Design a Life They Can't Control

Do you want to know what the system actually wants from you? It wants you to be on autopilot. And not because anyone planned it. Not because there is a room of executives deciding how to keep you compliant. I mean, there is that too, but not on the grand scheme of things.

The thing is a person running on autopilot, spending without thinking, borrowing without questioning, working without questioning why, is very predictable and very profitable. And you know, the thing about autopilot is you don't know you're on it. That's kind of the point.

So, sometimes I think about my obituary, and I know that sounds incredibly dark, but stay with me. I think about what it would say if I died today. And the version that scares me the most is something like this. Here lies Tom, a consultant who worked his entire life in jobs he didn't choose or like and spent the one life he had maintaining a version of himself he was never quite sure he wanted. That's the version I'm trying not to write.

Not because I had a terrible life. I haven't. You know, my childhood was actually kind of magical if I'm being honest with myself. You know, I grew up in an apartment with my mom. We didn't have much money, but I had this enormous inner world. You know, I used to build entire universes in my head. You know, as a kid, imagination was free. And I think part of me has spent a lot of my adult life trying to find my way back to that feeling, you know.

And I also survived a period of depression, years of it, like you know, therapy, medicine, the whole thing. And I never thought I would say this publicly, but I'm actually glad it happened because there was a time when I couldn't enjoy anything. Not a meal, not a film, not a morning, nothing really reached me, you know. And when it eventually lifted, something, you know, changed, you know, shifted permanently. And now I know those things, you know, like a shower or breakfast, a Saturday, which actually brings me to Saturdays.

Every Saturday my wife and I, we take a walk with our dog, you know, sometimes on the beach, sometimes through the forest, and then we go home, we have some lunch, we take a nap, and in the evening, her mother, my mother-in-law, comes over and we order food and we rent a movie. That's it. That's the whole thing. And it's perfect. It's genuinely completely perfect. Those Saturdays, by the way, they didn't happen by accident. I sort of designed them to be that way, which is actually what this whole video is all about.

But here's the thing that that I've sort of been sitting with lately. That life, you know, the Saturday life, the dog walk, the nap, the ordering food, the movie, that life has a price tag attached to it. And for a long time, I said yes to things I didn't really want to do, just to keep paying that price. You know, a job I didn't want, a commitment that I absolutely resented. And not because anyone really threatened me, just because the bills just kept arriving, you know, and I couldn't afford to say no.

Oh, and by the way, if any of this is resonating with you already, consider subscribing. More videos like this are coming.

So most people I think assume that freedom is mostly about money and I get that you know money obviously matters but I've also come to think that it's only one part of the picture because freedom isn't just what you own. It's what you can walk away from. Like can you leave your job if you had to? Could you survive a few months if one income source disappeared? Can you say no to a client, a project, a commitment without your whole situation collapsing? And I think that those questions reveal more than a salary figure ever could. And a person can earn well and still be completely trapped.

So, I have this friend. I can't show you his house for obvious reasons, but imagine something out of Bair. two pools, a sauna, a very modern kitchen, heated floors, beautiful garden, and he renovated it himself for years. It looks like something from a magazine, and he works a job that he absolutely hates, but it pays well. And he sees the house as an investment. And you know, technically maybe it is. You can definitely discuss that. I've made videos about this topic. But the thing here is he will never sell it. He loves his house too much. So what he actually built is a beautiful, immaculate, expensive reason to never leave. And that's the hidden thing. And a lot of people don't become more free as they earn more. They become more expensive to operate. And the more expensive your life becomes, the more dependent you are.

So you know, an employer doesn't have to threaten you. They just need to know you can't afford to miss two paychecks. A bank doesn't need to pressure you. It just needs your signature on something with a long payment window. And I remember I read this line from thorough once. Something along the lines of the price of anything being the amount of life you exchange for it. And that line has gotten more uncomfortable to me as I've gotten older because I started noticing that I wasn't just buying things with money. I was buying them with mornings, with focus, with hours that could have gone somewhere else. And sometimes though I didn't name it this way at at the time, I was buying them with my ability to say no.

You know, the modern trap, it isn't always about not having enough. Sometimes it's about having just enough comfort to stay, but not quite enough breathing room to choose.

So, here's something strange that I've noticed about myself. When I first started working, I hated going in. Every single day, there was this unbearable feeling, you know, walking through the door, like something in me was just refusing. And that went on for years. But today, I I don't actually think about it. I just walk through the door. Now, that might sound like progress, like I adapted, like I grew up, or I gave up. But I'm not sure it is, you see, because at least in the beginning, it felt wrong. My body knew something was off and it resisted. Now, it doesn't. It just becomes second nature. And I think that's actually the most dangerous thing that can happen to a person. Not the discomfort, the disappearance of the discomfort.

And I used to think that older people got grumpy and tired because that's just what happens with age. You know, the energy goes, the excitement fades. Biology, right? I don't think that anymore. So, sometimes I look at my wife and I've noticed how much we have both changed since we met. Obviously, we're older. We're more mature. That's fine. But there is a specific kind of change I noticed that I don't think is just aging. You see, work shapes a person if you do it long enough in the wrong conditions. Something sort of flattens and the range narrows. You know, the edges they soften. And we used to have so much more energy, so much more excitement. And I think that some of that is just the slow accumulation of years spent saying yes to things we didn't want to protect a life we were afraid to lose.

Now the strange thing about how this kind of dependence is how invisible it becomes. You know you don't notice it when you are inside it. It just feels like Tuesday. You know income goes up expenses follow. lifestyle sort of inflates quietly. More things to maintain, more payments to protect, more anxiety around any kind of disruption and freedom slowly migrates into the future tense. One day after this next thing, after this promotion, this loan, this busy period, but the future keeps moving and the trap adjusts to match.

And I also think that a lot of people aren't held back by a lack of ambition. I think they're being held back by the wrong kind of ambition. Ambition aimed at approval, at appearances, at proving something to people who aren't particularly interested. And that kind of ambition can build a very beautiful prison. That ambition was real. You know, the destination was just wrong. So, I built exactly what I was told to want. And underneath all of it, the same question sort of remains unanswered. Can you leave if you want to? Can you choose? Can you say no?

In 2015, my wife and I put a bid on a house, and we were so excited. The paperwork was signed, the handshake with the banker, the drive home in our old Toyota. That night after my wife went to bed, I stayed up. And I remember I just sat there thinking about the mortgage, about the number, about the fact that we would now have to work essentially forever to keep it. And here's something I've never quite been able to explain to myself. I love this house. I genuinely wish to live here for the rest of my life. You know, the neighborhood, the garden, everything is perfect. It's the dream I had as a kid. You know, I grew up in an apartment and I used to be jealous of the kids on the other side of the school, the ones who lived in houses in the rich area. And now I got it. I have it. But I didn't really choose it consciously. Not really. You see, I kind of followed the script. You get a job. You find a partner. You buy a house. You sign. You shake hands. You drive home feeling like you did the right thing.

So earlier this week, I logged into my bank accounts where I have the, you know, mortgage. And I saw a number I haven't been able to stop thinking about since. 30 years remaining. The bank actually has a plan for me. 30 more years of payments. That's their idea what my life looks like. And I just sat there thinking that's not a mortgage, that's a sentence. So now paying off this house faster than they planned has become a priority, you know, and not because I hate the house, but because I refuse to let someone else's spreadsheet decide how long I have to keep showing up.

Now, that night in 2015, sitting alone in the dark, that was the moment I went fully onto autopilot. I just didn't even know it. I just followed everyone else, adapted to reality, and I woke up inside a decision that had already made a hundred future decisions for me without asking.

Now, here's the part that nobody really likes to talk about, honestly. And I'm not going to tell you to quit your job and live in a van. I'm not going to tell you that the system is evil and you need to escape it. I live inside the system. I have mortgage. I have a consulting job. I pay taxes. I have a Netflix account too. I just I think I become more conscious about what I actually want, you know. And I think that the hack here it isn't to leave the system, you know, live outside the grid somewhere. The hack is to stop letting the system make your decisions for you.

And I know people don't want to admit this. But most of what we do every single day, every single hour, we don't actually choose. We just do things, you know, because this is what our brains are designed to do. We are creatures of adaptation. Our minds are built to go on autopilot, to preserve energy, to follow patterns around us. Think about taking a walk. You know, you breathe without thinking. You balance without thinking. You step over the curb without deciding to. Your body handles it. That's a miracle of adaptation and it works. But when that same mechanism runs your financial life, your career, your spending, it stops being a miracle and it starts becoming a problem because what society programs into us. Spend now, borrow easily, work forever, upgrade constantly. None of this is chosen by you. You just absorbed it. It becomes the default. and the faults run very quietly in the background costing you things you didn't even notice you are losing.

So I think that the hack is simply this. Be extremely intentional where society taught you not to be. Work inside the system but from your intentions not societies. So the most concrete example I know is money. You know, most people they earn, they spend, and if there's something left, they put it away. That's the default, right? And because so much of spending happens on autopilot, you know, a coffee there, a subscription there, a concert ticket, because everyone is going, you don't even see it. You just spend, you know, the intentional version is the opposite. Decide first how much you want to keep. You know, keep your priorities straight. Then adapt your life to what's left. You know, do the complete reverse and ask the questions you were never taught to ask. Do you actually want that subscription? Do you actually want to spend $150 on a concert ticket? And not because you're poor, but because you're choosing, you know? And I think that reversal sounds very tiny, but it isn't. It's the whole thing.

Now, for me, the practice that made it real is writing. Every evening, I sit down and I write. It's not exactly a diary. It's not like goals. I just write my day, what happened, what I felt, what I choose, and what I sort of drifted into, you know? I write down certain behaviors that just came on, you know. So, for example, my wife is away this week. She's hiking with a group in Georgia. So, I've been home alone with our dog, Loki. Loki has a lot of energy. Loki needs about four walks a day all week. Now, I I love Loki. I do. But walking the dog four times a day was never my dream life, if you know what I mean. My wife wanted a dog. And from the start, I made it very clear that I didn't want to take full walking responsibility. And yet somewhere along the way, I just started doing it every day. No decision was really made, just adaptation. And when I wrote this down, especially this week, I noticed clearly for the first time because I could sort of see it from above. You know, I wasn't in the moment walking with the dog. I could see from a distance, if that makes sense. And I could see something else, too. I I've been sort of trying to get more steps in. You know, I'm just not exercising enough. I have some weight issues and I want to fix that. And suddenly, I could sort of connect the dots. The dog walks, they stopped being a burden. Burden, I hated it. And it started becoming a solution to a different problem. Same walks, different intention. completely different relationships to them. And this is what I think writing does. It pulls you out of the current and it lets you see clearly enough to actually design it. It's powerful stuff.

Now, before I started doing this, my days just happened to me. You know what I mean? Like I spent money without deciding. I said yes without thinking. I walked the dog and I resented it. And now I'm walking the dog and I'm counting my steps. And the thing I want you to feel here is that, you know, you're not broken. You're not weak. You're not bad with money or lazy or trapped. You're just running on defaults that were never chosen by you. And so the question is whether you want to start choosing.

You want to know the real secret to building a life they can't control? Then here it is. This is the hack in practice. You show up when nobody's watching and then you keep showing up. Now, what do I mean with that? Like, I'm going to give you an example. I post at least two videos a week here on YouTube. Sometimes several days in a row, and not because I always feel inspired, and certainly not because I think every video is going to go viral. YouTube isn't a hobby for me. and never well it was at first but now I've noticed that it's more of a passion but more than that when I stopped seeing it as something I did on the side and started seeing it as the thing that could actually you know get me out of the 9 to 5 I became more focused more deliberate less distracted and there is a version of this that I think that most people skip they wait they plan they want to feel ready they want to feel inspired and have the perfect setup and nothing happens because that's what autopilot does. It defaults to inaction when action feels uncertain. Now, the intentional version is boring. You make the decision, you know, I'm going to do this and then you just do it. Now, some videos land on this channel, some are duds, but skill keeps compounding and audiences grow and options multiply and one day something is going to change.

Now, currently, this channel now earns me more than my consulting salary. I never thought this would happen, but it did. And it happened in only a few months. So, let me take you back. A few months ago, I was offered a full-time position, almost twice my current consulting salary, and I turned it down without even blinking. And not because the job was bad. Well, actually, it was, but that's a different story. But because I don't want to make decisions based on money anymore. That's how wage dependency started in the first place, you know, because what happened here was they ended up hiring me as a consultant instead. And same work, but sort of my terms, if that makes sense.

Now, I also get sponsorship offers for this channel almost every single day, and so far, I haven't accepted a single one. And recently a fellow YouTuber I was chatting with, he was sort of like, "Have you lost your mind, Tom? You are leaving money on the table." And maybe I am, but I've seen what happens when money becomes the filter. You start saying yes to sponsors you don't believe in, and then a company you actively dislike offers you more than anyone ever has. And suddenly the line you thought you had moves. You know that's the money trap. It's the same trap I was in as an employee. Different costume.

Now I would rather ask you directly to support the channel on Patreon. And I'd rather be honest about what this is. A person makes videos about things he actually thinks about. Not brand deals, not courses for tous thousands of dollars. just this. And right now, this channel, this community is earning me more than my consulting salary, which means something I never quite believed was possible.

I was sitting at my desk at work recently and I made a mistake on something. And I looked at my manager and I sort of said, half joking, "You should probably just fire me." And he just laughed and I laughed. But there was a part of me that meant it. You know, now 5 years ago, I never would have said that, not even as a joke, because of the fear of losing the job was actually real and very constant. And now I'm at a point where I'm actually hoping that he does. Not because my work is that terrible, my agency is actually very good to me, but because I don't feel trapped anymore. Not the way I used to. You see, work used to be the only thing standing between me and losing everything. Now it's just one income among several. And also, you know, we have savings. We have options. And if HR found this channel tomorrow and decided to let me go, I won't be scared. We could float for at least 2 years on our savings. And I have a working business. like I definitely proved that my business idea works. Okay. The only reason I'm still at a 925 is there is that mortgage and honestly that number the one I saw on my bank account this week 30 years remaining still has some weight and I would just feel irresponsible to walk away. But I do have a plan and for the first time in a long time that plan is mine.

So when I started my career fresh out of college, there was a question I heard constantly. Well, how much are they paying you? You know, every time from family, from friends, from people at parties. The first thing, the only thing sometimes, nobody ever asked me if I enjoyed the work. Nobody asked what I was actually doing each day or whether it meant anything to me or whether I was still recognizable to myself at the end of it. Just how much. And I think that single question repeated enough times to enough people sends a lot of us down a road not chosen by what we want to do but by what pays the most.

The thing I want you to feel by the end of this not think feel is that the solution to wage dependency it's not more money. It's like thinking the cure for a trap is a bigger trap. When people tell you to hustle, when they tell you that you have 24 hours in a day and there is no excuse, I think they're solving the wrong problem. We don't actually want or need more money. We just want a life that belongs to us. And to get to that point, you don't actually need an empire. You just need to earn enough in a way that feels right to you to match what the job currently provides. Now, I know that sounds small, but it isn't. Just look at me. Like, I'm not an expert. I'm not a business genius. I'm just a person who likes to think out loud about how much he hates the 9-to-f5. And right now, doing that matches my consulting salary.

Now, how you make money matters more than how much. And I come back to that image sometimes, you know, the unlocked door. You know, nobody forces you in. Nobody's holding the handle from the outside. But you've built a life around staying and leaving would just cost too much. That's not a prison sentence. That's just a badly designed situation. And badly designed situations can be redesigned right now. It doesn't have to be quick. And it it certainly won't be without tradeoffs, but gradually with small deliberate choices made over time. The 30-year number in my bank account, I'm going to erase it early and not because the bank said so, but because I decided the dog walks that I resented, they're now how I stay healthy. Not because anything changed, but because I finally looked at it from a different perspective. A life that's harder to control doesn't look dramatic from the outside. It looks like someone who's a little less anxious than they used to be, a little less dependent on any one thing, staying exactly as it is. Someone who has over time quietly accumulated more options. Not unlimited options, not perfect freedom, but just enough exits to breathe. And some Saturdays that nobody can take away. That's what I've been moving toward. Not escape, not rebellion, just a life with a little more room in it and a little less that anyone else can threaten.

As always, thank you for listening. Do me a favor and tap that like button to show your support. Subscribe if you're interested in more content like this. Until next time, stay hungry, relentless, and strong in your journey of escaping wage slavery. Bye.

Oh, you're still here. Oh, that's right. It's the behind the scenes vlog. So, this part of the video is where I share more personal things. It's mostly for my subscribers, but if you're new here, you're more than welcome to stick around.

So, I wanted to mention two things. First, yes, the rumors are absolutely true. I'm going to do another collaboration with Aaron Nightly very soon. It will probably be the next video on this channel. So, make sure you don't miss it. It's going to be one hell of a discussion about wage slavery and escaping the 9 to 5. And I think that Erin and me, we are very similar in some ways and very different in other ways. And I think that can spark some very interesting discussions. So, I'm really looking forward to it.

Now, the other thing I wanted to mention is that yesterday my vacation started and I'm glad, but I'm also kind of exhausted. I mean, it's just been a very stressful time for me these last couple of months and I I'm starting to feel like I can now catch up, you know? Anyway, I'm getting two weeks no plan. And I mean that literally. The idea here is to wake up every single day in the morning and decide what I want to do and not rush towards something that I had already agreed to, not follow some schedule decided by someone else. And I realized that that's kind of the whole point of this video. And that's what I'm actually working toward, a life where that's not the exception, two weeks, once a year, but just how things work every day. You know, you wake up and you decide and you go.

Now, my wife is coming home on Sunday from her hiking trip in Georgia, and I've missed her. Loki has certainly missed her, though he won't admit it. And I cannot wait to spend 2 weeks doing absolutely nothing together. That's the plan. No plan. I'm hoping you're having a great summer so far. Please let me know in the comments section what your plans are. I'm genuinely curious. Okay, that's all I have for today. See you in the next one. Take care.