Freeing yourself from the shackles of whatever currently ails you has got to be a top three great feeling. However, whether it’s a miserable job, an unhappy relationship or a deep sense of dissatisfaction with some aspect of yourself, there are some among us who spend years and years allowing our niggles to get the better of us.

Often, it’s embedded into us so deeply that we don’t even have the strength to change it, and we begin to justify all the reasons why we must resign ourselves to living in misery. Commonly, it’s an employment situation that makes people unhappy – I’ve known friends to spend years in a job whilst taking every chance they get to bitch about it, during what is *supposed* to be an enjoyable evening with friends (call me fucked in the head, but if spending time with your friends is just a circle jerk of whining about your jobs, then take a look around you, because like attracts like, and find a better crew). It’s totally fine to lean on your friends for support when the chips are down – being 100% positive at all times is ludicrously unrealistic. But if you’re drunkenly slurring to me for the thousandth time about hating your job, and yet you tell me you “don’t have time” to look for another job, then bitch please gtfo. So you don’t have time to update your CV or check Seek.com.au, yet you’ll happily spend hours bitching about it to anyone who will listen? That just tells me that on some level, you are not interested in giving yourself the best possible life that you can.

So why do so many of us dwell in this limbo? I’ve quit a job before with no other job to go to. I had a trip to Thailand with friends coming up, I had managed to stick out one year of the Worst Job Ever (no lie), and I knew in my heart of hearts that this awesome trip away with friends would be really awful and tinged with despair and anxiety if I knew I was going to have to return home to that job. So I quit! Funds were incredibly tight, I lived on cheap mie goring, started to pare down all my expenses, relied heavily on my partner (who would rather us be broke and emotionally safe than comfortable financially but miserable) and had to decline many a night out until I knew where my next paycheck was coming from – but none of that mattered. I had an incredibly liberated holiday, with the weight of the world gone from my shoulders. I was truly living, in the way that we were born to be – curious, spontaneous, and living solely in the present – with no energy being wasted on anxiety and stress. I would do this again in a heartbeat, and I recommend it to everyone. Even if you think you have too many financial responsibilities to be able to leave a toxic job, you can work on this problem two-fold: a) Minimize your financial obligations as much as possible, so that they don’t become a ball and chain of your life, and b) Start looking for another job. Immediately.

With all of this in mind, I’m striving to live this way forever, and to learn how to catch myself should I ever fall into the trappings of thinking that I can’t totally manipulate my life the way I want it to be. Be bold – take control of your life as much as you can! Challenge yourself to find the one deep thing that’s making you truly unhappy, and focus on changing it ASAP. Don’t look for reasons why not – instead, ask yourself HOW. Future You will be stoked you did <3

Love, Akika xoxoxooxoxox