If you want to start your own business it is immensely important that you are sure why you want to be independent at all. What do you hope to gain from this? What problems do you want to solve today? Is it about more freedom and flexibility? If so, what do you want to use it for? For your children, for your hobbies, for other people? Or is it about self-fulfillment, about creating something of your own that you have been dreaming of for a long time, such as a yoga school or a soup kitchen? Or are you hoping for more money? What would you do with the money? Are you sure that it is about purchases that make you personally really happy? Or is it just about representing success (e.g. with a fancy car), i.e. to keep up the act and to keep on just suggesting your happiness?

So it’s all about the question of what motivates you. What gives you the strength to take the path to independence? What will motivate you to get out of bed in the future? Your motivation is fundamental to our goal of developing the willpower, stamina, and discipline to actually achieve your goal. If your motivation is not clear to you, you do not (yet) need to start building your business. Because chances are that you will not be much happier after you´ve reached your “goal”.

If you look at the literature on the topic of “starting a business”, it seems that the only motivation of people is to get rich as fast as possible: “How to get rich fast”, “Laptop Millionaire”, … Maybe it even works for some of them. However, these books do not promise you that you will be satisfied or even happy. They only promise you that you can get rich.

My goal is that you will be permanently satisfied and balanced with your new job, not necessarily rich. Because being rich does not make you happy from experience, but rather unhappy (you only have more things to show off, to hide your inner unhappiness behind. You can send smiling selfies from exotic countries. You can hide your unhappiness behind the tinted windows of your expensive SUV etc.). So, if you are convinced that the only way to be happy is to get rich fast, then this might not the right place for you.

But before you leave and hunt for the big money, please consider the five things that dying people regret most:

• “I wish I had had the courage to live my own life.”
• “I wish I hadn’t worked so much”
• “I wish I had had the courage to express my feelings”
• “I wish I had kept in touch with my friends”
• “I wish I had allowed myself to be happier”

Does it say anything about me wishing I had more money, worked more or bought more? No. So don’t make the same mistake that so many did before you.

When is the right time to put this realization into practice and change your life so that you can look back satisfied in the end? The time is never right! There are always “good” reasons why it is not right now: “I don’t have enough money to dare to do this! Once the kids are out of the house! I have to solve my problems with my current job first! When I have a partner! If I didn’t have a partner!” Etc. etc.

The right time never comes, it’s now.

Should I dare? Or should I not? Uncertainty and the possibility of “failure” are very frightening, although in reality there are almost never the horror scenarios that you like to imagine (or that others tell you). Most people, therefore, prefer being unhappy to being insecure and remain in their unpleasant but familiar status quo.

Uncertainty is a monster because it is unknown and foggy. What could be hiding behind it? Which worst-case scenarios are conceivable? This openness to all sorts of things is filled with all the horror stories that come to our minds or the minds of others without checking them for their truthfulness and probability.

And that’s exactly how we solve the problem: we make ourselves aware of all the details of what the worst-case scenario of this step could be. Nail your nightmare down! Write everything down until you are sure: It can’t get any worse than this. And then, at every point, think about how you can react to it so that the scenario actually becomes quite acceptable. Because you are not helpless! You can and will take precautions, react to developments, get support, find alternatives, etc.

You have already taken one step: you didn’t just quit your job and see what happens. Instead, you have become aware of your needs (“I want to change something.”), looked for solution ideas and came to this blog to go your way systematically and step by step.