How To Choose Between A Life Of Stability And Freedom

Stability versus freedom. At first, it may seem like you need to choose between the two. It’s either you choose the security of a full-time, well-paid job that will enable you to gain the experience, skills, and network to advance in your career and live a comfortable life in the long-run, or you choose the freedom and adventure to live the life of your dreams—move across the globe, meet international peers, build on your passions and create memories that last a lifetime.

The latter is the dream, which seems too good to be true. And it’s quite scary, just the thought of it.

It’s a huge risk to jump into the unknown, especially if you have something great going on in your life right now, whether it’s your career or your relationships. You’re comfortable and content to be exactly where you are. And that’s perfectly fine.

Or you feel a tugging urge for a bold life-altering change. You seek spontaneity and you’ve got a bucket list of dreams that cross your mind every single day. You’re a risk-taker and you desperately need to take action.

Any time you make a decision to leap, it’s not an easy one. Assessing all the possible scenarios and outcomes, nobody knows what will be. It’s a constant battle between the mind and the heart, the distracting noise from the external world, and the ego that makes you doubt your decisions and capabilities, feeding the fear of failure and the possibility of being wrong.

Nobody can make the decision for you but yourself.

Know that everything is temporary, that nothing lasts forever. You’re not a victim of your circumstances—you always have a choice. You’ve got options. And just because it doesn’t happen now doesn’t mean it never will.

There is never a perfect time for anything, and you will never be ready; you just have to want it bad enough.

I’d rather live a life of “oh wells” than a life of “what ifs”. I’d rather live the unconventional path of discomfort and constant change, a life of no regrets. For every experience is a lesson learned, there is always more than what meets the eye. The puzzle pieces will eventually come together for you to see the bigger picture.

How do you want to live your life?

But guess what? Stability and freedom are not mutually exclusive, as it is your perception of what both are that matters. You can have both. You can travel the world for several years and return, settle down, and have a stable career. And you can do it all over again.

Or, you can live comfortably in your home country surrounded by loved ones and still create a life of travel with multiple trips a year. You can do all of that and work on your passion projects as a side hustle. At the end of the day, it’s all about living up to your own values and chasing perspectives.