness which can be
fleeting feelings of unhappiness and
unfulfillment I like pools of quicksand
where you just sink deeper and deeper so
if what feels like work and pursuing
your passions will eventually feel like
work well where does that leave us
are we doomed to a life of monotony if
you’d asked my younger self what I
wanted to do I would have told you I
wanted to become my own boss but I had
achieved that and on that Valentine’s
Day I realized that achieving this goal
wasn’t designed to keep me happy what
people don’t tell us is that when we set
goals we’re wearing glasses with
rose-colored lenses our goals are the
arrow answer to happiness only once had
I achieved this dream of becoming my own
boss did I say that in reality it was
pocked marked with discontent and this
is always going to be the case with any
interestingly when I look at the more
successful people in my life I noticed
they all share one common trait they’re
all discontent in some way discontent
with their work discontent with their
lives discontent with the problems they
face but this small amount of discontent
is healthy for them because it fuels
them see what people don’t tell us is we
have two options you can either let
discontent settle in become the norm and
weigh you down Norway at you like you
did for me and insidiously make you
unhappy or you can let it fool you fool
you to continually change grow evolve
and disrupt yourself over and over again
when I what I didn’t realize was when I
quit being a pharmacist
it was my discontent that fueled me as a
pharmacist I hated working the
nine-to-five so underappreciated and so
few career prospects awaiting me so I
eliminated all of this by becoming my
own boss but once I became my own boss I
discovered new and different things that
made me discontent
I was discontent with the fact that Lisa
study guides could only help a few
thousand students each year because
tutors could only help so many students
at one time I was discontent with the
fact that Lisa study guys wasn’t making
the widespread impact on education as I
had hoped
and so of course I couldn’t have known
all of these things when I had my big
romantic vision of being my own boss and
that’s the problem with messages like
you can do something you love or be all
you can be
it’s a problem when an idealistic Court
says if you do a job your love you’ll
never work a day in your life because it
implies that
once he hit that goal your life suddenly
becomes static frozen in time it’s a
problem because it projects this
unattainable vision of being
continuously happy forever once you
reach a certain point when I finally
understood this I started to let my
discontent to fill me towards a new
vision my new goal has been building my
second business Edie Edie is an
artificially intelligent tutor bot who
is able to support more students than
Lisa study guides ever could in a
hundred years I’m excited to see the
impact Edie will have on modern
education especially on a global scale
I’m excited to achieve this dream
because I know that once I do it’s not
going to be the end there will be new
discontentment awaiting me new smears of
reality new frustrations that will
propel me onwards towards a new big
romantic goal so it’s okay if work feels
like work because behind the rosy lens
of our dream job we see that even there
our happiness herbs and flows but
there’s a hidden champion amongst the
Aloha and glamour of our dreams
discontent there’s something liberating
about knowing that it’s not the end goal
that keeps us happy because we’re now
free to enjoy the process itself the
process of chipping away the areas of
discontentment in our lives
it’s discontentment that keeps us in the
continual pursuit of change and self
disruption and it is within this that we
find happiness by creating a life truly
of our own design this is the romantic
date I signed up for thank you you
you love you’ll never work a day in your
life
raise your hands quite a few of you it’s
a great saying right it’s so
heartwarming to think there’s a job out
there that you can choose that will mean
a lifetime of happiness I’m here to tell
you that that quote has got it all wrong
at the age of 24 I quit my nice safe
respectable job as a pharmacist to
pursue my dreams of building my own
business lissa study guides
lissa study guides provides high school
students english and literature tutoring
and three years on we’ve helped tens and
thousands of students I can now safely
say I’ve been lucky enough to have
achieved more than I ever thought I
could but there are many many days where
what I do feels like work us Millennials
we get a bad rap and it’s not hard to
see why nearly half of the baby boomer
generation stayed at their jobs for
longer than 20 years yet a millennial is
expected to have seven different careers
during their lifetime and up to 30
different jobs with a generation
characterized by short attention spans
ADHD self-importance bordering on
narcissism privilege coming out of our
ears and bellies full of $17 smashed
avocado but what’s even more different
is the environment we’ve grown up in due
to government initiatives in the 90s
we’ve grown up to messages that improve
self-esteem so messages like you can do
something you love or be all you can be
every night we read on our news feeds
about some young teenager who’s
developed a swanky new app and has made
them a millionaire overnight everywhere
I’ll friend share highlight reels of
their lives so we see the beautiful
holidays they go on the new expensive
car they’re just bought and the gorgeous
house they’ve just moved into but what
these news feed stories don’t say
what they self-esteem programs during
tell us is that there is no silver
bullet job out there that’s going to
keep us constantly happy there’s no
magical job out there that’s going to
make you feel like you’re not working
you know the one I’m talking about the
one where you say to yourself if I could
just be a blogger and travel the world
or if I could just build my own startup
and sell the company for millions if I
could just do this and be paid this that
would make me so happy for me the
romanticized illusion of becoming my own
boss meant working from the latest
trendy cafe diving away into the night
and waking up whenever I wanted to
but that illusion has well and truly
worn out don’t get me wrong I love what
I do and I’m really proud of the company
I’ve built but let’s rewind back to
Valentine’s Day 2017 I’ve been able to
almost triple the number of people in my
team in the prior two months growing
from a team of eighteen shooters to a
team of fifty the company was the
biggest it at ever beam with customers
bursting from the seams I should have
been so happy sorry proud in the morning
my boyfriend surprised me with a bunch
of roses and we were looking forward to
a romantic date I can tell you that it
was not the date I signed up for you
know what happened instead I spent the
entire morning crying I broke down
because I felt so overwhelmed and tired
tired of feeling chronically unhappy
with what I was doing tired of wondering
why everything felt like work when I’d
been promised happiness and tied because
I couldn’t understand why I was so
unhappy despite achieving my goals the
truth is when you do a job you love it
will eventually feel like work because
our happiness doesn’t last a lifetime
psychologists call this the hedonic
treadmill in a
adding to this theory despite major
negative or positive life events like
becoming your own boss humans tend to
return to a baseline level of happiness
so that friend who’s traveling the world
vlogging or your other friend who just
bought that expensive new car well their
happiness levels will eventually sink to
baseline true humans are always needing
more and it’s not a bad thing because on
the flip side there are people in jobs
that make them deeply emphatically
unhappy they often feel utterly trapped
so much so we’ve invented a term for
this phenomenon called the golden
handcuffs describing a job that chains
us to it with its stability these jobs
feel like work through and through and
there are means to an end to power our
hobbies to fuel our weekends and to fill
out our superannuation nest
so unlike happiness which can be
fleeting feelings of unhappiness and
unfulfillment I like pools of quicksand
where you just sink deeper and deeper so
if what feels like work and pursuing
your passions will eventually feel like
work well where does that leave us
are we doomed to a life of monotony if
you’d asked my younger self what I
wanted to do I would have told you I
wanted to become my own boss but I had
achieved that and on that Valentine’s
Day I realized that achieving this goal
wasn’t designed to keep me happy what
people don’t tell us is that when we set
goals we’re wearing glasses with
rose-colored lenses our goals are the
arrow answer to happiness only once had
I achieved this dream of becoming my own
boss did I say that in reality it was
pocked marked with discontent and this
is always going to be the case with any
interestingly when I look at the more
successful people in my life I noticed
they all share one common trait they’re
all discontent in some way discontent
with their work discontent with their
lives discontent with the problems they
face but this small amount of discontent
is healthy for them because it fuels
them see what people don’t tell us is we
have two options you can either let
discontent settle in become the norm and
weigh you down Norway at you like you
did for me and insidiously make you
unhappy or you can let it fool you fool
you to continually change grow evolve
and disrupt yourself over and over again
when I what I didn’t realize was when I
quit being a pharmacist
it was my discontent that fueled me as a
pharmacist I hated working the
nine-to-five so underappreciated and so
few career prospects awaiting me so I
eliminated all of this by becoming my
own boss but once I became my own boss I
discovered new and different things that
made me discontent
I was discontent with the fact that Lisa
study guides could only help a few
thousand students each year because
tutors could only help so many students
at one time I was discontent with the
fact that Lisa study guys wasn’t making
the widespread impact on education as I
had hoped
and so of course I couldn’t have known
all of these things when I had my big
romantic vision of being my own boss and
that’s the problem with messages like
you can do something you love or be all
you can be
it’s a problem when an idealistic Court
says if you do a job your love you’ll
never work a day in your life because it
implies that
once he hit that goal your life suddenly
becomes static frozen in time it’s a
problem because it projects this
unattainable vision of being
continuously happy forever once you
reach a certain point when I finally
understood this I started to let my
discontent to fill me towards a new
vision my new goal has been building my
second business Edie Edie is an
artificially intelligent tutor bot who
is able to support more students than
Lisa study guides ever could in a
hundred years I’m excited to see the
impact Edie will have on modern
education especially on a global scale
I’m excited to achieve this dream
because I know that once I do it’s not
going to be the end there will be new
discontentment awaiting me new smears of
reality new frustrations that will
propel me onwards towards a new big
romantic goal so it’s okay if work feels
like work because behind the rosy lens
of our dream job we see that even there
our happiness herbs and flows but
there’s a hidden champion amongst the
Aloha and glamour of our dreams
discontent there’s something liberating
about knowing that it’s not the end goal
that keeps us happy because we’re now
free to enjoy the process itself the
process of chipping away the areas of
discontentment in our lives
it’s discontentment that keeps us in the
continual pursuit of change and self
disruption and it is within this that we
find happiness by creating a life truly
of our own design this is the romantic
date I signed up for thank you you
Please follow and like us: