You need to work faster.
Your numbers aren't high enough.
This is your final warning.
We're going to have to let you go.
Have you ever heard any of these words? I just did over the span of five months. I also heard from a new arrogant leader, my 5th boss in a year and a half, of the Private Company I was apart of, "You get everywhere in life by being an a-- hole!" This was one of the first conversations I had with this individual.
Are you creative? If you are, you'll know that crunching numbers to simply make a quota so you're department looks good on paper is not at all creative. But unfortunately, my position changed. Rather than being simply creative, it was to crunch numbers. While I understand the business side and needing to run a billion dollar private company... how do I say this? I hate business. I hate everything to do with it. Accounting, the non-personal relationships. You can't make true friends in business because the friendship is based on business. It's all arid. It doesn't smell of anything, or taste of anything. All of this figuring is a completely colorless occupation. I could not longer see the colors because the number crunching washed them all away.
Money doesn't make you truly happy. What does? Figure out a way in which you can get paid to play and work. To expand your mind and learn as you go. If you don't, you will quickly become board and have that dread for Mondays. Not just Mondays, but Sundays because you know it's about to come to a close. Are we living out life just so we can have a Saturday? Who makes the rules? Rules that start with, money, are not a fundamental or universal truth. It is all made-up and bound together by lies and false promises. You can show every bit of loyalty to a company you work for most of your life, yet in turn you loyalty means nothing. Remember that when reading the promises from the employee hand book.
It helps to make a solemn promise to yourself. That promise could sound like this.
"I will never accept a job. I will always be my own employer."
The successful artist, writer and sometimes musician or independent consultant can occupy such rolls. Yet, by and large everyone seems to take a job with a major corporation. It's very difficult to run a business where you are your own boss.
Don't create something that is unmanageable for only a few people. You will then begin to hate it because of the constant stress. The creator likes to create. If you don't enjoy the process then you're only doing it for money. Many prostitutes work this way.
I'm creating art, graphics, and visually stunning photographs. I haven't the slightest idea what to fill out on these forms. I also don't care about the percentage of numbers I'm putting out, look at what's being created.
Business doesn't care about creativity, as long as all the numbers look good. Universities are no different! There was a doctor who said he only spends 1/3 of his working hours practicing medicine. The rest is filling out paperwork. Recording, filling out data. Because the record of what you do is more important than what you do. Write it down, we'll keep a tally, then it's real.
And so, for the same reason, many people don't believe in their own existence until they see their name making headlines by means of their wealth. So they get involved in the business of making money rather than creating and often forget who they are and what they like to do. They end up getting everywhere in life by being a-- hole, as it was so delicately worded.
What the business man needs to know is what the gas station attendant needs to know. What they need to know is the same. What do you want? I propose what Alan Watts once said in a speech. An entirely new kind of college entrance form as well as a new kind of job application form in which you write down your idea of paradise in an imperfect world for about twenty pages. It can be any kind of paradise you want. Spell it out. What do you want to happen in life? Then you'll hand this form in and it will be read over. It will be examined by a few people so they can make you realize what goes with the things you desire.
I want enormous riches. Well, then... prepare to keep a few lawyers as friends because someone will try to sue you. Prepare for constant security, because someone will try to rob you.
I want the perfect woman/man, describing all the practicalities of that individual. You go on to specify what she will be like. You never once mentioned what his/her mother should be like, or her father. Because these things normally go with a spouse.
Be careful of what you desire, because you may very well get it.
Love what you do not the thing it gets you.
We can argue endlessly on the opposition as to who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. There would be no gentlemen's agreement and no compromise, as if there is honor among thieves. And I'm of the mindset that large corporations are a new form a slavery by making everyone think they need the job they have to make it. Everyone forgets that what humans actually need, in truth, is food, water, clothing, and shelter.
The world is designed right now to make you feel that if you're not in absolute luxury and comfort then you're not going to make it. It's a trick to steal your time by making you think that you're not alive without these things. It's a car salesman's tactic.
Find what truly makes you happy without thinking about the money and more than likely the work will sell itself. At the same time, keep it simple.
Work like a captain, play like a pirate.