When you arrive at the age that — instead of reading the sports page or the headline news first — you begin your day with the Obituaries, you may breaking news start noticing some things about people’s choice of vocations that are disturbing. A lot of the importance we place on having wealth, good health care, and a respected career goes out the window.
I’ve been noticing that a shocking number of people barely make it to retirement age after working a lifetime in white collar professional jobs. I find that very interesting, don’t you?
If the people with what are supposedly “the best jobs” don’t even live long enough to collect any of their well-earned retirement funds, what does that tell you? We’re talking about people with respected positions in the community, plenty of money, and solid marriages who still drop dead by age sixty-two or so.
Some of my own friends have died recently, so I know a lot more about their lives and can speculate about what caused their health to fail them at such a young age.
Here is my theory about why this is happening:
#1) There is a stress inherent in working for an organization, on someone else’s impossible deadlines, doing work that is not really of your choosing
#2) These people have not had the time and leisure to afford themselves a wellness lifestyle
What Is A Wellness Lifestyle?
My definition is that it is “a way of living that is conducive to health and wellness”.
We all know we should eat more wisely, but if we’re traveling or in meetings most of the day, it is hard to get the best quality food for our health. We’re at the mercy of fast food providers and caterers’ ideas of what is healthy. We certainly don’t have time or the opportunity to prepare exactly what we know our body needs, so our nutritional defenses are weakened.
Likewise, it is difficult to plan a regular workout time into our day, even if this is something we care about. To the many executives, doctors, and federal workers, regular exercise may have been one of the sacrifices they made to achieve success in their career.
All these basic comforts (if we’re even aware we want them) are forcibly submerged to do the job at hand — and I believe all this self-denial produces a stress that eventually is too much to bear. As they say, “Whose life is it, anyway?!”
Fortunately, these days it is more and more attainable to create our own employment, focused on our own unique talents and passions, and do the work we choose from our home. Home-based self-employment is the only work available for some skilled people in an economy that has contracted significantly, so why not make the most of it?
By the way, it is worth mentioning that when you work for yourself, there is no “glass ceiling” limiting your income or advancement. You can “cut out the middleman” and finally begin to earn what you are really worth.
The real beauty of working for oneself, from the comfort of your home, is that you can take the time you have been spending stuck in traffic to fit in a workout or a healthy meal whenever you feel like it. Living a wellness lifestyle becomes possible when you are no longer under pressures imposed on you by others’ expectations.
Creating a wellness lifestyle around which to build a home-based online business is the key to staying young longer. If the prestige, money, and health care benefits of enduring a stressful occupation can’t prevent you from kicking the bucket at age 62, maybe it would be wise to check out some other, more enjoyable, options.