Beware the Corporate Quicksand

“The pursuit of normality is the ultimate sacrifice of potential.” – Faith Jegede

This article is a reality check.

You, just like everyone else in your peer group, is heading for quicksand. Worse, you’re in denial about it. Everyone has plans, has dreams and they all involve avoiding the quicksand.

But as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

What do you think when you hear the mantra “follow your dreams?”

Your gut instinct is probably "Do it!" It’s a mindset that’s been drummed into us since childhood by Disney movies and storybooks. Like it or not, the hero’s journey is imprinted into our soul, everyone’s knee-jerk philosophy is "Follow your passion! Embrace failure! Enjoy the ride! It’s better to regret something you have done than blah blah blah [insert Instagram motivational meme here].”

But here’s a secret: you don’t really think this. You think the opposite but you don’t know it.

And this is why the quicksand will get you.

This isn't a negative article telling you to be realistic about your dreams, it’s a positive article asking you to be realistic about your mind.

The real world will knock your dreams out of you. This is important to understand. It's nothing personal, it's not a character flaw or an innate failing, it's simple mathematics undertaken by your reward-centred brain.

This is how things usually play out

We dawdle through our twenties faced with a barrage of realities about money. For many of us, it’s the first time out in the world alone. We need to get a job to pay the rent or to buy a car, to cover living expenses and perhaps even pay for a holiday or at least fund some semblance of a social life.

The immediate answer to all these expenses is a corporate job.

This is quicksand.

Corporate jobs are in abundance, they're secure, predictable and most perniciously of all, they’re "respected". It's not nice to admit but tell someone you work in a supermarket and they won't think much of you; tell them you work for a law firm and they will have some admiration, even if you're earning less as an admin assistant in that firm than you would be in the supermarket.

So, the big plan to avoid the quicksand and pursue your dreams becomes a compromise of dipping your toe in the quicksand to carry you through those difficult initial years of adulthood.

But beware, there’s no such thing as dipping your toe in quicksand, corporate jobs are corporate careers in disguise. Before you know it, you're up to your neck in responsibility, lured in by incremental pay rises, promotions, status and stability.

One minute you've put your dreams on hold to pay the rent, the next you’re in your mid-thirties and a faceless cog in a machine, wondering who the fuck you are.

If you’re young and reading this, be in no doubt this happens to almost everyone. Dreams are evaporated by life's pressures and your brain’s desire to reduce risk.

Three simple ways to avoid the quicksand

It's easier to avoid getting into something than it is escaping it. If you have the tenacity and faith — or perhaps sheer stubbornness — to follow your dreams from the start, that way you'll never have to worry about any of this.

So, rule one: if you're young enough, don’t enter the corporate world if it doesn’t align with your dreams.

Understand working in the corporate world means giving up your dream to help someone else achieve theirs.

Rule two: listen to your intuition, it won't lead you astray, it's just hard to hear sometimes. This is a difficult undertaking, especially when your friends' salaries whizz passed yours, but if you're lucky enough to be clear on your dream, follow it with all your heart. There you will find yourself.

Rule three: find the right measuring stick. Your friends in corporate will start earning more than you, but it's an illusion, an acceleration thing, not an indicator of top speed. Still, when you're the poorest of your group, you're going to feel like a failure, but you're using the wrong measuring stick.

Do not be fooled by social media bluster and dinner party bravado. No one has a great job in their twenties, especially not loud-mouthed friends who work for Deloitte posting photos of their business class aeroplane seat with the hashtags #nottooshabby and #winning. They're going to work, not to party with Drake on a yacht.

The reality is most of your peers will have shit-munching jobs working as PAs, Paralegals, HR Assistants, or Marketing Administrators, or any other semi-skilled role young people fill in corporate machines.

Barely tolerable jobs quickly grow into barely tolerable careers. They have one leg in the quicksand and they don't even know it.

Measure your life based on how aligned you are with your dreams, not how much salary you've traded it in for on a monthly basis.

Rationalisation as a pill

For those of you older and further into the quicksand, the power to admit you have made a tactical error will do wonders to turn your life around.

It's okay to be wrong, we have all been seduced by the system to one degree or another.

Though admitting your error will be harder than anticipated. Your reward-centred brain has you denying you even had dreams. It likes the money, the status, it likes the corporate stability, it wants to reduce your risks to zero and for you to stay in your cog-based comfort zone.

The truth is most people don’t have what it takes to follow their dreams because it's extremely difficult and scary. It takes a certain type of madness and self-belief to spurn all the comforts society offers you and to beat your own path.

So, to hide from the painful truth, we disconnect from ourselves and take the blue pill. Denial. By 40, most of us don’t even remember we had dreams. It's an amazing display of mental gymnastics, pretending to be happy when you're merely anaesthetised.

Final Thoughts - Or: this is why you love sports stars

The bottom line is for all the work you may put into your job, your soul cannot be soothed by corporate spoils.

There is a need to self-actualise, the answer your calling, and as you won't meet it yourself, you binge on achievement-porn instead, obsessing over sports stars, devouring autobiographies of the rich and famous, looking up to outliers like Elon Musk, Michael Jordan or Warren fucking Buffett and ogling yachts and cars on Instagram.

Success stories comfort you, if only for a while. You need to get as close as possible to others fulfilling their dreams to feel better because you are meant to be doing the same.

We all do this. We are drawn to the individuals more courageous than ourselves so they can live the hero's journey for us.

There’s a reason why everyone takes the express route to mediocrity, it’s safe. You can't fail if you don't try. We trap ourselves in comfort, security and most of all, practicality.

Ordinary, non-dream based realities are easy but they are a compromise. What if it's time to stop compromising? What if it's time to pull yourself out of the quicksand and finally follow your dream. Take the risk, without it, there will be no glory. Who knows what might happen. You might find out who you really are. What a place to be. I'll see you there.

"Man, alone can transform the power of his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone can dream, and make his dream come true." - Napoleon Hill