How entrepreneurs can end up unfulfilled, stressed out, and drained while trading their time for money (and what to do instead).
How to learn what you are truly capable of in life.
Why purpose is the secret to limitless motivation.
And much more…
Let’s begin:
Table of Contents
1. You hate your job, you live for the weekend, and you stay up Sunday nights dreading Monday mornings
I remember those days.
I remember coming home on Friday nights exhausted from a week in the office, too tired to even hang out with my friends.
I’d party on Saturday and be hungover all day Sunday. My friends even nicknamed me “Sunday Mike” because I’d be curled up on the couch with a blanket and a banh mi watching football all day.
The later it got on Sunday, the more the feeling of dread for the next day would increase.
Things have changed since then. I love Mondays. On many Saturdays, I can’t wait for Monday to come. I can’t wait to get back to work and do my thing.
Because I love what I do. It means a lot to me, and I’m excited about what I’m doing and where I’m going in life.
If you hate your job, you live for the weekend, and you dread Monday mornings, this most likely means your work isn’t aligned with your happiness or your inner compass of what matters most to you.
How do you solve this?
You’ve got to find work that aligns three main things:
What you love to do (your passions)
What you are good at or want to get good at (your gifts, talents, and abilities)
What the world wants or needs (how you can be of service to others)
The combination of these three things is what most people are searching for when it comes to purposeful work.
Finding this is like night and day compared to a job you hate.
It’s well worth the effort.
2. You distract yourself with mindless social media scrolling, TV show binges, alcohol, drugs, or porn
Distraction and escapism are tell-tale signs of someone who isn’t happy with their life.
Whether it’s mindlessly scrolling through social media, binging show after show, drinking too much, taking too many drugs, watching too much porn, or any other form of escapism…
These are signs of an internal imbalance.
In moderation, in healthy amounts, you could argue that none of these are that bad.
But when you are overindulging, it’s typically you trying to fill an internal void and make up for something you feel is missing in your life.
One of the things that may be missing is a purpose, mission, goal, or dream that excites you – a worthy goal you’re working toward on a consistent basis.
When you have something like this, it starts to harmonize the other areas of your life, because you have something more important and meaningful to focus your energy on.
You start taking better care of your health. Your relationships improve. Your habits get better.
People without a purpose tend to fall prey to their more base desires and habits (social media scrolling, alcohol, drugs, porn, etc).
People with a strong enough purpose tend to transcend their base desires and habits out of necessity.
You simply cannot fulfill your purpose or accomplish your goals and dreams while wasting your mental and emotional energy on things that don’t contribute to your success.
You can’t do it while not taking care of your health, either.
The goal is too important. The dream is too important. The purpose matters too much to you.
Without a purpose to focus your energy on, it’s natural that you may fall prey to your lower habits and base desires.
With a purpose to focus your energy on, you will start to transcend those base desires and habits and harmonize the different areas of your life.
You will begin to tap into the true power you have to change your life for the better.
This power is available to each of us, and a strong purpose is one of the best ways to bring it out.
Because of this, many people (48%, according to one study by Joblist) choose career paths based on their parent’s approval, not because it’s what they actually want.1
How does this affect the child’s life years later?
They go to school for four to eight years and spend five to six figures on a degree, only to do a job they hate and stresses them out!
The child did what other people (their parents, other family members, community members, friends, etc) expected of them instead of what they wanted to do.
In so many cases, this leads to internal conflict, lack of fulfillment, and unhappiness.
This quote by Bill Gove is perfect here:
“If I want to be free, I’ve got to be me.” – Bill Gove
If you want to be free, you’ve got to be you. Not who other people expect you to be or want you to be.
You’ve got to be you! You’ve got to do what you want to do!
You’ll never be truly happy doing what other people want you to do if it’s not what you want to do.
We all want our parent’s approval. It’s a psychological characteristic of most, if not all, of us.
We want to be accepted by our family, our community, and our friends.
But what about seeking your own approval? What about placing your own approval of yourself above other people’s approval of you? What about accepting yourself?
Because if you don’t make yourself happy, you can’t make anyone else happy.
If you don’t make yourself happy, you can’t make anyone else happy.
Put your happiness and self-approval first.
Make your own decisions about what you want and what’s best for you, even if they don’t align with what other people want for you at the moment.
Trust your instincts and your intuition, because you are the only one who can live your life.
4. You get overly dramatic when your sports team loses
I remember my friend and roommate, tears streaming down his cheeks, crying when his football team lost in the playoffs.
They hadn’t won a Super Bowl in years.
I remember him and another fan hugging each other for a few minutes after the game, consoling one another.
And I remember thinking to myself…
“Damn…isn’t this a little much?”
Passion is a wonderful thing. If it’s directed at a sports team, I’m all for it.
If you’re a passionate fan, then you probably should feel bad when your team loses, especially if it’s a critical game.
I’m not a fan of any team, but I’m a two-time fantasy football champion. I’ve had some tough losses in the playoffs. I get it.
But if this team is your life, if you are distraught and depressed when they lose, you’re probably too emotionally invested in something that doesn’t actually have big “real world” implications – both in your life and in general.
Meaning…you probably don’t have anything better to care about, and you probably should.
You don’t have anything better to invest your precious energy into so that when your team loses (and they will) it’s not such a big deal because there are things in your life that are more important than that.
Your goals, your dreams, your work, your family, your friends, your community, your service to others – whatever is more important to you – these things should take precedence over whether your sports team wins or loses.
Because…to be honest…your team losing isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
But you working toward a dream that could change your life and your family’s life, or you working on something that’s meaningful to you…that’s a big deal.
If you get overly dramatic when your sports team loses, put it into perspective and use it as a sign that you should probably bring some other things into your life that are more important to you than that.
Because I can almost guarantee there are things you care about or could care about that are more important to you.
Then your team losing won’t be that big of a deal, and you’ll be more grounded and diversified in how you invest emotionally in your team and the other things in life that matter to you.
5. You’ve settled for a job you “tolerate” or “don’t hate”
Just about everyone has been there.
You’ve found yourself in a job that makes you enough money. You don’t hate it, but you don’t love it either.
You’re just tolerating it. You’re in this neutral, “whatever” sort of place.
Living in this state is akin to purgatory. You’re just watching time go by. It feels like you’re neither going backward nor forward.
However, if you’re not going forward, I guarantee you are going backward.
Nature is defined by either growth or decay. You are a part of nature. If you’re not growing, you’re declining.
There is no standstill. There is no purgatory. You cannot go “nowhere.”
It’s like that famous quote from The Shawshank Redemption:
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
If you aren’t getting busy living, you’re getting busy dying. If you aren’t growing, you’re declining.
There is no such thing as a metaphorical purgatory in life. There is no such thing as going “nowhere.”
If you aren’t moving forward, you’re moving backward. It may be slow, so it feels like you’re not in motion. But you are in motion in the opposite direction to where your heart really wants to take you.
One of the primary drivers of happiness is growth. When we are growing and making progress, there’s an intrinsic joy that comes from that.2
Nature has wired us this way so that life itself can continue to expand and grow.
If you are in a job you tolerate or “don’t hate,” you are actually in a gradual decline.
If nature does its job, eventually you will need to leave and find something better, because the human spirit cannot stay in that state forever. It must grow.
So why not make a move now? Why wait?
Why not start finding work that invigorates you and excites you? Why not find work that challenges you in all the right ways?
Why not find work you actually care about?
It’s possible. There’s more opportunity to find or create this work than ever before.
But you need to be the one who says, “Enough is enough! I am worth more than a job I just tolerate.”
6. You started your own business but it has regressed to trading your time for money and now you “own a job”
After I graduated college, I started a location-independent online business with the goal of traveling around the world.
My goal was also to avoid the rat race and the corporate life. I knew it wasn’t for me and didn’t align with my highest happiness.
However, during multiple periods in my business journey, I found myself just one level above the corporate rat race.
Even though I was my own boss, I was doing work I didn’t really want to do for clients I didn’t really want to work for. I basically owned my own job.
I was my own boss and my own employee. I was trading my time for money – the exact thing I didn’t want when it came to working for someone else.
I was still in the process of achieving my goals and dreams, which made me happy, but I hadn’t gotten myself into the right business yet, and I hadn’t set up the business in a way that served both my customers and my life.
Many people start a business with the goal of achieving their version of freedom. Whether it’s financial freedom, time freedom, or simply the freedom to make their own decisions.
But if you don’t get into a business you’re truly passionate about, and if you don’t set up the business correctly, the business can end up owning you.
Business owners can end up unfulfilled, stressed out, and drained in a gilded cage of their own making.
If this is the case, you need to make a change. You cannot serve the world or achieve the freedom you desire in a business that drains your energy and constrains your freedom.
Start by deciding how you really want to impact the world. Then figure out how to structure your business in a way that actually gives you the freedom you desire.
7. You don’t like thinking about the future
If you don’t like thinking about the future, it’s probably because it stresses you out or gives you anxiety.
It’s probably stressing you out or giving you anxiety because inside you know you’re not heading in the direction you really want to go.
Or you don’t have enough clarity about where you’re going. Your future seems hazy. It’s unclear.
This is understandable because as human beings, we’re wired to want to know where we’re going and why we’re going there.
Nobody wants to go on a road trip to a boring place they don’t care about. We want to go places that are exciting, fun, and meaningful to us.
So when you don’t have that for your life in general, and you see other people who do have that and are excited about where they’re going, it’s natural to feel bad about it.
Which often leads to unhealthy habits to distract yourself (as mentioned earlier).
However, when you have a strong purpose that excites you, thinking about the future becomes exciting and thrilling.
Dreaming is fun because you know you’re in the process of experiencing what you’re seeing in your imagination. You start loving the prospect of what the future could have in store for you.
In order to get to this place, you need to have something worthwhile to work toward. You need to have some type of purpose and a vision for realizing it.
Then your excitement about the future will translate into excitement in the present moment about what you’re doing, which enhances your life right now.
If you don’t like thinking about the future, it’s a sign that a worthwhile purpose or goal is exactly what you need to shift your entire energy and, perhaps, your life.
8. You watch daytime television
No offense to daytime TV shows or hosts, but if you spend every morning/afternoon watching daytime television, I guarantee you can find something better to do with your time.
Something with more purpose, something more meaningful to invest your precious time and energy into.
I’ll try not to badmouth daytime TV too much. Everything has its place. And many of them are following their own passions, so kudos to them.
Who knows? Maybe you’re just in a dark place right now and need some escape. I’ve been there.
But if you watch these shows day after day, week after week, month after month, I would encourage you to consider what this is doing to your life.
Daytime TV is mostly celebrity gossip, and they make it seem like it’s the most important news in the world. When, in reality, just like your sports team losing…
It isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
When you get to the end of your life, are you going to look back on all of the daytime TV you watched and feel super grateful for it?
Are you going to be happy you paid attention to all of the latest celebrity gossip in your lifetime? Probably not.
In fact, this is the stuff people usually regret on their deathbed.
Not that they watched too much daytime TV, but that they didn’t spend their limited time in this life more wisely, doing things that actually matter to them.3
Many say that life is short. I disagree. I think it’s long. I believe we have an abundance of time.
It just feels short if you’re spending your time on a bunch of BS you don’t actually care about. It makes you feel like you haven’t done that much with your life, so your life feels shorter even though it’s the same amount of time.
The more meaningful stuff you do, the longer your life feels because you’re filling your time with awesome, purposeful experiences.
Excessive daytime TV (or any other over-indulgence in time-wasting escapism) will make your life feel short.
And may even shorten it for real, simply because your time isn’t being spent purposefully.
Get yourself a powerful purpose and you will increase the odds of living a long, full life; one that you’ll look back on and feel grateful for how you invested your time and energy.
9. You feel like you’re meant for so much more but you don’t know what
One of the reasons people struggle to be happy in dead-end jobs is that they have this nagging feeling they’re meant for so much more.
They have this feeling they’re capable of more than this job or career path can offer.
(And they probably are capable of so much more.)
Yet, at the same time, they don’t know what “more” they’re capable of. They don’t know what they would do instead.
So they stay in their dead-end jobs hoping things will get better or something else will turn up for them.
However, years may go by, and nothing changes. Their frustration mounts and the negative effects on their lives get bigger and bigger.
If you’re experiencing this, here are two important points:
You probably are capable of so much more.
Not knowing what you are capable of is simply a lack of clarity, which can be solved through self-discovery.
You need to get to know yourself better in order to know what you’re capable of. You need to get to know yourself on a deeper level to know what you really want and where you really want your life to go.
At the end of the day, it’s just self-knowledge you haven’t acquired yet.
Start asking yourself deeper questions about what you really want in life, what you are good at or want to get good at, and how you might want to serve others.
These three things are the building blocks of most life purposes.
Ask yourself these deep questions and write down your answers. This will begin your path of self-discovery to uncover what you are really meant to do in your life.
10. You can’t seem to stay motivated at work despite trying a bunch of productivity “hacks”
The secret to limitless motivation is to find and follow something you are truly passionate about.
Passion is the fire that ignites motivation.
Therefore, it follows that if you don’t have a passion for what you’re doing and you don’t care about it, it will always be a struggle to stay motivated, no matter how many productivity hacks you try.
People try to overcome a lack of motivation with productivity techniques, but no productivity technique can overcome a lack of passion.
No productivity technique can overcome a lack of passion.
Managers across the globe struggle to motivate their teams not because they’re incapable of being motivated, but because they just don’t give a sh*t about what they’re doing!
There isn’t enough purpose in it for them. There isn’t enough passion. They don’t love it.
If they did love it, there would be no need for motivational talks or productivity hacks. Their inner fire would do all the work.
It’s not a case of needing motivation or finding the optimal productivity hack. While these things can help, the true source of motivation comes from within.
It’s more a case of you being aligned with the work itself. It’s about you actually wanting to do it. If you want to do the work you do, you won’t need anyone to motivate you.
Then any productivity hack will be amplified ten-fold. Your productivity will skyrocket, simply because you actually like the work and care about what you’re doing.
11. You lack motivation in general and aren’t taking care of your health and well-being
If you lack motivation in life and you’re not taking care of your health and well-being, this can also be a sign of a lack of purpose.
A purpose focuses your energy and forces you to let go of negative habits that don’t contribute to the fulfillment of your purpose.
A purpose also ignites energy within you that not only motivates you toward the purpose but motivates you in the rest of your life in general. A purpose uplifts everything.
When I’m focused on my purpose, I take better care of my health, I’m more enthusiastic in my conversations with others, I’m more inspired to learn and grow, my vision of the future is brighter, I become more confident in myself, I achieve more inner peace, I’m more self-disciplined, and I’m happier in general.
There’s a harmonizing quality to having a strong purpose in your life. It helps harmonize all of the other areas of your life.
If the different areas of your life aren’t harmonious and you aren’t taking care of yourself, choose a strong purpose to focus on.
It could be the solution to turning around the other areas of your life and taking care of your health and well-being.
12. You believe you can’t find work that makes you happy AND makes you a lot of money
When people believe they can’t find work that makes them happy and makes them a lot of money, they often settle for high (or even low) paying work that doesn’t make them happy.
They think it’s an either/or scenario:
“Either I find work that makes me happy but I won’t make a lot of money. Or I find work that makes me a lot of money but won’t make me happy.”
This is a symptom of believing you are limited to either corporate jobs that pay well but ultimately stress you out, or to following your passion but barely making enough money to cover your living expenses.
However, this isn’t your parent’s era. That might’ve been true decades ago, but it’s not true now.
We’re living in an era where more and more people are finding both. They’re doing work that makes them happy and makes them a lot of money.
Many are making way more than even the highest-paying corporate jobs (seven figures per year and up).
Arguably, it’s the fact that they’re following their passion that has led to their increased income. They’re motivated by something more than money, so they’re doing better work and providing a better service.
Because of that, they’re being showered in financial abundance and success they never would have found doing work that didn’t make them happy.
Some like to argue that doing what makes you happy is impractical. I believe it’s the opposite.
We live in a time where we can have both. Why not at least make the attempt to take advantage of that opportunity?
13. You spend more time complaining than in gratitude
In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker (one of my favorite books) he says something everyone should keep in mind when they’re about to complain about something:4
“When you are complaining, you become a living, breathing ‘crap magnet.’“
He’s saying that complaining turns you into a magnet for crap.
When you complain, crap magnetizes to you and sticks to you in ways no shower can wash off.
Imagine yourself covered in crap (yes, I’m repeating ‘crap’ on purpose). Metaphorically, that’s what happens when you spend a lot of time complaining and not a lot of time…
In gratitude.
When you spend more time complaining about your life instead of being thankful for it, you become a walking, talking crap magnet.
You will continue to attract that crap until you become more grateful, appreciative, and happy about your life.
I get it. Maybe life’s been a struggle for you. Maybe you got the short end of the stick too many times.
Now when a little thing doesn’t go your way, you start complaining.
The energy you put out comes back to you. So what comes back to you?
Crap!
You’re doing yourself no favors by complaining, no matter what has happened to you in the past
I’m going to be a little in your face here, but it doesn’t matter how bad things have been for you in the past. Negative energy can only attract negative energy. It’s how the universe works.
I’ve been through my fair share of heartbreaking defeats. I can rattle off many things that “haven’t gone my way.”
I just don’t think about them!
And I definitely don’t complain about them!
I don’t let them become negative beliefs and perspectives. I don’t let myself start blaming others or complaining because things didn’t go my way or I went through a tough time.
Because I know, for a fact, that all that would do is attract crap into my life.
I don’t want to attract crap. I want to attract blessings.
To go from being a crap magnet to a blessings magnet, you need to put out the energy of blessings.
What do we say when we receive a blessing in our lives?
We say thank you!
So start saying thank you, put that energy out into the universe, and you will stop being a walking, talking magnet for crap and become a magnet for blessings, instead.
14. You miss the good ol’ days and (falsely) believe your best days are behind you
Ahh, the good ol’ days.
I love the good ol’ days. I have so many fond memories of the good ol’ days.
Growing up. Hanging out with my friends. Playing. Partying. Having fun.
Those were good times.
But I don’t believe those are my best days and everything from here on out will be worse than that.
I don’t believe my best days are behind me.
My best days are always ahead of me because I am always moving toward more and more good things. Amazing things. Incredible things. More and more of what I want in life.
If you miss the good ol’ days and believe your best days are behind you, it automatically creates a negative outlook on the future. You’re basically saying it’s all downhill from here.
Is it all downhill from here?
Well, that’s up to you. You are the creator of your own life experience. You determine whether your life goes up or down. You make it go up or down by virtue of your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Yes, it’s all you. Just like it’s all me. And that’s the best way for it to be.
Because it means we have total power over our lives. We have total power to make sure our best days are always what we’re experiencing now and will experience in the future.
If you believe your best days are behind you, I encourage you to let go of that perspective and create a vision of the future that excites you. Then start working toward it.
Continue to cherish your fond memories. I reminisce on mine a lot.
But make sure you’re always looking forward to something that excites you. It will invigorate your entire life.
15. You believe you’re too old to find your purpose and do what makes you happy in life
In fact, it’s also one of the biggest myths holding some of the younger generation back, as well.
30-year-olds are walking around thinking they’re too old when they still have their whole life ahead of them and plenty of time to figure out what they really want.
People think they need to have everything figured out by their mid-twenties or earlier. If they don’t, they’re late.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. You are never too old, and you are never too late.
What’s really happening is you’re overly comparing your life with other people’s lives.
Maybe you see people who’ve figured out their lives earlier than you and are happy/successful, and it makes you feel bad when you compare your level of happiness/success with theirs.
This type of comparison will only hurt your self-esteem unnecessarily. And it will get you no closer to your own desires, no matter how old you are.
If you believe you are too old to find your purpose and do what makes you happy in life, first, recognize that you are never too old.
No matter how much time you believe you have left, you can still do something meaningful with it.
Second, it’s time to stop focusing externally on others and focus internally on yourself.
If you had no idea what other people were doing with their lives or what stage they were in, what would you want for yourself?
What would truly make you the happiest, regardless of what other people are doing or how far along they are?
That’s the purest answer you can come to.
Find that answer, and you will discover your purpose, no matter how old you think you are.
Want more? Start here…
I help people find their life purpose. It’s a big part of my purpose and passion in life.
By “life purpose,” I don’t just mean a single, overarching higher purpose that’s meant to guide you for the rest of your life.
I mean ALL the layers of your life purpose, including your passion, your calling, your mission, your ikigai, your career/business passion, your life goals, your dreams, and every other layer that’s important to you.
I walk people through a process of self-discovery. The answers we seek are already within us. We just need to go in there and unlock them.
To help you do this, I created a free self-discovery workbook that will help you get to know your true self and start using that knowledge to move toward your ideal future.
You can download it for free using the form below.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing – Bronnie Ware. Here are the top 5 deathbed regrets: 1) “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” 2) “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” 3) “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.” 4) “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” 5) “I wish I had let myself be happier.”
Michael Karp is a personal development blogger and self-published author. He started his personal development journey in 2011 as a sophomore in college.
Since then, he has self-published several books, started an online business and became a digital nomad, achieved his dream of moving to Thailand and traveling around Southeast Asia, built a following of 18,000 people on Instagram sharing personal development advice, became a life coach, found his life purpose, and healed his body with the power of his mind.
With a deep passion for serving others, Michael continues his hero's journey on a mission to help people around the world to empower themselves, realize their true potential, and achieve their dreams.
