I Left Corporate America to Focus On My Health - Now I Feel More Connected Than Ever

It’s hard for me to believe, but I am approaching one full year of being out of the traditional workforce. I remember when I handed in my 2 weeks’ notice because it was a bittersweet moment for me.

To be honest, I really enjoyed the people I worked with, I thought the work was interesting, and most importantly the job not only paid the bills, but it afforded me a very comfortable and convenient lifestyle far beyond what I really needed.

I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly difficult to walk away from a job that I actually like, considering the plethora of bad bosses and toxic work environments that are out there… and believe me, I’ve had plenty of those, but this was not the case in the slightest with the last job that I had.

So why exactly did I walk away from a perfectly good job? 

And why did I walk away from the corporate workforce after years of attaining advanced degrees and work experience that positioned me perfectly for upward mobility into an senior-level role and a generous salary to match?

Well, you see, for years prior, I’ve been doing a lot of introspection and figuring out what it is that matters to me most in life and one aspect of life that quickly rose to the top of my priority list was my health and well-being.  When people think of health, they’re probably thinking of it in the traditional sense, which is part of the equation, but when I talk about health I’m talking about more than just the physical aspect.

Health is also a matter of being aligned mentally, psychologically, and emotionally… and for me, to be healthy means to live in alignment with my values, with my purpose, my passions etc.  Because when not in alignment with these things it is reflected in the subconscious mind. It impacts how your genes will be outwardly expressed. It can invite really damaging things into your life like stress, insomnia, burnout, etc… all of which can manifest in some pretty nasty chronic health issues that are pervasive in our world today.

The societal norm in the U.S. is to prioritize money and career advancement over health as I’ve described it. But in my humble opinion, checking off all the conventional metrics of career success at the expense of my health is just not indicative of a life well-lived.

As I dove deeper into the different factors that influence health, it became evident that the experience of being a white-collar worker in the modern service-based economy is grossly disconnected from what I believe a healthy human experience should be.

As humans we are integrally connected to this earth that we live on.  Our minds, our bodies, our physiology, our mental state, our mood are directly connected to our natural environments. When it rains, it makes us feel a certain way. When it’s sunny out, we feel another way.  We are designed to spend our days congruent with nature, outdoors moving our bodies.  This is vitally fundamental to not only our physical health, but also our cognitive and mental health.

So, I began to develop a longing to spend much more of my time in more natural settings not only because I knew it would be beneficial for my health, but because it simply made me feel better.  I also realized that I wanted to engage with the world, and with people on a more personal, a more authentic level.

Instead, with my 9-5 corporate job I was getting the exact opposite.

Instead of being outdoors in the elements experiencing the shapes, colors, sounds, smells of the natural world, I was spending the majority of my days inside of a sterile office environment with artificial lighting and constant air-conditioning, I was sitting down for hours at a time hunched over a computer, moving PowerPoint slides around, building spreadsheets, doing mandatory employee trainings, and my favorite of all… doing performance reviews.

Instead of connecting with people authentically, I was proficient in corporate jargon where I communicated with other people as if I were some kind of robot speaking in code.

While these sorts of activities might be accepted without question in the corporate world, I determined that this is not how I wanted my life to be aligned.  I decided that this is not what the human experience is all about, and I didn’t want my life to be relegated to this for the next 30 years.

And with each passing day, month, year… I felt that if health and wellness is truly my priority, then putting myself in this sort of environment day after day was doing myself a disservice by living a lifestyle that was the exact opposite of what I knew that I needed.

But beyond the physical environment of our workspaces, the social environments of our jobs also play a major role in our health.

A long time ago, before this new age of capitalism where massive 100,000 employee corporations across multiple time-zones are the norm, business was conducted on a much smaller scale; on a human scale.

If you go far enough back, “work” for most humans consisted of making tools for personal use, building shelter to protect the tribe, hunting and gathering food, making clothes, etc…  Work was directly connected to some tangible benefit on the lives of the people who were doing the work. In other words, when you put in work, you understood exactly why you were doing it because it was directly beneficial to you and your community.  And by “community’ I’m talking about the relatively small band of no more than 150 people who you saw and interacted with regularly.

As prehistoric societies transitioned into more advanced civilizations, systems of organization became more complex.  With the help of advancements like writing and other technologies, larger groups of people were able to organize around common goals.  Larger cities were built, larger armies were formed, and more complicated integrated industries came to prominence as a result. The fruits of our labor began to become more disconnected from us as they went to support these larger systems of organization.

However, business was by and large still conducted on a relatively human scale, albeit not to the extent of hunting and gathering societies.

The blacksmith foraged swords, mostly by hand.  The mason built buildings for his community, brick by brick. The scribe used his skills to convert ideas into writing, thus preserving knowledge for his contemporaries and subsequent generations.  The farmer grew crops and then sold his harvest to customers a the local market. This was the human experience for the past 10,000 years more or less. I’m generalizing a bit here as  societies varied widely across geographies and eras. 

However, things really began to change with the dawn of capitalism 500-ish years ago and the industrial revolution 200 years ago. And then things really accelerated with the onset of the information age in the last 50 years or so.

Now in the information age, the disconnect has become even more pronounced than ever, particularly as the U.S. has transitioned to a service-economy with multinational technofeudalist conglomerates running the show.

The white-collar corporate worker has gone from being a cog in the wheel, to being a rather insignificant node in an interconnected global network.  The result is that it is almost impossible to truly feel connected to the end product or service. For many people, they will never actually be able to attribute their specific contribution to an impact on society in a way that is not only tangible and measurable, but also meaningful and in alignment with their personal values.

Studies have shown that as company size increases, as a company’s geographic footprint increases, as technology-enabled remote interactions increase, worker satisfaction and connectivity to the company mission decreases.

Now don’t get me wrong. There will always be some people who truly feel connected and that they are right at home in their jobs. There will always be people who feel that their work is deeply meaningful and purposeful, and they know exactly how they are contributing to society.

But I would argue that most of us really are just motivated for the paycheck at this point… and maybe also the status and other social benefits that potentially come with “prestigious” and highly coveted jobs.

I do, however, think humans inherently want to work.  I think most of us would actually be unhappy doing nothing at all throughout our lives.  We have a desire to put our talents to use, to be productive members of society, and contribute to a cause greater than ourselves.

However, in this modern age of mega-corporations and global economies, life has grown to a scale that is too large for the human mind to comprehend, and this is where the problems come into play.

The disconnect that many of us are experiencing is not benign.  As mentioned before, feeling disconnected can truly throw the mind and body off and disrupt the physiological processes that are important for physical, cognitive, and emotional health.

I think a lot of us justify the disconnect with the pay checks that we receive.  At least that’s what I did for many years.  However at some point I came to terms with the notion that my brain, my body, and my soul don’t care about a pay check or climbing the corporate ladder, or career advancement.

I came to terms with the idea that these things that I pedestalized were the result of me buying into social engineering that started when I entered grade school and began being groomed to be the ideal employee, and continuing into adulthood as I aggressively chased the conventional measures of success.

For me, the solution was to leave the workforce altogether so I could dedicate more of my time and energy towards what I know to be better for my health… not just my physical health, but also my cognitive health, and my mental health. 

So I left my job, I left the workforce, and I left the country to align my life and my work with what matters to me far more than a promotion or status that comes with fancy job titles.

I’m no longer trapped in the sterile office environments longing to be in a more connected setting. I’m no longer feeling like a cog in the wheel, wholly disconnected from whatever impact I was creating on society, if I was creating one at all.

I now spend my days living slowly, meditating, working out, building meaningful social relationships, spending time outdoors in the sun and at the beach, and pursuing solo-entrepreneurship in which I feel directly connected to the work that I am doing and the impact I believe I’m having on other people’s lives.

I’ve brought things back to the human scale, and I’ve recalibrated myself with what I believe to be a more natural human experience.

I realize this is not a feasible or even a desirable solution for many of you out there, but if you do also feel that there is some sort of disconnect between your job and your physical, your cognitive, your emotional health … then firstly you should absolutely do something about it. Secondly there are things that you can do to counteract your work making you feel disconnected from the natural environment, detached from your physical and emotional well-being, and feeling like just another cog in the wheel (or a “node in the network”).

The key is to be a bit more mindful about how you navigate through your professional life. No matter who you are, I think this can be done with a simple five step process that firstly begins with…

Figuring out and prioritizing your values

This is probably the hardest step of the process because really understanding what you want, and what you stand for can take a lifetime, but this isn’t necessarily something you need to get right on the first go.  In fact, these things may change as your life evolves, because life is not stagnant. It is ever changing.

A simple trick I like to use to at least get closer to my values is what I call “anti-visioning” which basically entails imagining the worst case scenario for you and your life at some point in the future.  Then you reverse this anti-vision to come up with your vision. It’s literally the opposite of your anti-vision.

And from your vision, you can deduce it into 3-5 key words that reflect the essence of your vision.  These 3-5 key words are your values. For example my 5 words are health, autonomy, connectedness, simplicity, and peace.

So you’ll need to narrow in on the words that best align with you and those are your values. Everything you do from this point on should be true to these values.

Once you know your values, you’re ready for the next step which is to…

Define how being more aligned with your vision will transform your life for the better

I cannot stress enough how important it is to paint a clear picture of your life when you are better aligned.

Because you’re going to have to make some tough decisions, and you are much more likely to act decisively and see your decisions through if you have clarity behind why you are doing it.

So think about what your life will look like. Go back to your anti-vision and then your vision, and then turn that vision into something that is relatable to you. Think about what the perfect day would look like for you.  From the moment you wake up, to the moment you go to bed, and everything that happens in between, if you had it 100% your way, how does your day play out minute-by-minute?  Be as detailed as possible.  In this reality, are you spending all of your days in a sterile office, hunched over a computer, speaking corporate jargon with a bunch of consultants?

Or are you having slower mornings, traveling more, spending time outdoors hiking or fishing, working on your own entrepreneurial projects that you feel intensely passionate about?

Your perfect day is yours and yours alone, but you want your life on average to resemble days that look more like this, and less like whatever sort of situation you’re in that you want to change.  This leads to the next step which is to….

Audit your life and either eliminate, reduce, or change the factors that move you farther away from your values.

I think the process of elimination is always easier than addition. So removing elements from your life which are misaligned with your vision is the easiest and most immediate action that you can take to start producing real tangible impacts for yourself.

For example, if one of your values is “health”, then there might be room to scale back on after-hours networking cocktails or taking on high-stakes projects that will keep you up at night. These are likely factors that detract from your health and well-being, so it is wise to minimize them to the extent possible.

It’s ultimately up to you, but if you really want to stop letting corporate life impede in your ability to align with your values, in this case your values of being healthy, then you must actually prioritize your values.

If you’re still in the mindset of worrying about how doing such a thing will impact your career prospects, then this article isn’t for you.  This is for people who want to adjust their life trajectory in a way that enables them to stop letting the corporate life disconnect them from the human experience, and to begin scaling back on their work life so that they can make room for their health, their well-being, or any other value that is being jeopardized as a result of being entrenched in the corporate lifestyle.

After eliminating the elements of misalignment, next is to…

Inject new elements of connectedness into your life

Since you’ve strategically eliminated some of the elements that were preventing you from fully living your values of being healthy, you now have a clearer path to start moving closer to your vision. You can do this by using that time and energy that you freed up for yourself and putting it into activities that move you closer to your values.

So, sticking with “health” being a core value, maybe you’ll focus on cutting back your alcohol consumption since your intentionally avoiding networking happy hours.  Perhaps you use that newfound free time instead to attend after-work yoga classes or begin a meditation practice.  Maybe not taking on high-stakes projects will create space for you to develop better sleep habits now that your mind is in a better space. It’s up for you to decide

This is just a small example, but the possibilities range from making small eliminations and additions to bringing more balance to your life to doing what I did and walking away from the corporate world altogether to create a blank slate for yourself to build a much more aligned life.

But ensuring that you are successful and consistent means that you must also….

Create a strategy and structured approach that systematically gets you closer to your dream life

While it’s great to take steps when you have the motivation to do so, the truth is that motivation is fleeting.  So you’ll eventually want to put some rules and guidelines in place that you can follow and live by without putting too much cognitive energy into figuring out how to live in alignment with your values each and every day.

The truth is that our mood rises and falls.  Sometimes we put our values high on the priority list, and other times we lose sight of them and succumb to instant gratifications and societal narratives that are misaligned with our greater life vision.

So having a system in place will help you to consistently make decisions and take actions that are better aligned for you.

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At the end of the day, I realize not everyone shares my sentiments in terms of corporate life in this new information age. However, I can’t be the only one who found myself in the office, in meetings, at the water cooler thinking that there’s got to be more to life than this… feeling like I’m slowly withering away physically and mentally because this setting is not suitable for humans and making me feel so disconnected from the authentic human experience.

I can’t be the only person who felt like I needed to be spending more time outdoors, more time moving my body, more time doing work that actually feels meaningful and impactful in a way that really resonates with me.

So with that said, if you are someone who’s been deep in the corporate rat-race and you feel like your job or your career has disconnected you from your physical health, cognitive health, your emotional health then I have something just for you.  I’ve created a 60-day health and wellness challenge to help you re-evaluate your relationship with the many elements of modern life that are making you feel disconnected, including the corporate 9-5 grind, and instead I’ll walk you through my system of bodyweight strength training, ancestral eating, and other lifestyle interventions that promote being fully connected in mind, body, and spirit.