Do You Want Security or Freedom?

What is your answer?

Most people, when asked this question, would prefer to have both. ‘Do you want salad or soup?’. ‘If possible, both please’. And in a restaurant, yes, you can have both if you are willing to pay the price. And it’s no different with other things in life.

Of course, I want security and freedom. I want to have a steady paycheck and I also want to be free to pursue work I want (or better, work I love). 

If you want to have both security and freedom, you have to pay a higher price. The currency is risk.

There are countless entrepreneurs, self-employed people who took numerous risks and as a result of that live a life of security and freedom. They earn a reliable income from their business and enjoy the freedom of deciding what to spend their time on.

But for employees, or rather employees with an employee mindset (I’ll get into why this matters, later) it’s a different story. One that has turned increasingly bleak. 

There used to be a time when workers drudged in factories, but could reasonably expect to be employed for the long-term. There was no freedom, but at least there was security. And well, that’s something!

Nowadays, job security is increasingly vanishing while nothing much has changed with freedom. As long as you work as an employee for a company, you are bound to the goals and schedules of the company. No security and no freedom, isn’t that a double loss?

It’s sad that few people realize this. 

When you work as an employee for a company, you get lulled into a sense that you are safe. Whether the company makes money or not, you can expect to get a fixed amount of money every two weeks, or every month in most European and Asian countries. 

It felt like a relief each time the money came into my bank account. “At least I don’t have to worry about paying rent and my credit card bills. That problem is solved.” 

In the short-term that was true. As long as I did what my company expected me to do, I was safe. Or sort of safe. 

That was my thought process in my 20s. Secure a job and tackle that money problem!

Like millions of other graduates, as soon as I finished university I rushed into finding that sense of security. I modeled that path after my parents, relatives, friends, and society. Go to a good university, get a degree, and after that secure yourself one of those fancy and well-paying jobs. 

I got a pretty good one. My first real job was as a management trainee at one of the largest multinational banks. I held prestigious job titles including ‘Project Manager, International Projects’ and ‘VP, Strategic Business Management’. These coveted positions made me feel important. The acknowledgment of my parents and friends made me feel that this job was something worth clinging to. If everyone, including the people closest to you and those you trust the most tell you how great your job is and how proud they are of your accomplishments, then it becomes difficult to question your situation. 

No one ever asked me ‘Do you know what the hell you’re doing?’.

I wish that someone had asked me this question back then. And if I had the courage and honesty to answer that question, perhaps I would have said ‘You know, actually I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

It’s only now that I realize that I was a hamster on a wheel, like millions of other people.

I was working 50-60 hours a week (that is the number of hours where you have so few left that the remaining hours become ‘maintenance- and compensation-only time’). I was spending precious time working on projects I didn’t care about in order to be rewarded with money and titles. 

I operated on a wheel that kept me ‘safe’ but not free.

Well, isn’t that a good problem to have? At least as an employee, you have temporary security, you get a steady paycheck as long as you’re employed. Even if that’s 2 years, it’s not too bad. 

Yes, if you have, or if you see no other options, then being a hamster on a wheel is better than starving. And if you happen to genuinely like your job, then there’s nothing to complain about.

But how many people can truly say that they like (we’re not even talking ‘love’ here) their job? How many people are mainly in for a sense of security? Sadly, I believe, most people stay in their jobs because they think it’s safe. If they were completely honest, they’d say that they’d rather do something else. 

H.L. Menchen said “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.”

That’s understandable. The survival instinct makes people prioritize safety at the cost of sacrificing career freedom. When you don’t have enough food to eat to stay alive, then your first priority should be to secure money to solve that problem.

But once you’re past that stage, money becomes less and less of a problem solver. Then a bigger problem looms. The problem of ‘How do I make my life worth living?’. You begin to realize that you can do so much more and that you’re not stretching yourself enough.

You’re not making the most of life. And that realization leads to many people being miserable. 

As Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The mass of people are desperate for a better career (And with a career sucking up at least 50% of your waking time, it has the potential to make your life better or worse).

If you want proof for this, try asking 10 people how they feel about their jobs. Then, regardless of the exact words that they say, pay close attention to their demeanor and change in facial expression. You’ll find that most people are not too happy with their work. 

Although the majority is going through this, they are quiet about their desperation. No one likes to talk openly about how lost they feel. It’s easier to pretend that everything is ‘yeah, great!’, and continue turning that wheel. 

But as safety becomes rare, staying put in a job or career you don’t like is no longer the best option. When job security is non-existent, then freedom becomes even more attractive. 

During my banking career, I worked for the same company, and it never occurred to me that one day I could just be let go. Fortunately, I kept my job. I even had what most people would say a fast-paced and successful career. 

What drove me out of my job was the desire for freedom. I no longer wanted to work towards the corporation’s objectives and mold myself into the kind of employee that is valuable to that one particular company.

I didn’t want to be company-centered.

Instead, I wanted to develop myself to become the best version of myself that I could be. A career, a job, a company would just be a vehicle to accomplish that.

If I said that these were my thoughts at that time, I would be lying. Back then, I had no clue, I just wanted to leave and pursue ‘my passion’. Only recently did I start having a better understanding of whether it’s a good idea to ‘follow your passion’, but at that time, that thought was enough to kick-start something new. 

While in my 20s I ran on someone else’s wheel, in my 30s I constructed the wheels to run on. I was not safe but I was free.

Back then I couldn’t explain it to myself, but I had a very strong feeling that I wasn’t made for the corporate world. I was not an employee with an employee mindset. 

After quitting my banking job I had short-term stints working for a company. I was formally an employee, but my mindset was no longer that of an employee. Employment was just a means for me to achieve a larger goal. It was not the end goal.

I quit my job and went through a series of successful and unsuccessful projects, all the way until now. I started a small business which I discontinued, I freelanced, I made 2 feature films, I acted in independent films, moved countries several times, went back to school, started 3 youtube channels. 

I paid the price for this exploration. But I also gained more in terms of life experience, self-knowledge, than any job or college education could give me.

I failed so many times and pulled myself up again an equal number of times. I became an expert at starting projects, plowing through failure, and cheering myself on. All while keeping my finances relatively intact. 

I promise to share with you more details about all these experiences and how they changed me! 

But if I could sum it up into one thing, then the one fundamental thing that changed about me was that I knew that I never wanted to be on someone else’s wheel again. 

And here, the context is very important. Not wanting to be in someone else’s wheel doesn’t mean that I will never work for someone else, be part of something bigger, work with an organization ever again.

On the contrary, if you want to achieve big things, it is oftentimes necessary with organizations. 

What I mean is that someone else’s wheel, meaning an organization, a corporation, should not be the main container in which you see yourself.

Here, mindset is everything. How you view yourself in relation to the company you work at. A company can be one of the containers in which you work to develop yourself and earn a living. But beyond that, you need to have a much bigger thought container that guides your actions and decisions.

That is if you value freedom over safety.

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