What is holding you back from quitting your job, fear or greed?

Many folks know deep down it is time to move on. They have had just about enough and they need to walk away from this job. They murmur and complain but keep postponing their independence day. They know crystal clear what it is they want to do with their life. They have clear goals and have been working on them for years. They have attained financial independence but are still not sure if they can survive on their own.

They are addicted to working for money; hence the mere thought of being without a salary scares the living daylight out of them. They can live without their salary quite alright, but they keep bringing up doomsday scenarios. What if this or that goes wrong? And conveniently too, the possibility of their employer closing shop is not one of the doomsday scenarios.

It is fear and greed that are playing games with your mind. You have saved enough but you are still not sure, so you raise your target. You are expecting a raise or bonus, so you shift the target date. On and on it goes. Fear and greed reinforce each other in your mind as you stay longer than you planned, gain weight and become more miserable as your morale and productivity go downhill as you remain chained in golden handcuffs.

The story of the monkey with a fist in the jar always fascinates me. The monkey wants out but is not willing to let go of the peanuts in its palm. The monkey knows quite well that if he does not get out he, will soon get caught, but he will not let go of the juicy peanuts. Due to the dangerous fascination with the peanuts, and the struggle to release himself, the monkey does not stop to ponder on the following:

• He cannot have both peanuts and freedom. He has a choice to make
• He does not make a value judgment to determine which is more important, freedom or peanuts
• It does not occur to him that if he gets caught, he might lose the peanuts
• He has not considered the possibility that with freedom, he can find better peanuts outside of a bottle, which he can have without sacrificing his freedom.

This monkey desperately wants freedom, but he is not ready to let go of the peanuts. The struggle continues till the owner of the peanut shows up. The monkey eventually loses both freedom and maybe the peanuts too. Even if he gets the peanuts, he finds out rather too late that peanuts are more enjoyable when eaten in freedom.

Many of us are like monkeys. We want freedom but we are not ready to walk away and leave some peanuts on the table. We want to scrape everything. The longer we work for peanuts, the stronger our belief that we cannot live without them. We lose sight of the fact that there is more than peanuts out there, and that by walking away you can end up with more.

What is holding you back from quitting your job? What is holding you back from making that move? Fear or greed or both?

Photo credit: Wikipedia