It’s been almost three months since I’ve set foot outside the corporate world. As we all know, this corporate life is an entrapment to the soul, where your freedom to act is limited. It forms you a mask where you're expected to become a follower, for the betterment of the company. I may have earned quite a salary while working for a company, but it didn’t make me happy. Any opinion I wanted to implant for change in my team was always more often than not—neglected.

And so while I was still working for this company, I decided to build an escape rope. A couple of guys from the past asked me to form a corporate firm with them, and start our own company, within the confines of the same industry. I thought it would be easy, but then I failed to save enough money for when I leave corporate–it's a habit I built that I would like to refer to as complacency from false security. It was like a ticking time bomb. Passively working on the start-up, while actively working for a corporation. My time was divided. It was insanely challenging and difficult to do, considering the conflict of interest between the two forces of work. So then and there, I decided to take the risk of leaving corporate without having much savings to survive a balance of work and lifestyle.

I literally took the risk without any knowledge on what the risk really was. The risk after all, was not trying. I learned that there are a lot of ways to earn outside the confines of rules undermined by your company. Leaving corporate gives you direction that you can steer yourself. If you fail, the only thing you should think of is that you still have a functional brain. Might as well use it. Utilize it, but never mask it in forms of desperation. Leaving corporate gives you the freedom of time, the freedom to act, and the freedom to take risks.

My start-up has not generated any big returns yet, as it should be, because anything great takes time. I’m in the real estate industry, and of course with the proper skillset and mentorship, I can see a soothing light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s just that in this case, where there is no stream of income being thrown to my bank account, it is very important to look for ways to survive. The only way to do it is to read books and have a healthy mind (and body.) Acting sappy is counterintuitive as a positive risk taker. I can say that I have not failed because if I did, I would be starving by now. At a time when I thought I had nothing, I looked at things inside my home and files inside my computer. Contemplated on what to do. Later on, I figured out that I had something that people wanted. I monetized on it and it has helped me capitalize on my own survival, at least for now. This experience helped me manage complacency and practicality, with rationality. Working for corporate is a seduction in itself to get complacency's dick hard because it gifts you with the feeling of security, a false one at that, since it is outside your reasoned choice and control.

I have survived long enough to still keep a healthy lifestyle, meet women and improve on myself, but not enough to achieve where I want to be. It’s a start, yet nothing starts without a challenge. Challenges are opportunities. Opportunities lead to goals. Accomplished goals are rewarded. Rewards provide better insights from previous action. Insights give ideas. Ideas are the bottleneck of chance and luck.

Luck does not happen overnight, nor at the heat of the moment. It stems from action and progressing towards a goal. From achieving these goals, you get rewarded with experience. There are rare times, when this experience, yield great profit—and that’s where luck is attributed from. Sometimes it is hard to locate where luck can be found, like a fossil deep within the desert, but to be honest it is just as easy as knowing that there is indeed a needle in a haystack. You just gotta think of different ways to find the needle. For all we know the needle is easily found just a pain throw away.

TL;DR: Take risks, you have nothing to lose, except maybe the experience of failure. Bad decisions lead to failure. Failure leads to experience. Experience leads to better decisions. Better decisions lead to luck and success.