The Midlife Career Trap: Why Most People Stay Stuck

Key Takeaways

It's 6:00 a.m. The alarm's gone off. You hit the snooze button, but then the realization kicks in that you've got to get up. You've got to go to work. Got to pay those bills. Okay, this is the same [ __ ] It happens every [ __ ] day. It is literally Groundhog Day. All this sound familiar? You're not alone. It happens to the best of us. Most people actually never escape this cycle. But today, I'm going to show you why, and more importantly, how you and myself can break free of this cycle. Before we get started, you guys know what to do. Hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, show me some love, show me some support, making sure that I'm not actually wasting my time doing this. I need some reassurance, guys. Okay, so the first reason why people get stuck in their jobs and then never leaving and breaking that cycle is probably the most important one, which is fear. Okay? Fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of taking that leap, fear of losing that steady paycheck every single month. Okay? Because let's face it, we need that. It's essential, especially if you're over 40 like myself and you have a mortgage, you have a family to support. You need that income. I know this because I'm having all of those fears myself at this moment. The fear of losing that regular paycheck is my biggest fear because without that stability, your stress levels are just going to increase by a million%. And a lot of people have a fear of failing, which I totally get. No one likes to fail at anything. I failed on my previous SAS. I'm quite resilient, so I'll just get up and go again. But I know a lot of people that if they fail something, they'll take that personally. They'll take it to heart. It's totally understandable. And there's huge amounts of reasons for people to be fearful because starting or leaving your 9 till 5 grind it's a risk a risk that a lot of people don't want to take. But then I realized I had another fear and that fear was not doing anything about it because there's nothing worse than living with a huge amount of regret just plotting through life and before you know it you're 60 years old and you've not done what you want to do. You've not tried. you've just been stuck in the system and living with regret because living with regret is something that I can't live with and I don't want to live with it. So for me, I have to address that fear of trying to make that change. We all live with some sort of regret. Okay, that's all part of growing up. It's part of getting older. From a personal point of view, I have a certain amount of regret with taking the career path that I did because I joined a family business. I've been there for 20 years and I do like my job. There's elements I really like, but the issue is I wish that I never took the job. I wish that I never joined the company. But the past is the past. Let's just put that behind us. Look into the future. There's no point dwelling on the past now. What we got to look forward to is the future that we're going to build. And like I said before, you're not too old. Okay? If you're 50 or 60 years old, you just start now. Okay? You live in an age where anything's possible. So, forget about your age. There's loads of people out there that are doing it. 60 70 years old. Okay, so forget about that. So the second reason that most people won't leave their 905 grind is the money and lifestyle traps. A lot of people have stuff on finance, they have a flash card, they've joined the gym, they have Netflix and have all these subscriptions, they can't afford to change their income in any way. They have to get that paycheck to be able to maintain their current lifestyle. It's easier for the younger generation because they don't have that same commitment. They don't have the mortgage. They don't have the car payments. They don't have the subscriptions, the kids to look after, all of that stuff. And chances are, if you're watching this video, you know exactly what I'm talking about, okay? It's literally like a pair of [ __ ] handcuffs around you every single month. You see your paycheck come in and then a few days later, it's basically down to a third of it. All of the money's been assigned for all of your monthly outgoings. So, let's face it, it's [ __ ] When that happens, it's [ __ ] Then you find yourself in your overdraft. So, the idea here is to create some breathing room, okay? Because we don't want to have 600 bucks a month going out every single month on not on non-essential things, okay? Netflix, not essential. Flash car, not essential. Don't need any of that sort of stuff. That stuff can come later on if you're making a sufficient amount of money. me for me to have a flash car, I need to be earning a 10, 15k a month to be able to upgrade my car because even though I like cars, I just hate spending money on them because I'm a tight ass. So, you have to create that breathing room. Otherwise, there's you've just got no chance. You need to go down to the bare minimum, the bare bones, make those sacrifices because otherwise you're just not going to be able to take that leap. And when you do start making those savings, say you're saving three or 4 hundred bucks a month, you're going to feel a lot better. you've got that breathing space, then you can invest it into something I call the freedom pot where you can invest in software like lovable to build a SAS. You can invest in equipment. So, if you want to start a YouTube channel, go and get a camera. You don't need to have a huge amount or save a huge amount initially. You just need to make a start. Don't do it all at once because that will feel like torture. That's a that would be a big mistake. I wouldn't recommend that. So, start with getting rid of a few things. say Netflix or Amazon Prime, start saving 20 bucks a month or start making pack lunches, sandwiches, stop going to Tesco's and spending 40 quid or 50 quid a month on meal deals. Start small, make those savings and start reinvesting and put it in that freedom pot. Okay. And the final reason why a lot of people won't leave their 9 to5 because they have lack of clarity. They have no idea what they're going to do, what the next step is. Especially again if you're later on in your career, you feel stuck. You feel like you can't do anything else. It's impossible to change career. It doesn't have to be like that anymore. Okay? It's we have an abundance of technology. The whole process can be totally overwhelming, which I absolutely get, okay? Cuz I found the whole whole process overwhelming. But it's also very easy just to make an excuse and a reason not to do something. But you don't need to reinvent yourself. You've got decades of experience. Stick with what you know and keep it simple. Okay. So, how do we break free? Well, step one, we need to acknowledge fear. Okay. The fear will not disappear. It won't go away. Is always going to be there. But to start with, you have to start small. Take a few simple steps and start a side hustle, a small business, something that you can work alongside your career. So that way you're not taking that immediate risk of leaving your job, throwing in the towel, and just going all in on your side project. Okay? That's not a good idea. I would not recommend you do that unless you've got a huge amount of capital behind you. So start small, a very small side hustle like building a SAS or starting your own digital products, starting your own YouTube channel, something that you don't have to commit every waking hour till, you know, something you can commit maybe a couple of hours a night to. So the next thing to do is create some breathing room. Audit your expenses. See what is essential and see what's not essential. There's nothing worse than every single month looking at your monthly outgoings and pretty much all of your monthly incomings allocated for unnecessary [ __ ] Okay? Don't need it. So make that audit. Create that breathing space. Trust me, your life will be a lot less stressful knowing that you've got a bit of money every single month that you can dedicate to investing in your own business or investing in your time, something like that. That's what you've got to do that. That's absolutely essential. And finally, choose one path. You don't need 10, just one. I'm guilty of it, okay? I have because I have so many ideas, I'm constantly thinking, do I need to jump ship? Do I need to do this? Do I need to do that? Stick with one. Give it some time because some things take longer than others. Necessarily be an overnight success. You need to give these things time. If you've got an idea and it's a good one, stick with it, work hard on it, and give it say 3 or 4 months. If you're not seeing any progress, you're not seeing any sort of income from it or any interest at all, then think about switching to something else. But only focus on one thing to start with. I've covered that in previous videos. Don't make the same mistake I did. Okay? I was working on about three or four different projects and I nearly had a an absolute mental mel meltdown because I could just couldn't cope with it. So stick with one project to start with. Get that up and running. If it doesn't get up and running, start on something new. But it's important that you just focus on one thing. So that's just about it for this video. I hope you've got some value from it. I've actually really enjoyed making this one. But the sad truth is that most people won't leave their 9 to5 grind. They'll keep doing it until the day they they die or the day they enter retirement. They won't leave it because they don't know how to or they can't. The reason is they just don't take that first step. Okay? The fear stops them from taking that first step. Don't let yourself be one of those people. Okay? It's not too late. You've got plenty of time. It's better to start sooner rather than later. Especially if you're if you hate your job and you want to get out of it, then you've got to start now because it's not a quick success. It's something that you got to work towards. you got to build on, but you can enjoy the journey. I'm enjoying it and I'm doing the same thing you guys are doing. I'm on the same path as you. So again, hit that subscribe button because hopefully you guys can get some value from my journey and how I'm doing it and you won't make the same mistakes that I'm doing. So anyway, hope you've enjoyed this video. I'm off to I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'm going to do something. Probably do a bit of work on my SAS and I'm going to play some football with my son out in the garden as it's fairly nice outside. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your weekend and I'll catch you all