America Sucks! The industry standard for your working life is 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. You get 2 weeks vacation if you’re lucky. Many people who choose to comply with this bullshit request from employers go through a period in their lives where they have little to no:

1. Self development
2. Personal/dating life
3. Fun
4. Vacation

Sound familiar? Are you a person who’s crossing off days on the calendar 3 months before you go to Vegas for a weekend? I say fuck that, change it. It’s just not worth it.

I’m not just recommending something blind to you! 2 and a half years ago I chose to quit my engineering career to become a dating coach. As you would guess, not even one person who I knew thought this was a good idea. Friends, family, teachers, college advisors all recommended I finish my last semester in college for my Engineering degree. I chose instead to flush 10+ years of college down the drain and move to Los Angeles.

Let me tell you what I experienced. After about 3 or 4 months of acclimating to LA, the dating scene here, and to the fact that I didn’t have to beat my head against the wall doing homework everyday, a wave of relief washed over me as I realized I was now the sole owner of a new lifestyle. I had a job where I worked only a couple of weekends a month, and I wasn’t making hardly enough money to support myself.

Fast forward to today. About 2 and a half years into my career I’m living comfortably. My salary is MUCH lower than what I’d be making doing engineering, yes. However, I have a TON of time freedom that I’m using to explore business opportunities that I believe will lead me to my goal of becoming a millionaire. So far it’s lead me to losing a bunch of money, but I remain steady in my belief that failure breeds education and patience with failure breeds success.  I continue to press on.

Enough of the money stuff, since I’ve moved to LA I’ve also used my free time to do some much needed self-development. I’ve changed from an angry, unmotivated, emotionally unaware guy into a high quality man. I’ve used the resources around me to learn to control and process my emotions in a healthy way, to gain motivation to work on things in my life that I’m truly passionate about, and to fix my dating life once and for all. For the first time in my life I can say that I’m truly experiencing what it’s like to have true happiness. What a fulfilling emotion.

What I’m getting at here is that when you sign up for 40 hours of work in a week, you’re signing up for an unhealthy lifestyle that won’t reward you in the long run.

If you’re a courageous person who believes they can really have it all, if you want to be the happiest you can in life, I recommend the following:

1. Figure out what your monthly “nut” is. This is the minimum amount of money required to sustain your life. Your BMW payment doesn’t belong in this.

2. Adjust your work schedule to work the minimum you can to cover your monthly nut.

3. Use the first couple months of your new-found time freedom to chill out and decompress from all the stress that you’ve been experiencing. Do a reality check and remind yourself that what you were doing was a terrible thing for you as a person.

4. Start exploring what you value in life through finishing a Value Heirarchy. This will give you a solid idea of what you value in your life and how to prioritize the way you spend your time.  I do this with most of my clients.

5. Start setting some goals for yourself. These goals should be ones that you can accomplish in 6-12 months. They should be measurable, and solely dependent on your action. In other words, instead of “lose weight,” your goal might be “look up a local fitness trainer, schedule a free session, take body measurements and work with trainer to set 6 and 12 month goals for body fat %, etc.” Next list the resources and role models you have to help you accomplish your goals.

6. Spend your new-found time on working on the things you value and would like to develop in your life.

7. Have sex with tons of chicks….jk…okay maybe not.

For me, this system has allowed me to finally give my life the substance I was seeking. I’ve been able to first and foremost master myself and my emotions, i’ve been able to develop killer skills with women, I am finally getting in shape, and I’m working towards my financially free future. I’ve gotten more in touch with who I am and what hobbies I truly enjoy spending free time on, and my relationships with others have grown stronger. I find myself loving waking up in the mornings to continue on this journey.

I challenge you to take a strong look at your lifestyle as it is RIGHT NOW. Are you a truly happy person? How could you change what you’re doing to allow more time for YOU and YOUR development as a man? Caution: right about the time you do this, you’re going to experience yourself being very creative. I’m certain that you’ll waste no time in finding 20 reasons why “That couldn’t work for me” or “This one thing prevents me from that.” The reality is that you have the ability to change ANYTHING that you’d like in your life, so keep that in mind when handling your own objections to success and happiness. Cheers.