IMAGINE THIS:
You wake up to the blaring of an alarm and after hitting snooze a couple of times, you begrudgingly get out of bed and head straight to the coffee pot for that first cup, the only thing that’s going to make this morning bearable.
You’re standing in your kitchen, checking your email while sipping that warm coffee, and a sense of dread just hits you.
You really, really don’t want to go into the office today. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but there’s just a sense of dread that overcomes you when you think about getting in your car, sitting in morning rush hour traffic and arriving at work to spend your day doing a job that drains and exhausts you, sitting in rush hour traffic again and having just a few free hours until it starts all over again.
What I just described to you is exactly how I used to feel every. Single. Day.
I’m Shannon Mattern, and in 2014 I felt drained, depressed and imprisoned at my day job. And the guilt for feeling that way? Ugh, don’t even get me started.
I finally figured out that it wasn’t my day job’s fault! If I wanted things to change, I had to be the one to change.
Yes, I created a side hustle doing something I loved as part of the solution, but that didn’t mean that I still didn’t have to go to work every day.
And when I came home depleted, I had zero energy for my side hustle.
The first thing I had to change was the belief that I didn’t have a choice about how I felt. I could decide to hate my commute, or I could do things like listen to podcasts about entrepreneurship that not only made my commute go by super fast, but also made me look forward to it!
I could decide to not like my beige office with fluorescent lights, or I could go to the home decor store and buy a pretty rug, a nice lamp, some pictures and a few accessories to make it cozy and pretty.
I could decide to opt out of the negative water-cooler gossip mill and focus being a solution seeker rather than a problem-pointer-outer.
I could focus on all the things I didn’t like about my job, or I could focus on being grateful for all the things my job afforded me.
And once I changed my attitude, I had more energy for my side hustle. Once I changed my environment, it made me happy to walk into my office on a Monday morning. Once I focused on personal development on my commute, my stress level came down. Once I became focused on solutions rather than problems, I could see all kinds of opportunities.
So if you’re starting a side hustle to escape a day job that you don’t love, I challenge you to make a decision to change how you feel about your day job.
It will help you feel less stressed and overwhelmed and have more energy for your side hustle.
And in future episodes, I'll be sharing some tools with you to help you do just that.
Show Notes:
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