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Office workers are cowards.

I know because I was one. I failed at my real goal in life in my early 20s when I built my dream startup and walked away from it. To protect my ego from facing the truth and avoid going to therapy, I got a safe job.

Doesn’t get any safer than working in a big bank. I could hide from anyone or anything. If the company made me redundant, I could always move departments. I had backup plans built upon backup plans.

But my measly salary wasn’t enough to buy a simple one-story house for my future family. I was living like a bum using coffee cards to get one out of ten lattes free. Every stamped card was a reminder that this is what playing it safe gets you—discounted mediocrity.

Taking a holiday was a 6-month budgeting project that involved me ignoring all the fun things I could do just so I could save money.

My 9-5 job forced me to be a coward. I’m not alone.

Millions of people work 9-5 cubicle jobs they secretly hate because they don’t have enough courage to do anything else.

The modern world programs us to be cowards

College degrees are great in theory.

Their 12-step guide to any career makes logical sense and should work. But the degree lacks real-world action. And everybody is a f*cking genius until a 9-5 boss, recession, divorce, sickness, or redundancy punches them in the face. Then all the info is useless.

Society worships books too. If I dare say on social media that 99% of reading non-fiction books is just procrastination in disguise, I get roasted in the comments.

Even though we all know books don’t help you hit your goals or enable you to make real decisions. Information creates the illusion of progress. Action creates change

A loving family helps. But there’s only so much a loving family can do for you when you’re an adult and must face the big, bad world. Your family can’t live your life for you. You must live it as you are with your current skills.

We’re conditioned to think if we have all the information we can make a decision. But we never have enough information to choose. Or we have information overload.

At some point, we just have to make decisions. That takes courage.

This is what courage actually looks like (few understand)

• The courage to be a beginner now, knowing you’ll figure out the details later and become an expert as long as you stick to it.

• The courage to keep trying even when everything you’re doing isn’t working.

• The courage to try new things even though they’re scary

• The courage to ignore your fears but not let them stop you

• The courage to keep going even when critics fling poo at you

• The courage to be called weird even though you’re just being yourself

• The courage to burn down your current life to build a new one

• The courage to live in new countries while you leave your family behind

• The courage to say yes to an opportunity you have no idea how to deliver on

Having courage is saying yes to the unknown. And most people refuse to do that which is why they’re stuck doing something they don’t want to do.

Courage is making a decision, not being stuck in indecision.

Courage is trusting yourself when no one else will. Courage is taking a risk knowing that’s the only way you’ll find out your true potential.

Courage is deciding to take action despite the downsides because it’s better than living with regrets of what you could have done.

The average person lives a life of quiet desperation because they’ve never sat down to understand the true definition of what courage is. They think courage is a personality trait or is handed out at birth. They’ll say things like…

“I’m neurodivergent.”

This is code for “I’m not capable of having courage.” Or…

“I’m introverted.”

This is code for “courage can’t be applied to my situation.”

Labels are a poor substitute for knowing what courage is. Courage is a conscious decision. Each of us gets to decide whether we want to be courageous.

Most problems in life are actually hidden problems of courage

The average person doesn’t quit their BS job in corporate because they think they need:

• Better timing

• More intelligence

• More information

• A better strategy or plan

• More years of experience

They don’t though. They’re lying to themselves. They need to have some balls. I told myself these same excuses for years.

At age 34, a unique set of