This Is How You Save Yourself from Corporate Life

This lie we’re told breaks up happy families. It causes divorces, couple fights, and lots of rage.
Here it is: The corporate life sells you the lie that you can own the company or a small part. You can’t. The department isn’t yours. The team isn’t yours. The company car isn’t yours. The nice desk by the window isn’t yours either.
The moment you fall for the lie of ownership, you’ll take the anger home with you. You’ll try to control your circumstances at work. It will take all your focus and you’ll take your attention off your family. Your family will feel you’ve become distant. They won’t understand the new corporate you.
Go to your corporate job and don’t worry about ownership. If you want to be an owner then become an entrepreneur.

One little human.
They start on a Monday morning. They enter the office with a sweet smile. You meet them and think they’re going to be great. They take you out for lunch to get to know you.
They make you think they’re going to help you a lot in your career. Six months in, you realize they are a corporate devil. They tear people’s career dreams apart for breakfast. They munch on your goals and spit them out on the pavement. Then you get angry.
How did you not see their destruction coming? If only you could get away from this one little human being then you could go back to the good ol’ corporate life you had. Wrong.
One human will always find a way to ruin your corporate life.
These people ruin your dream because they think it will help them achieve theirs.
Someone is always going to mess up your corporate life. You get to decide whether they do. You can stand up to them. How? Let them know you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. That reckless mindset scares the shit out of them. The line I used with a ladder climber was this:

“In 2015 I had a near-miss with cancer. It taught me that I could die at anytime and to appreciate the present moment. That’s why I live as if every day is my last. It means I’ve got nothing to lose. It’s probably not something you want to bet against.”

A person that hears these few sentences will be shaking in their boots. You’re unpredictable. You’re wild. You’re outrageous. You’re gosh damn crazy. That one human being will leave you alone when they see you don’t give a f*ck.

Caring too much in corporate life is a formula for career devastation.
When you care, you take business too seriously. You forget that life is not about how much money you make, what bonus you’ll take home, and what your job title will be in five years. Nobody cares about what level you are on the ladder. So why should you?

If you learn to care less, corporate life is actually pretty good.

You go to work to meet people and have fun. You stop stressing over KPIs that don’t matter. Revenue goes up. Revenue goes down. It’s not your freaking business so who cares. You’re warming an office chair until someone better than you can pull it out from underneath you.
Care about your growth, not about a logo. A logo can burn your career dreams to the ground if it wants. It’s the logo’s corporate right.

A 4 PM calendar invite on a Friday is all it takes. If you don’t save yourself from corporate life, then this unfortunate reality can find it’s way into your reality. A corporate giant can fire you at any time.
They don’t need a valid reason. All it takes is to say your role is no longer required. Workplace law won’t protect you in these circumstances. I learned the hard way when this happened to me. I saved myself from corporate life by always having a backup plan.
*My rule is now this: