If you're reading this text right now, consider yourself lucky. You are witnessing a revolution that is changing the way the world works. As much as you may not have realized it yet, we are at the crest of a global movement that in the coming years will deconstruct the notion of what it means to work and have a truly happy life. The main responsible for this? The internet and technology.
The combination of these two things gave rise to a new model of work and life to which more people adhere each day – the possibility of being able to work from anywhere in the world, as long as there is an internet connection.
It's an epic moment: office walls and cubicles begin to collapse for various professions. In several cases, they no longer make sense. Today, for many people, there is no longer any reason to pick up traffic hours every day, move to offices that are mostly in central areas, spend on transport, parking, lunch, gasoline, and everything inflated, as there are many people doing the same things in the same places. There are smarter ways to work, earn money and have a great life at the same time.
With current working conditions, several people can perform their duties from any computer with internet access. Even meetings do not necessarily need to be face-to-face these days, with a few exceptions. The internet has made a new option possible for those who feel much more inspired and productive when working from home or anywhere else of their choice. It came to be a powerful tool for those who are dissatisfied with their professional and life path, and who wish to work and live in another way. She is the letter of freedom for millions of people.
But it was not always so
The social model that most people consider “normal” comes from the end of World War II. With everything destroyed, with the economy broken, with high unemployment rates, homelessness, and families embezzled by war, people's dream became to regain the losses. That meant having a nice house with a white fence and mowed grass, a successful career in a big company, working harder to get that promotion, so that you could finally get married, have kids, a nice car in the garage, and two 15-day vacations. per year. Thus, the American Dream was built. This means that even before you were born, the world already had expectations of you, imposing a path that is traced in the same way by most people. They made you believe that there were no other choices. That this was the only possible path to happiness.
They were wrong.
After some time, some people began to realize that the American Dream was more like a nightmare, as this capitalist model of life was creating more and more prisons in their lives. They began to realize that they had entered an endless mad dash in search of more money, no matter what the consequences. We are not against making money – quite the opposite. We are in favor of earning money, but this does not mean having to give up 80% of your time, and start living only during breaks. Life is too short for that.
From the moment you go to college, you are destined to work with that for the rest of your life. And woe to anyone who complains, since there are more candidates than vacancies in the market. When you get a job, you have to stay on track and do whatever your boss tells you to build a career. Then you have to go up in rank over time, and earn more money every day to be able to support the standard of living formed by all the expenses you are required to have when you become an adult. You buy a house, and it owns you. It is necessary to fix the leaks on the roof, mow the grass, paint, fix the cracks, buy beautiful furniture, install cable TV, hire internet. If you have an apartment, in addition to all that, you will still have to pay an eternal rent, which is the condominium. If you have a car, you need to pay insurance, gasoline, property tax. If you live on the run in a big city, you need to make up for all the stress by eating in cool restaurants, going out to clubs where you pay R$50 entry just to smile, or even paying R$8.50 in the hot mix of the inflated bakery on the corner for lack of options. Buying becomes a form of reward for frustrations. When the money runs out earlier than planned, the way is then to use the credit card as if you already had that money, which results in debt, which is more prisons without bars. The result is that we need to work harder and harder, submit to more and more pointless efforts, so that we can pay and take on more debt. This sets up an endless looping, also known as the rat race.
If you recognize yourself in some of these items, sorry inform, but you're also more of a rat participating in an undated race to finish. Just like us a few years ago. If you don't escape it, it will have no end. It was meant to be endless, and the only way to get out of the loop of modern life is to recognize the problem and jump off the wheel before it's too late. Life is not a race. And you are not a mouse.
If you're on the same track as everyone else, then you're doing something wrong
Since we resigned, opened our project company to the internet, and managed to make it our full-time job, many people have come to us reporting being lost in their professional path and asking for advice.
Most of them chose a career just thinking about what they thought would make money, or what their parents wanted, or simply because they had no idea what to do anymore. At first, it might have seemed like it would work, like a new relationship in which you see the other person's faults, but you believe he will change. People do not change. Likewise, it's pretty hard to come to feel happy about a career over the years if you've chosen it just for the money or to please someone else. You can deceive everyone but yourself.
The result is a life with few real and meaningful accomplishments. The ones that make the heart flutter. That give palpitations. That make you grateful daily. And living a life without these frequent sensations is such a waste. It doesn't make sense to dedicate a lifetime to a career, and then wait to be happy at the end. Happiness is not a destination, it is a trajectory.
If you find yourself lost and unmotivated with the direction of your professional career, and do not see yourself happy doing the same thing in a few years, know that you are not alone in this. Our generation is increasingly awakening to the fact that it is possible to turn your dream into work, and each day more people rebel to pursue a dream.
The internet is one of the tools that made life easier for people who left their timecards to do what they really liked and knew how to do well. Whether with the creation of an online business, or using social networks to spread their work, today anyone can create their business and find people who are interested in it around the world. So, if you are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel to turn your professional life and your level of happiness, know that the internet can be a great ally to help you achieve your dream, And I explain how.
We are Digital Nomads.
With the evolution of the digital age and mobile technologies, more and more people are beginning to realize that geographic boundaries are no longer precise. If you can work from home, using technology, you can work from anywhere in the world. And this is the new American Dream for many people and the characters in this new story were named “Digital Nomads“. Most of them have been on the other side, as well as us. They studied, had to fit into a pre-determined career, worked long hours surrounded by the walls of some office, eagerly awaited to live in breaks from work, such as on weekends, at the end of the day, on vacation, and became depressed when end of them, until they asked themselves: what am I doing with my life? If you're doing something anxiously waiting for it to finish, that's the biggest sign that this function doesn't bring you happiness.
These people's lives could be good, they were healthy, they earned money to buy what they wanted, they had nice cars, and nice houses, a respectful career, but all of them, in some moment of lucidity, realized that their role models of life were tedious most of the time, as they spent most of the hours of their lives working with something that didn't satisfy them. The question that didn't want to be silenced was: “Was that it then? Is this what I've worked for my whole life? I swallowed frogs, I came to nights, I went to work sick, I took turns with bosses, for that?”
They could have a successful life, but they had to go all the way to realize that the model imposed on them since childhood was not capable of bringing happiness – after all, the opposite of happiness is not sadness, but boredom, as Timothy Ferriss states: “Happiness and sadness are not opposites, they are like love and hate. You can love someone you hate. We see this a lot in some relationships between mother and child and husband and wife. Therefore, the opposite of love is actually indifference. How the opposite of happiness is boredom. It is the boredom of a routine that no longer satisfies that quenches our inner flame. It's the boredom of a job that no longer makes sense to you, that keeps you from being happy. It's the boredom of a relationship that doesn't add anything new to the two people, that makes that marriage.
al who was so happy in the beginning are more like good friends who sleep together. We walk in the inertia of life, looking for a happiness that will never come if we don't break our routine.
