Discover the five telltale clues that indicate you were born to be an entrepreneur rather than an employee.

The expansive ocean of people around the world makes for a fascinating life journey.

People choose to live vastly different lifestyles. They might choose to become an entrepreneur, study at university, work for an organization, find fulfillment traveling the world performing charity work close to their heart, work for six months and explore the world for the remainder of the year, or live in different countries dependent on the weather.

Five Telltale Signs

Irrespective of the life you choose, you are guaranteed to encounter the never-ending battle between individuals, recruiters, and employers. In the face of recruiters’ and employers’ constant efforts to place individuals in a box, there are those who admit defeat and remain in the box.

Then there are those who profusely refuse and fight like heavyweight champ Joe Louis at the mere thought of remaining in a small confined box for the rest of their lives. The latter are the individuals who inevitably find themselves searching for the right path to enable them to permanently live outside the box, despite external influences attempts to push them back in.

These entrepreneurs simply refuse to fit into a check box, they make the rules rather than follow them, absolutely despise being told what to do, value freedom, and want to live life on their terms.

Here are the five telltale signs you are not supposed to be an employee:

1. You’re Highly Restless

Highly restless people will continually struggle to stay in one job for a long period of time. They are restless because they require constant challenge, an interesting role within an organization that allows them to color outside the lines.

This is where it begins and ends. Organizations have so many rules and regulations that it can be difficult to color outside the lines. This results in restlessness, which leads to boredom.

Organizations face an uphill battle to attract top talent, and more importantly, retain it. The Wall Street Journal reported that the average job tenure for individuals between the ages of 20 to 24 was 16 months, and three years was the average job tenure for those aged 25 to 34.

2. You Love Never-Ending Challenges

It is a well-known fact that high-performing individuals leave organizations if they are not given significant challenges in their role.

High performers are renowned for pushing the boundaries and achieving goals that exceed expectations, and therefore, if the organization is unable to fast track a promotion, present opportunities such as project work that develops the individual further, these high performers are easily bored and sprint towards the first exit sign.

3. You Were Born to Be Fiercely Creative

Creative individuals’ internal desire keeps them highly motivated. They thoroughly enjoy unveiling their plethora of ideas and innovative solutions to management within organizations.

The challenge lies in retaining these individuals, for they become restless and frustrated working in a 9-to-5 environment, limited by a rigid job description and unable to bring any of their ideas to fruition or irritated by the constant battle to overcome obstacles along the way.

4. You Are Insanely Talented

Thankfully, the 9-to-5 job is slowly dying, with an increase in the number of individuals leaving jobs to become self-employed or choose from the delectable freelance opportunities available.

Those who are insanely talented want the freedom to run their own race, work with clients they love, find innovative ways of working, utilize their talents, significantly raise their income, and pivot at a moment’s notice.

They have grown tired of being chained to a desk, which is such an antiquated way of working. The Swedish are already experimenting with six-hour workdays, and reporting that productivity and retention increased. Organizations preach work-life balance yet expect employees to work long hours at a desk at the expense of engaging in quality family time, hobbies, and further studies, often due to exhaustion or mental health issues.

Being technologically connected is destroying relationships and increasing work expectations to unattainable levels. Just ask a partner working in a professional services company or the CEO of any organization, the email communication alone is out of control.

5. You Want to Rule the World

Individuals who want to rule the world rarely fit into society’s ideals, and that is exactly how they like it.

They are wired that way, it’s a part of their personality that is hard to ignore, which is why these individuals effectively have no option but to leave a laborious role to enter the majestic world of entrepreneurship.

Famous entrepreneurs who make their own rules mix the right ingredients together to deliver exactly what the world needs. Namely, entrepreneurs like: Lisa Messenger, Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Sheryl Sandberg.

These entrepreneurs are paid for results, whereas organizations choose to pay people primarily based on the time spent at the organization, such as full-time or part-time roles and consulting or contracting opportunities, which is highly inefficient.

Of course, there are key performance indicators to be achieved, budgets to meet, and bonuses used to motivate. However, the most important factors to consider are how much time, energy, and money are being spent on any one business activity. This concurs with Harvard Business Review, which defined time as an organization’s scarcest resource.

Long story short, all you know is that you weren’t born to do one thing for your entire life, your vision keeps you awake at night, you possess more energy than 10 aerobic instructors put together, so you opt for uncertainty and challenge over routine and, from the depths of your soul, you know that you are capable of doing, living, learning, and earning more on your own than you ever would working for someone else.

 

This article was originally published on Inc.com