Going Self-Employed 5 Reasons You Should Always Work for Yourself

Work sucks. That was the tagline to the movie Office Space which I always thought was funny but really started to appeal to me after I started working my various jobs. I never could stand the mindless and repetitive tasks that would be placed in front of me each day and that I’d better have completed lest I anger my boss and he gives me the boot to the unemployment line. I started reading biographies of various wealthy people and I almost always found the common thread that they became that way by being self-employed. Sure they may have started out with a company but soon broke away and developed their own ideas and made a ton of money doing it. That’s what I wanted, not necessarily immense monetary wealth, but wealth of the soul and the freedom to explore life as a human being and not another cog in the machine. Self employment clearly was the only route that I could take and be completely satisfied and if you think you may be the same here are five reasons why you may be onto the right idea for you:

1. Freedom! Horrible, Horrible Freedom!

I remember when I used to trudge to work every day and see people walking their dogs or doing anything else that clearly indicated that they might not have to work that day. I always felt as if I was a child again and had been grounded by my parents. I could look out of my window and see all of the other kids having fun but I wasn’t allowed to join them. After a few months of doing this almost everyday I began to question exactly why I had to go do any of this at all? Work wasn’t fun, it didn’t pay much, and I had to do as others told me. Having these thoughts consume your mind each day is flat out depressing and it would be a few years before I would come to the realization that I didn’t want to have a job anymore even if it meant I would be destitute for a long time.

Sometimes it is hard to separate my short term future and my life long well being and happiness. Yes, of course it would be easier to go back to my old way of life where I knew that I would have enough to get by each month (plus good health insurance) and be happy in my own bubble feeling safe from bad things because I had a job. However, there is a part of me that has been slowly taking over my brain that says that I only have one opportunity on this Earth and that I should live exactly how I want to regardless of societal norms. It disturbs me to realize what I have been brought up to desire in life is a ‘secure’ job where if I’m lucky I get two weeks of vacation per year. What kind of dream is that? Sure, it’s a better position than 95% of the world but what if you live in a country where your physical needs can be met with ease? Once you have food and shelter taken care of your psychic needs takes a more central role.

So after much thought and deliberation about the whole situation I decided that my dream was to wake up each morning and do whatever I wanted to. It’s a struggle to get to that point and yes it often requires a significant bit of money but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Take stock of your own life and ask yourself do you really have the level of freedom you desire or does your company have more control than it actually should?

2. Challenge Yourself Daily

Being self-employed requires you to challenge yourself to work harder and create opportunities for you to succeed. Some jobs require this as well but when it’s you by yourself and there is no fall back position that’s when you really get to see what you’re made of and what type of ideas you can come up with. I write everyday that's how I "work" for myself. I write for multiple user driven content sites like Associated Content and Busika plus do work for other blogs that I haven’t even launched yet but I’ve started writing several posts for. It’s been a challenge to make myself do this every single day, even when very little revenue is coming in to support it but it’s become an obsession of mine to keep pushing forward and achieve my goals.

Self-employment is not easy and it is not for the timid or those without the drive to be a success. You can train yourself to have more discipline and laugh your way through the hard times but it doesn’t change the fact that it takes lots of work to get to where you want to be. It sounds like an awful experience but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love the thrill of writing and having new ideas, these are feelings that I never had while working my old jobs. Whenever I was at work I would feel like I was always just going through the motions and checking the clock every few minutes asking when the day would be over. Now it seems like I don’t have enough time in the day and I’m shocked that it is already noon because that means that I am slightly behind schedule.

3. Your Income Depends on You and Not Your Boss

Whether you work for a salary or and hourly wage someone else is dictating what percentage of the value you create you get to keep, wouldn’t you rather keep all of it (besides taxes of course)? When your self-employed your income is going to start at zero but depending on what you put into it you could very well overtake your old salary and leave it in the dust. It’s sort of like going to college in that you are giving up the immediate benefits of working (income) for an education because you know that down the line you will make more money than you could of with just a high school diploma (in most cases). The early stages of self-employment are hard but it is an investment in yourself and your own talents that can reap more money than would ever be possible working for someone else.

Beyond that you can diversify your income and have it come to you automatically each month but setting up different revenue streams. Just using blogging or web site development as an example you can get paid through advertising, e-books, affiliate programs, selling products, endorsement, and many other ways. Imagine having built the traffic necessary by consistently creating valuable work and then sitting back and have an automatic income each month for work that you did a year or two ago. Since your work is not time based but is instead value based you get paid each time it creates value for someone not just the time you spent working on it.

I have articles that I have written in two or three hours a few months ago that have generated $30-40 so far and will continue to pay me more as long as it is posted online which could be for the rest of my life, I don’t really know. But see I’ve already made a wage similar to what I would get paid working a part time job for something that I wanted to write in the first place and it’s going to create a bit of income in perpetuity.

Hell, if I wanted to write like mad for a few years and then slouch off and coast from my automatic income I’m sure I could make a pretty decent living, at least enough to support myself and cover my basic needs each month.

4. What’s a Schedule?

Some jobs give you more flexibility in the hours you work than others but all too often it’s the dreaded 9 to 5 times slot with no room to budge. Never mind if you want to take an exercise class that is only offered at 10 AM each day or go out and enjoy the sunshine, you must be at your desk almost daily with an hour lunch break in the middle of the day. It’s not a bad thing to have a set schedule because it can really help you to get your daily tasks done faster. However, some days I want to sleep in so I push back my work to the afternoon and evening hours and still other days I know that I want to go out and have some fun late night so I’ll get all of my work done bright and early so I don’t skip over anything.

Self-employment gives you a flexibility that you just won’t find with many other jobs and being able to adapt with your changing moods and lifestyle makes it easier to stay happy and focused on what needs to be done. My work only requires that I have a computer with internet access meaning that if I want to take a trip to visit my friends out of state one day I could do that and still generate more income for myself in the process. Like Bruce Lee said, “Be water my friend.”

5. Take Pride in What You Have Accomplished

I remember having projects at work that I would spend loads of time on and when I finished I felt a sense of pride for having stuck it out and getting it done. That pride was always fleeting though because it wasn’t the work that I wanted to do for myself, it was something that I had to do in order to please the higher-ups and keep my job. Nowadays, I can take pride in the fact that what I write has been read by thousands of people (actually in total from every site hundreds of thousands) and has maybe helped someone else improve their lives or at least find some information that was useful to them.

I’m not saying everything I’ve written has been brilliant or even that good but the odds say that I have provided some value to at least to one person and even if everyone else hates what I write I can still hang my hat on that fact. Building something with your own two hands is always more satisfying than having someone else do it for you. The company you work at was built by someone else and your job is to simply maintain that structure, when you think about it like that it really isn’t that gratifying. Humans are naturally creative, the problem is most of us lose that creativity over time to where we can’t even think of something we’d be good at producing on our own. Take the time and get that spark back even if it is only between hours at the office and slowly build something that you can be proud of and even make a nice income from creating.

Look not everyone can be self employed and there are a lot of jobs out there that aren’t totally soul crushing and actually can make you happy with what you’re doing in your life. On the other hand, these types of jobs seem to be few and far between and most of us will end up in a job we hate because we tell ourselves that we will move on to something greater down the road and slowly lose our dreams until they leave us for good. Don’t let that happen to you. You may really not be able to just up and quit your job right now but you can start the process of developing ideas and putting them into action to untangle yourself from work you hate. Schedule in time to read about what has always interested you, go take classes if you can, start a blog, start a website, start your own business! Just do something now if you really want to be self employed. Fear of failure isn’t an option because you only have one crack at this world.