The Troubling Mind of the Young Entrepreneur

Being young is hard. Everywhere you go, people are telling you what you should be doing and how to go about doing it, just when you thought you were growing up a little. From the time we, as humans, were first born, our freedom has been taken from us. Our parents have kept us alive, yes, but also stifled us with their rigid ways and continuously trying to mold us into something they, themselves, want to be.

After first learning to walk around and maybe speak a little, we are abruptly thrust into the life someone else created for us. That's right, elementary school. There, you may interact with fellow slaves or maybe learn how to read. That's great, learning to read and spell and the like. But, couldn't you simply learn to read and spell independently of the school, instead of being forced into this atmosphere that you don't want to be in?

What gives anyone the right to tell us what we will do with our lives? I think the average person doesn't realize how little freedom we have. We are forced to go to school from the ages of 5 to 18 years old, our entire childhood and adolescence has been pegged out for us.

After you do graduate, if you choose to have your freedom taken from you for two additional years, you will be pushed and shoved into a new direction: college or working-class. If you try to stray from this path, you will be met with angry resistance from your parents, your teachers, your friends, your trusted guardians, pretty much any adult person, or person who has been brainwashed into believing that there are only a few paths in life.

Yet, you don't see happiness anywhere around you. You have friends in college, and they hate it more than they hated high school. Maybe you try working the 9 to 5 job for a little while, only to realize your soul is being slowly drained away by the long hours and pointless trifles employers put you through. To must of these places, you are simply a tool.

Employers don't usually care about you, as a person. They care about what you can do for them, and their company, and their paycheck. That's it. If they show concern for your well-being, it is really only concern for their own well-being. Eventually, you figure this isn't the life for you.

After 18, or even 20, you are sick and tired of being shoved around and told exactly what move you should be making. Maybe you snap, and quit your job, and rant about your coworkers and your boss for months after the fact. Maybe you continue to work there for ten more years, only to realize you've wasted so much time, and then you regret it.

The thing about freedom, however, is that it's actually hard to be in control of your own fate when others have been throwing it at you ever since you came out of the womb. You feel so much confusion, you wonder if you are doing the wrong thing. Your mom is growing sick and tired of you mooching off her, and your friends what you to get a job so you guys can go do things...things that require money, which you do not have, because you don't know how to get it without being enslaved again, and you certainly don't want that.

So, what are you to do? Freelance! Build your own business! Take control of your own fate. Ask yourself constantly if you are working you hardest for yourself, or someone else. Do you think it's best for you to go to a job you hate for a good portion of your waking life, or find your own path?

A good place to start is here: Stevepavlina.com