I am from a very average family, both of my parents were blue collar workers and I was always told that I should do whatever I want career-wise. I use to be a huge bodybuilding enthusiast and started my career as a fitness coach. I had my license, I had my clients and life was pretty good. However, I felt like I need to do something more and got accepted by a prestigious business school. I went to another country, found new friends and literally got brainwashed into this high performance mentality. Most of my peers were constantly talking about internships at IBs or Tier 1 consulting firms and I thought that I need to follow the exact same path.
However, inside of my head I always knew that I do not want that. I still applied for “prestigious” jobs after graduation, passed the interviews, secured a few offers but told to myself that it is not worth it and ended up going back to my home town, where I secured a job in a local consulting firm. Bosses are great, colleagues are great, work is not difficult and I have a really good WLB.
The problem is that deep inside of my head I had these feelings of regret for not choosing to work at top tier companies. I see my peers on LinkedIn doing great career and “hustling” and I get this feeling that I am wasting my potential. I know that it is all non-sense but I ignore my privilege of being able to work from home and end work at 4PM every day.
How do I get this high-performance, hustle mentality out of my head? I just want to be normal like I used to be, when I did not need to worry about driving a mercedes, wearing expensive suits and eating steaks at expensive restaurants. Now all I think is that I wasted my potential to have a successful career. Business schools are really great at brainwashing..