Hello you. I’m Jenny Jameson and I don’t work the 9-5 anymore. I tried for decades to make myself fit in. I got two alarm clocks to try to turn me into a morning person. I bought the right clothes. I went on the training courses, made friends with the right people and nodded in all the right places in the name of striding up the career ladder.
Those years gradually chipped away fragments of my soul. Bit by bit I felt another piece of my personality wither away and die. Until one day I woke up and felt nothing but disappointment in what I’d become.
I wasn’t as successful in the corporate world as I knew I could be. Those right noises I tried to make, well they came out all wrong. I wanted to sound as sweet as Pavarotti on a summer’s morning and instead I sounded like a walrus with a toothbrush stuck in its throat.
The right people I tried to make friends with? Well, they were perfectly OK people but somehow I just couldn’t make the relationships gel. I hated the clothing, oh how restricted I felt dressed in muted colours. I could never find a suit that felt just right on me. I felt like a little child dressed in adults’ clothing – awkward and silly.
I know now that I was a smart, engaging, insightful girl with a lot to offer the world. But when I look back on it, I was offering my skills in all the wrong places.
My confidence was low. I believed that since I wasn’t a success in the corporate world, there was no way on Earth I could be successful with running a business.
I say my confidence was low. Closer to the truth was that I had lost it all.
When I left my career, I believed I had absolutely nothing of value to offer the world. I believed I was a laughable failure.
I read everything I could about changing careers. I looked at people who were running online businesses and was in jaw-dropping awe of their confidence.
I had a vision of them being utterly perfect. Of it being so completely organised, planned and most of all supremely self-assured.
The world of the online business, the “quit your career and make an awesome living online” brigade looked light years from where I was sitting. Which was at my desk, in front of a PC monitor, stuffing crisps into my mouth to try to soothe the ache in my soul.
They tell you how easy it all is, don’t they? They give you the steps to take and a gazillion ideas and routes you can take to make that leap. And while that information is insanely useful, it doesn’t help you with one of the fundamentals that you need in order to skip laughing out of the office and into freedom.
You need to keep faith with yourself.
You need to create that faith and guard it with every cell in your being. You need to protect and nurture that faith as if it were your own child. You wouldn’t let anyone harm your own child and you’d move heaven and Earth to make sure they were secure.
So do the same for the faith in yourself.
This is a sample taken from a chapter in the book How To Escape Your 9-5 And Do Something Amazing.
At last! A guide to stepping off the corporate hamster-wheel and living a fuller, more rewarding life. Written by people that have successfully made a break for freedom, How To Escape Your 9-5 And Do Something Amazing is your freedom manifesto.
With thought-provoking, insightful features written by people from all over the world, this book will change your life. If you have ever wondered how you can shake off the shackles of your 9-5 but still make a living, then this is the most important book you will ever read.
