It's well-established in business circles that quitting is synonymous with failure. Certainly it's true that if you don't keep getting up after failures, you certainly won't succeed. But there's an important caveat to this rule - that you're following YOUR dream! It doesn't apply in cases where out of fear or the misguided pursuit of security (which doesn't actually exist anywhere) you're doing something that's making you unhappy.
Many of us have had it drummed into us from an early age about the importance of qualifications and a career. What no one told me and I had to learn myself was that success and security make lousy goals. Look in the pages of any celebrity gossip magazine to see highly successful people making a complete "pig's ear" of their lives!
Happiness does not come by being successful or secure - in fact these things can trap you in a waking nightmare from which there's no escape. I have worked in the chemical and retail industry and in teaching, and seen people's mental health ruined in all three. I have often been astonished how people will tolerate being on the receiving end of incompetence, indifference, stupidity and even cruelty, whereas I myself have a very limited tolerance of being treated badly, and do not see why I should accept it.
It turns out that it all boils down to belief. Most folks stuck in "dead-end" or highly stressful jobs sincerely believe "that's the way that it is" and they can see no alternative. I have a good friend for example working 6 days-a-week in a job she hates to get things she wants. A typical believer in the "that's how it is" paradigm, she sees no other way. To be happy, she wants stuff, and to get stuff she spends much of her life hating what she's doing!
The flaw in the "it's the only way" argument is that it assumes the only way is where you can see it coming. A dreadful job guarantees a certain amount of money in the bank. But there is another way. Don't pursue the stuff or the certain wage, pursue the happiness! The reason people choose not to is that they can't see the money coming. They are sadly saddled with the "That's how it is" paradigm when the paradigm is completely wrong!
They way it actually works is that you create your reality by what you believe. So you can see that those who believe that's the way that it is get exactly what they believe! You see, reality is not universal, it's personal. Reality is unique to every individual - your reality is always exactly how you believe that it is. If you change your belief, your whole reality changes! If you believe that the resources will always be enough for you to follow your dream, then they are! Any sports coach will tell you that all the talent in the world is useless unless the players believe they have it!
If you want to believe there's a better way but don't know how, here's a very simple exercise. Think of something very small and simple that you currently don't have that you would like. For the next six weeks, think about that thing every day, every hour, and imagine owning it in vivid detail. If you doesn't turn up after six weeks, you can disregard this article, but only if you have faithfully been focusing as described. If it does turn up, you have a choice - start focusing on another small thing, or if encouraged, focus on something more ambitious for 12 weeks.
There's nothing magical or mystical going on here, it's only the way human beings have made things happen from the beginning. First they imagined it, and by imagining it for long enough and often enough, they made it happen. Every man-made thing you can see started in someone's imagination! That is where your ideal life must begin - by focusing on that vision, your behaviour perception and consequently the world around you changes to make it happen!
