1. The middle class is dead. The so-called "American Dream" was always just a marketing slogan.
2. Many middle class jobs have been replaced by technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, and a host of productivity efficiencies.
3. Your employers and your bosses don't like you.
They want you to starve and buckle under the stress of continuous work, so they can 'handle' you better.
4. Studies show that an increase in salary only offers a little increase in "happiness"" above a certain level.
This is because we spend what we make. Very few of us save the increase in our salary. We are back at the mercy of our bosses eventually.
5. We allow too many people who don’t like you to control your destiny. (One boss, one client...)
Diversify the things you are working on so no one person or customer or boss or client can make a decision that could make you rich or destroy you or fulfill your life’s dreams or crush them.
6. Very few jobs will satisfy your physical needs, your emotional needs, your mental needs, and your spiritual needs.
Try to find one that will.
7. Your only retirement plan is to choose yourself.
We re all entrepreneurs. These are the skills you need to be an entrepreneur: an ability to fail, an ability to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on those ideas, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.
You can be an entrepreneur at work. Here, you take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create.
Or, you can start a business on the side. Deliver some value, any value, to any body, to somebody, and watch that value compound into a carer.
8. Eventually you will have to find solutions to the 'excuse' problem.
"I’m too old". "I’m not creative." "I need the insurance." "I have to raise my kids".
9. Take baby steps. You don't have to quit right now.
There are bills we have to pay. But start making a to-do list for the new life plan today. And everyday work out how those things can be done. Until you're ready.
10. You will make it when you build for others.
Thin how you can better things for your family, your friends, your colleagues, your clients, potential customers, readers, people who you don’t even know yet but you would like to know. People lie doers.