The truth is, anyone can escape the rat race.
The reality is, not many do.
But why?
Because the majority of people simply aren’t willing to make the myriad of changes required to become the kind of person who no longer needs to participate in the rat race.
There are many reasons for this, but they can all be covered by two categorical labels: spiritual, and financial.
These two are inextricably linked, and below is a practical guide on attacking the problem from both angles.
But, wait a minute…
Who am I to be offering thoughts on this topic?
Honestly, just a guy who woke up to the trap of the rat race one day and decided to change.
What I am outlining here is the experience that I have had, and the path I see ahead of me.
My hope is to help you see a path out of the trap so many find themselves in today – 9 to 5 job you hate that means a long drive home followed by a few minutes at the end of the day to catch your breath and numb your mind by scrolling through content your don’t actually care about before having to do it all over again because if you don’t you won’t be able to pay your bills and at some point the banker you use will come for everything you own including your car, TV, cell phone and eventually even your house.
It’s a ruthless game.
But you don’t have to play.
As you read on, don’t think of me as offering sage wisdom from a pedestal, but rather standing beside you as a friend and encouraging you to go for it.
Now…
Let’s begin.
Steps to Escape the Rat Race
- Uncover what you don’t like about life currently
- Decide what the life you want looks like
- Focus on life, not work
- Create your escape plan
- Lower your standard of living
- Raise your expectations (of yourself)
- Remove distractions
- Take control of your income
- Make your money work for you
- Create an emergency / buffer fund
- Build an asset (brand / product)
- Grow (spiritually) and perfect your process
- Identify and consume sources of inspiration
Step 1: Figure out what you don’t like about life currently
The majority of people spend their whole lives on autopilot.
We don’t like to believe it about ourselves, but we have a lot in common with computers.
Computers run on software. That software is programmed by someone else, and then installed.
A very similar process happens to us when we are born. We just call it childhood.
Our parents, guardians, caretakers, or wider society tell us things about how to navigate the world and our naive minds generally accept them to be true.
The trouble starts when, as adults, we continue to simply operate on the intellectual software installed in us by others without deciding for ourselves if it is the software we would like to use.
In order to figure out what it is about your life that is making your life uncomfortable enough that you are here reading this article (welcome, friend) and searching for a way out, you are going to have to examine that software.
What this will require will be different for every person.
For some, prayer is most effective as a contemplative practice. For others, hikes seem to help tremendously. Many find a slow morning or evening routine with a warm drink a good time to think things through and write them down in a notebook to keep track of progress and organize thoughts.
Whatever option you choose, just make sure that it gives you the time and headspace to be honest with yourself.
Oh, and above all, have courage.
You will need to call yourself out on the lies you’ve told yourself for years and that is no small thing.
But it is worth every minute.
Step 2: Figure out what you do want your life to look like
“It’s great to run towards something you like. But it’s even better to run away from something that terrifies you.” – Jordan Peterson
Step 1 was about outlining what you dislike about your current life so that you have something to be afraid of. This provides motivation via a healthy fear of life staying eternally as it is.
But motivation is useless without a direction in which to channel it.
And so, your next task is to get out of your own way.
In fact, in order to choose a destination you would like to begin moving toward, you must.
See, the same intellectual software you identified above has sub-routines running in your subconscious that govern all the little aspects of your life.
Some of these sub-routines are as follows: “What will other people think?”, “What if I don’t succeed?”, “What if I destroy my life?”, “How will I afford to buy food?”, “Who am I to say that?”
It’s important to note that these questions are not inherently bad and should not be dismissed out of hand.
It is important to examine yourself and to be ruthless in holding yourself to a high moral standard.
But we often go well beyond that point with our internal dialogue and slip into mental models that are not helpful to us or, maybe more importantly, others.
For instance, in my roles as father and husband, the lion’s share of what I provide to my wife and children is leadership.
If my internal brainscape is a cobbled mess of self-loathing and doubt that cannot be overcome, I will not be capable of leading my family toward anything.
In order to fulfill my role, I must have a vision.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” – Proverbs 29:18
The time has come to craft your vision.
This is not an exercise you can be led through. It is not a 12 step program that will heal you of all prior misgivings.
This is a search through the depths of your soul.
Ask yourself honest questions.
Give yourself honest answers.
Remember that the goal of this process is not something mundane like “get rich”, but rather something much bigger like “be free”.
Let the vastness of that question give you the mental elbow-room to ask open ended questions.
What would you like your life to look like?
If you could contribute to the world in a way that made you feel alive, what would you do?
As you’re asking yourself these questions, remember that you don’t have to have every answer. This process takes time.
Often, you cannot see the whole picture laid out before you. It comes in pieces.
As they come, write them down. Sit with them.
Once you have identified even a small portion of the vision, reverse engineer some steps to get you closer to that.
And remember, small progress is big progress.
Step 3: Focus on life, not work
Now, you’ve outlined what you want your future to look like, but you can’t forget to start living right now.
One of the great tragedies of modern life is living to work instead of working to live.
If you’re a resident of a western nation (which you probably are if you’re reading this), your culture likely prioritizes work over all else.
It gives you a sense of identity and also something to take pride in.
Without it, you don’t know what you would do with yourself or the time.
Sound familiar?
This was my story as well.
I thought I could find a sense of purpose and fulfillment in work alone.
WRONG.
This mindset is poison. It will lead you to burnout. In the most extreme cases, people choose to stop living and self-delete.
This is because fulfillment and purpose is found in your life, and your work is merely a part of the puzzle.
Your work should serve the purpose of giving you time and space to do what you were created to do.
It is my personal belief that this should start with getting in contact with your Creator, the one true God.
After this, prioritize your family and your friends. Become a pillar of your community.
Start living a life you don’t want to escape from by intentionally cultivating it where you are now.
This will give you further clarity and insight as to how to make it effortless and less taxing in the future.
Step 4: Create your escape plan
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
The journey must now begin, and you need a plan.
Our society coddles us to an incredible degree. It’s now normal for people to live their entire lives as perpetual juveniles.
In order to avoid being part of that statistic, you have to take responsibility, and with it, authority over your life.
The manifestation of that authority is a plan.
Define milestones
As you execute your plan, you will need markers to know if you are making progress.
The precision of these markers isn’t really the point. The point is just to have a frame of reference to judge the direction in which and speed at which you are travelling.
Choose workable milestones that are big enough to be exciting when you hit them, but reasonable enough to be attainable.
Write these down somewhere.
Choose your vehicle
All of us are unique, and uniquely gifted.
Think of your gift as your vehicle to execute the plan.
It is the ox to which you will hitch your wagon.
If you plan to use the internet, you have three vectors of communicaiton to choose from.
You can write, you can speak, or you can create visual art.
Whichever of these you choose to pursue, do your best to pick one that aligns with your gift.
Not sure what you are gifted in?
Try them out!
Ask friends and family what they think you are uniquely good at that others find difficult or uncomfortable.
The answers to this question can give you clues of where to start.
- Examples of writing vehicles: blog, ebook, zines, traditionally published book
- Examples of speaking vehicles: podcast, youtube channel, twitch / streaming, speaking at events
- Examples of art vehicles: deviantart account, instagram, pinterest, displaying art locally
Outline steps
The steps outlined here are merely guidestones to give you clarity when your own thoughts seem clouded or unsure.
Outline the steps required to begin building the vehicle you selected above.
And I suggest you get very literal.
Like this:
- buy domain name
- write first blog post
- post to blog
- format blog to your liking
- share on social media
It seems silly, but if you simply repeated that process and perfected your approach over time, you would eventually build something you’re proud of. Or you would find out that you selected a vehicle you don’t enjoy, and you can pivot.
Either way you win by outlining specific steps.
Step 5: Lower your standard of living
This may seem like an odd thing to find on a list about escaping the rat race, but it won’t after I explain.
Most Americans spend around 30% of their income on their housing.
There are many who spend considerably more. I have seen lots of people in forums self-reporting that they spend around 50%.
For the sake of understanding the issue, let’s look at the example of Sally the American.
Sally takes home $3,700 a month after taxes.
She is a single mom and lives in a moderately affordable area.
After she pays her rent of $1,300 for a modest house she is left with $2,400 for the month.
Her utilities average around $450 including internet and cell phone.
That leaves Sally with $1,950 over four weeks for food and transportation.
Her car payment each month is $400.
She’s down to $1,550.
Gas each month is about $200.
$1,350.
Her student loans are $400 monthly.
$950.
If she chooses to feed her family well, most of what is left will go to groceries. In some places, it wouldn’t be enough to cover groceries.
Now imagine if she didn’t have that rent payment.
She would suddenly have $2,250.
Whole different ball game.
“BUT HOW COULD YOU GET RID OF A HOUSING PAYMENT?!”, you ask.
I can’t tell you exactly how you will do it, but I will share with you how I did it.
I built a house…this house:
The COVID-19 debacle woke me up to the precarious position in which I was keeping our family by renting a place to live. Who knew what reason could be given for us to be evicted with no place of our own to go?
This seemed to me like a problem that had to be remedied.
And before you ask, I had never built so much as a garden shed before I started building our house.
I’ve also never made more than $45,000 in a year.
We spent almost every dollar we had on buying our land.
And this was not nice land. It was the cheapest land we could find. Scrub land. Solid clay. Zero possibility of growing anything including grass.
We sold everything we could do without and bought the land.
We then built paycheck to paycheck. We used whatever we had left out of each paycheck to buy materials.
The whole process from land to house took about 2 years.
I had to change as a person, and the finished product was not some instagram-famous barndominium.
It’s a house built out of used chicken-house metal.
But it’s warm in winter, and it’s cool in the summer.
And the best part?
My only rent to live here is paid to the state we live in the form of property taxes.
In other words, I went from paying $800 a month to $170 a year for my housing.
As far as bills go, we pay for electricity ($90), and internet ($55). Our water comes from the sky in the form of rain and is free.
The effect this has is massive optionality as to how I spend my time.
I now work for myself and spend more time with my family each month than most people get in a year.
All of this is made possible because my wife and I were willing to lower our standard of living to be free of rent and mortgage payments.
Imagine what could happen if you did something similar in your own life.
Step 6: Raise your expectations (of yourself)
The unfortunate reality for most of us is that we are not the person we need to be in order to escape the rat race.
After all, rewards are earned in life, not handed out for free.
If you want to escape, you’re going to have to change.
The other reality is that no one is coming to save you.
No sage or master is going to suddenly appear and explain your destiny to you, then choose to be there every step of the way to hold you accountable.
No, this process is going to happen from the inside out.
You are going to have to accept that who you are today is not good enough, otherwise you would already be where you are hoping to go and reading this article would be pointless.
You are not enough
Everywhere you look online, you’ll find new age teachers and influencers screaming at you to accept that you are enough exactly as you are.
The only problem is, they’re either lying or extremely confused.
I say this because one or two sentences later they will also say, “That’s why you need my course.”
If you were enough as you currently are, you wouldn’t NEED anything outside of yourself.
But it simply isn’t true. We all have needs that must be fulfilled by something outside of us.
From food to love, our needs guide our lives.
The work you must do is to make this a conscious process, rather than something that is acting upon you from your subconscious mind.
You must consciously acknowledge that you are a person with needs and desires and that in order to fulfill those needs and desires you are going to have to acquire skills and items that you currently do not possess.
Ask more of yourself
Once you’ve acknowledged your insufficiency, the next step is to become your own drill-sergeant.
Someone has to call you to be more than you currently are, and since no sage or master is coming to save you, you’re going to have to do it for yourself.
As you begin this process, I highly recommend starting small.
If you want to start a writing habit, only demand one clearly-articulated sentence per day to start.
Don’t dive headlong into attempting to write War and Peace on day one.
As you increase your endurance and ability, you can gradually increase what you require of yourself.
Who knows, maybe one day you’ll become the next Tolstoy?
But for now, one clear sentence.
Step 7: Mercilessly remove distractions
I’m willing to bet that a hallmark of all the people you know that actually get things done is that they have the ability to focus.
If you observed their daily lives closely, you probably wouldn’t find them spending 4 hours a day watching 10 second Tik-Tok videos.
But the sad reality for many is that that is exactly what they spend their time doing.
Instead of working toward a goal that would have a significant, positive impact on their life, most people spend their days numbing their minds with content that dulls their wit, food that destroys their gut, and activities that kill their soul.
If you want to get out of the status quo, you will have to mercilessly remove these things from your life.
Unlike in the last point, I suggest you go pretty extreme here.
I don’t know what your particular vice or distraction of choice is, but whatever it is, go nuclear.
Sell your TV or smash it with a hammer.
Pay off your credit card and cut it into pieces to stop buying things you can’t afford.
Ask your friends to publicly shame you for eating fast food.
I’m partially joking about that last one.
You know better than I do what the levers are that would be most effective in your life.
Dial them to 100% and leave your bad habits in the past.
P.S. – We do not have a TV because I basically couldn’t control myself in that arena. I’ve had to practice what I am preaching.
Step 8: Take control of your income
Full disclosure: This is the step we are currently working on.
The problem with most forms of employment is that you are not ultimately in control of how much income you bring in.
The most common form of pay is hourly, where you exchange your time for a set amount of money.
Next is a salary where you negotiate a set amount of money per year or per month.
The most flexible form of employment pay is commission. This model is used for sales positions where you are expected to hit certain sales metrics each month and you keep a percentage of total profit generated by your efforts. People can make enormous sums from this model, but it is still not you that is in the driver seat. Your employer is.
The only way to truly gain control of your income is to start a business.
But this doesn’t have to be some enormously complicated thing.
My exit from the rat race (which I consider myself to have exited) has so far culminated in me starting a handyman business.
I learned construction and home repair skills by building my house, and I am now using those same skills to generate an income by fixing problems for others.
In this very small way, I am now in control of my income and, more importantly, my schedule.
This allows me to work on my more long term goals like building out the Birch and Sparrow brand and developing an income that doesn’t require me to exchange my time for money.
You can do the same. You just have to take the first small step and start a simple business that begins to generate income.
There are so many options here it’s almost comical.
But here are some examples:
handyman – a jack of all trades that uses his own tools to go around and do simple home repair tasks for others
lawn care – mowing other people’s lawns
moving company – helping other people move
detailing cars – cleaning other people’s cars is big business, especially if you go mobile and bring the service to them
decorating / home organizing – offer services to home owners to help them decorate their spaces or organize their pantry’s.
The specific business you choose almost doesn’t matter because you are probably going to pivot along the way.
The important thing is to get started.
Step 9: Make your money work for you
Once you have money coming in from a source of income that you have control over, you can then start putting that money to work for you.
This is investing, but there are more creative ways to invest than just taking your money and putting it into a broad-based index fund that tracks the market.
Not that there is actually anything wrong with index funds. They’re actually somewhat of a financial miracle. For many, if not most, investing in these funds is the best option to securely generate a nest egg to live on later in life.
However, that’s not what this article is about. This article is about escaping the grind and hustle to live free.
In order to do that, you will likely have to make your money work for you in more creative ways.
The way I chose to make my money work for me was by buying land outright, and building a cheap house to live in.
What did this investment give me? Time freedom.
I now often work 10-15 days a month and cover all of our bills with no stress.
Am I interested in earning more? Of course!
But the daily stress of not knowing if we would have enough money for basic necessities is over and my wife and I are only 32.
This investment has given us the slack in the system to dream, raise a family, and start building our future.
Other forms of investment
There are, of course, other ways to put your money to work.
You could start a niche website where you pay someone else to write the articles and grow your digital real estate empire over time.
If you have the money, you could buy an already-profitable site on flippa.com and develop it to become your full time income.
You could purchase a dump truck and make $150 in profit per load delivered.
You could buy a tree truck and take down worrisome trees for home-owners. You can often make $1,000 – $8,000 in profit from a single tree depending on location and urgency of need.
You could buy a van that you turn into a mobile nail salon that builds a client list and also offers post-birth packages to new mothers.
The options truly are endless and the only thing limiting you is your creativity.
Don’t limit yourself to only the traditional choices for investing your money.
Make sure that you are putting your money into something that is going to generate the return you actually want.
If you are seeking freedom in your life before the age of 65, consider the possibility that mutual funds might not be the best answer.
Step 10: Create an emergency / buffer fund
Full disclosure: We are working on this goal.
This is pretty straightforward, really.
Once you have an income coming in that exceeds your current needs, it is wise to create a financial buffer between you and destitution in the form of an emergency fund.
This idea was popularized, as far as I know, by Dave Ramsey who has helped thousands of people get control of their financial lives.
This is the topic he discusses that I agree with most.
Start by setting a goal of saving $1,000 for emergencies.
Once you reach that goal, start building toward a full 6 months of living expenses at your current rate of spend.
If you spend $3,000, your ultimate goal would be $18k set aside as a safety net in case of a catastrophic event in life.
The peace of mind created by knowing you’re going to be fine no matter what comes is immeasurable. If you get injured at work, or you get laid off, or your company is acquired and your position eliminated, you’ll be fine for 6 months while you figure out your next course of action.
Step 11: Build an asset (brand or product)
Full disclosure: This website is part of the brand we are building.
Up to this point in this article, all of the kinds of businesses I have mentioned are service-based.
What that means practically is that you will be exchanging your time for money in some form.
This is tremendously limiting as far as income generation is concerned because there are only a certain number of hours in our days, weeks, and lives.
The way to overcome this hurdle is by separating your income from your time by producing something once that you can sell more than once or where the revenue generation model is not dependent on more time input.
Examples of products
- Shoes – If you created a shoe, the value that you are able to capture would be dependent on the efficiency of your process. Once the shoe is designed, the process of manufacturing is where the fine tuning is done. The more efficient the manufacturing and logistics, the higher the margin.
- Calendar – You could design a calendar and sell it on etsy. When a customer purchases the design, you use a print provider like Printify to create and ship the product to your customer. You keep the difference between what you charge the customer and what you pay to Printify.
- Ebook – Once written, there are no continuing costs with an ebook so the margin is 100%. This means if you wrote an ebook and sold it on your own website for $5, other than the processing fee with your payment company, you keep all of the money. Digital / information products like this are the highest form of financial leverage that exist.
Why you need to build a brand
Having a product is only one part of the puzzle in most cases.
A brand that people can relate to is what generates desire in a customer to purchase what you have created.
You see this all the time with influencers, but a very current (it is June 26, 2024 at time of writing) example of this is Mr. Beast.
Mr. Beast generates income from his Youtube channel, but the vast majority of his money comes from being paid by brands to put their products in front of his audience.
The asset that Mr. Beast has built is not just his youtube channel, but his personal brand.
Companies are willing to pay Mr. Beast to be himself and say that their product is worth purchasing.
People are willing to pay for products produced by Mr. Beast because they feel some form of loyalty to him after watching the videos he has created for years.
The value that Mr. Beast has created is in the form of human attention that is directed at him and that he now monetizes in various ways.
You can do this same thing on any scale you wish by beginning to put things out into the world under your own name or under a brand umbrella.
As you build a reputation, how you can monetize will become obvious as your customers will start asking you for what they would like to buy.
Brands give you the ability to build an audience that you can then sell your products to as you learn to solve that very audience’s problems.
Step 12: Grow (spiritually) and perfect your process
Once you start down this road, there is really no end to the improvements you can make to your creation.
Humans, you and me included, are continually changing and every change brings with it new desires and goals.
The brand or product you create will naturally have to change as well as you go along.
Some things you have created in the past will begin to feel as though they no longer align with your current values.
As this happens, simply find new ways to bring value to your audience or society that do align with your beliefs and keep iterating on your ideas.
Over time you will collect nuggest of wisdom, skills, and techniques that you will be able to deploy to bring your vision to life.
If you are diligent in pursuing your goal of creating freedom for yourself, one day you just might achieve it.
BONUS Step: Identify sources of inspiration
Escaping the rat race means embracing responsibility and the authority over your life that comes with it.
This can be overwhelming when you aren’t used to it, so finding people that have done it before you is tremendously encouraging.
My suggestion is that you look at your social media and Youtube as places to cultivate inspiration toward your desired goal and not as the distraction machines they are designed to be.
Choose people on these sites that are living the life you aspire to.
Follow people who run their own businesses, live outside the box, and are free to live life on their terms.
Emulate the things in their life that fit with yours and that you can start replicating immediately.
As you go, you’ll find your life slowly resembling theirs more and more.
But be careful as you begin cultivating this stable of inspirational figures.
Make sure that you are choosing people you actually want to be like and not people that society tells you you should want to be like.
Many of the people that society puts on a pedestal are actually living miserable lives full of pain and regret.
Don’t build a life you hate.
Examples of people I follow
Bear in mind that the people I list here are people that I want to emulate aspects of. Just because I follow them does not mean that I agree with everything they say or do.
- Dan Koe
- Martjin Doolaard
- Joel Salatin
- Kraig Adams
- Marty T
- Land of Slow Living
- George Dunnett
- Samurai Carpenter
- Off-Grid with Curtis Stone
- Bushradical
- Challem
No good at goodbyes
As you move forward in your journey to escape the rat race of late stage capitalism we all find ourselves in, we’d love to keep in touch.
At the bottom of this page you’ll find a way to subscribe to our newsletter.
We try to send out encouraging and helpful emails once a week to share what we’re doing that has worked, is working, or that we’re implementing as we keep walking down the road toward personal freedom.
If that sounds helpful to you, subscribe below.
We’re praying for you.
Godspeed.