It was a Tuesday morning. I woke up checking my mobile for the latest roster… “Nopes, no messages received.” I thought to myself as I saw no new notifications on the screen of my handphone.
Initially, I had informed the company that I was available on the 1st till 3rd, and I had just finished an exhausting round of roadshows through the past 2 weeks.
So what was going on? Why didn’t I get this week’s roster?
And it was then, with a tiny grin appearing on my face, that I’ve realized that… I was suddenly unemployed — on 1st September 2009.
“What’s next?” I asked myself.
To be totally honest with you, I had been looking forward to this — except that I wasn’t ready to push the red button for activation of “sudden unemployment”. Although… I had took a series of steps that lead up to this inevitable day.
4 steps prior to cutting the leash
There’s a fine difference between being foolish and actually knowing what you are getting yourself into! Like I’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph, I didn’t cut the cord immediately when I didn’t like the job. In fact, here’s the series of 4 steps that I had taken prior to “sudden unemployment” — systems may differ between individuals, you’ll create your own steps when you are ready.
Step #1: Know who you are and what you really want
Your goal is to not follow or become a carbon-copy of someone else. You can model from the best individuals that you know, but you aren’t supposed to be exactly like them — that will be freaky.
You’ve got to know who you are. That is, to know what exactly you are strong in, what excites you, what will keep you up all day (and night) where when you can feel the sense of fulfillment doing what you really should be doing, and just purely being you!
More than knowing who you are, you got to know what you really want (”really” in this definition means “specifically” — “I want to be successful” is a lousy want, and that won’t get you anywhere).
I’ve got a pretty bad-ass allergy to dust, dislike for paperwork, against indecisiveness (or too much change of plans), hates targets, and doesn’t like to waste energy on stuff or people that don’t yield any results. So anything along those lines are surely out.
But, sales, persuasion, time-freedom, mobility, creating stuff that works, and bearing fruits are stuff that I’d live for. Hence the following statement describes me well:
“I’m a writer, blogger, and I help build amazing business on the web!”
So… who then… are you?
Step #2: Getting back weekends
My previous job was being a part-time sales promoter. And there’s an unwritten rule that promoters are required to work on weekends. But, I don’t do weekends as they go against 2 of my personal principles; spending too much time and energy talking to non-buyers, and weekends were the only days I could spend quality time with my friends.
What I did was to increase my closing ratio from 1:10 (1 sale against talking to 10 people) to 1:1.5 (or 2 sale with every 3 people I talk to) in less than 2 weeks, and then set-up the counter to trigger curiosity of people passing by, and let it sell on its own — and I could simply walk away. That’s for a product where my colleagues thought that it needed tons of convincing to sell.
Then after seeing results on weekends, I started to ask for a Saturday off, then 2 weeks later, asked for both weekends off.
Step #3: Getting back weekdays
By then I was already working on a project where I’d be doing if “sudden unemployment” occurs.
And being a promoter, it is commonly known that weekdays are usually the quietest in form of traffic and sales, and off days are usually taken during this period.
Hence, I just increased my off days from 1 to 2 in the week… and it helped that during my last week I fell ill which left me to having a 1 work day week!
Oh, and did I mention that my first minisite was created? I spent most of that week bouncing ideas off my friends while I attended an amazing blogging course by Leo and Mary.
Step #4: Initiate your plan
You would have probably realized that I’ve been using the term “sudden unemployment” pretty often in this post. Well, it was supposed to be called “world domination” but… Chris Guillebeau from The Art of Nonconformity had already made that catchphrase his.
I’m not here to tell you what your plan is — you’ve already taken way too much instructions and orders in your career.
Instead, find out what you love, and do it. Time to initiate your plan, cut the leash, and execute on being you.
7 Sins That Will Be Tempting You
Of course, life isn’t going to be all beds of roses after that. There are still the critics (oh how we love to hate them) that will wriggle their way through to do some damage to your self-esteem, and also the 7 “sins” that will be out there to tempt you out of your plans.
Sin #1: Greed — Get-rich-quick schemes
You’ve definitely come across this in your junk mail, or from an infected instant messenger account, or through “friends” who just want you to be in their multi-level downline.
Sin #2: Sloth — Time freedom doesn’t equates to sleeping all day
I’ve instead used freed up time to attend a 10 day bootcamp, a 4 day Anthony Robbins’ seminar, totally immersed myself for 3 days in learning up on currencies trading, negotiating a freedom-time job that allows me to work remotely, while also looking into setting up a minisites business model with my friend who has agreed to run the sales side of stuff.
Sin #3: Gluttony — Life’s a buffet… You don’t have to fill your plates up
One common reason why many people can’t get things done is that they keep filling their plates up to the brim before getting started.
Till their cup runs over? More like till their blood gushes out from their head.
A myth is that successful people have an enormous number of stuff to do at the same time. Sounds like multi-tasking? Yeah, but do you know that your IQ effectively drops (don’t ask me how much, I don’t need to know that) when you multi-task? It won’t be much later when your finances drains up, EQ drops to be parallel to your IQ after multi-tasking without getting things done.
Sin #4: Wrath — Critics… the jerks of society
“Oh, you shouldn’t do this…” or they also put it this way, “… you won’t be able to do that…”
Critics asks the lousiest questions – ever – just so they can put their thoughts across, which is to put you down. Most of the time they just create false evidences to back their claims on why you will fail.
They will only give you more problems (and zero solutions). Well, they may think that they have given you a solution, but… in truth, they don’t.
Since, I’ve come to the topic on critics, here’s one exercise you can try if you’ve faced with one… ask him (universal gender) if the conversation was a fruitful one (after being hurled at with stuff without any solid outcome). If he said “very fruitful”, feel free to screw him upside down. If he said “very fruitful” and continues in his self-righteous thoughts, you may proceed in screwing him upside down, and deleting him away from your list of contacts, and then send a “Dear John,” email.
Moving on.
Sin #5: Lust — Power porn
Are you addicted to power porn? This article written by good friend and blogger colleague, Josh Kaufman, says it all, from how you might be spending too much time ogling and “thumbing through stories of the wealthy and famous, studying photo after photo of older men in conservative ties and ladies in pantsuits, hoping to find some little tidbit of knowledge that would somehow make you more successful.” (quoted from article).
Here’s what we’ve come to realize… its a waste of our time and energy to be sucked in by power porn.
Sin #6: Envy — The first step to covetousness
There are definitely friends within your circle who have achieved what you had desired, which could be time freedom, or attaining “impossible” income in a short period of time.
Having a healthy competition is fine. But wanting to accomplish that in an even shorter time by risking too much of your time, energy, and money, might just kill you instead. This is also when people will get trapped in the get-rich-quick schemes, or learn how to scam others by going against their own principles — a big blunder that you will regret.
Sin #7: Pride — The original sin
As written in Wikipedia, pride is the original and most deadliest sin where it is the ultimate source which the others arise.
Pride is far worse than critics. One difference is that critics just want you to join in their status quo (good if you are progressing towards their level, before progressing on eg: you are at ground zero, critic is at level 1 = criticisms can bring you up to a new level — you need these group of people, but bad if they are holding you back from progression), while pride just wants to keep you out from even thinking of progression totally using the talk down approach.
That is when they see you as a competition and not only they won’t help you, they will want to keep you out for good.
Instead, practice humility. Help others because others have helped you before. Appreciate others because they can be your biggest source of encouragement. Say hi, because we are all supportive people. :)
“I’ll take the red pill”: Step up!
In the matrix universe, the titular character — Neo — was given a choice of to take the blue pill or the red pill. While the blue pill signifies the certainty of going back to a “normal” life (perhaps defined by others to the individual), the red pill signifies otherwise… you’ll open up your eyes and get exposed to a whole new universe where you can live life happily on your own terms (or find out that the truth is equally painful and damaging to your ego, status quo, and how much difference you would have made for yourself if you’ve taken action).
Down the rabbit hole now — see what you’ve been missing out.
Anthony Robbins mentioned that to see coincidences upon coincidences coming into your life day after day, you got to do one important thing — that is to take massive action!
Well yeah, I have to agree with him on that.
It was when I initiated my plans when things started to appear in mysterious and wonderful ways! Such as being given the opportunity to attend the 10 days bootcamp, being sponsored for the Anthony Robbins seminar (this occurred 1 day after “sudden unemployment”), meeting new friends, seeing great people, and seeing results in the first minisite.
All those wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t make my move.
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Maybe, it is time to make your move…
