You’re Probably Selling Out.

Let me know if any of this sounds familiar:

✅ You can name at least a few people who have incredibly demanding corporate jobs (think Investment Banking, Management Consulting, ect)

✅ You find yourself thinking that they must be miserable, working million-hour days and pandering to respectability politics

✅ You’ve said more than a few times (or maybe to anyone who would listen) that they’re probably only putting themselves through all of that “for the money”

✅ Maybe, if you’re like I was, you’ve even used the term “selling out” to describe their choices

It wasn’t until earlier this year that I stopped using the term “sell out” as code for someone who has a high paying job they can’t stand.

As I heard @samlaurabrown explain on her podcast, ANYONE who does things that harm them (physically, emotionally, spiritually) purely for the sake of earning money could technically be described as “selling out.”

🤯

I then began to look at my life and ask myself if it was possible that I could be selling out, too.

I looked at my parents’ lives, and the trauma they’d endured at various jobs they’d taken in exchange for money.

While I wouldn’t ever call an overworked, unfulfilled activist or school teacher or hairdresser a “sell out,” (I’ve just decided to drop the phrase entirely) this re-frame did get me thinking about why we’ve normalized the idea that money has to come at such a high cost.

What if we taught EVERYONE that it was possible to be fully financially supported while having their boundaries respected?

While living from intention?

While loving the shit out of what they do?

I don’t believe this is merely possible.

I KNOW it’s everyone’s birthright.

As I’ve been saying lately, you did not incarnate to be oppressed