The best part of vacation is getting to experience life in a way you don’t normally get to. On a recent vacation, I watched palm trees sway in the breeze and, just beyond them, the waves crash into the shore.
While this type of getaway is a luxury I’m grateful for, it’s one of the few luxuries my wife and I have chosen to enjoy with our family. If you’re willing to travel during off-peak season, it can be surprisingly affordable.
On that trip, I was reminded how little I desire to be part of the “rat race” of modern life. By that, I don’t mean avoiding hard work or big goals, both of which I fully support. What I dislike is getting trapped on the hamster wheel of economic demands with no way out.
If the rat race is something to escape, it’s because it’s a trap you unknowingly fall into. It starts harmlessly enough: you try to get a higher-paying job and then let yourself enjoy the fruits of that labor. However, pretty soon your lifestyle has inflated so much that you need the high pay just to keep up, and the only relief is to climb higher and higher.
The end result is a life filled with all the trappings of modern success but without the time, energy, or freedom to enjoy it. Slowly, your relationships, your health, and your joy begin to erode from lack of investment. The rat race mentality expands to consume everything you care about if you don’t resist.
A Short Guide to Getting Out of the Rat Race
Reading about getting out of the rat race alone won’t get you out, and planning for a better future is only the start. You need to take action today. Your future is nothing more than a few hundred “todays,” and today is the only day that truly exists—so don’t wait.
1. Lower Your Cost of Living
Escaping the rat race starts with lowering your “burn rate,” or the amount of money you need to live contentedly in a given year. The lower you get that number, the more flexibility you have to choose other values. If that number remains too high, you’ll always be fighting to get ahead financially and choosing between time and money.
2. Define ‘Enough’ so You Can Stop Chasing More
Once you start cutting out expenses, you’ll be forced to decide what you really need to be happy. Of course, what you feel you need and what you actually need can be very different. People around the world live on less than you, and many of them are very happy. There are minimums to human flourishing, but they are likely lower than you’re used to.
Related Stories
3. Decide What Luxuries You Will Let Yourself Enjoy
If you are wealthy enough to enjoy a few luxuries in life—and many of us are—escaping the rat race doesn’t mean giving them all up. It means choosing them selectively and leaving enough space between life’s pleasures to savor them. If life is a never-ending buffet of luxuries, you never really stop to appreciate them individually.
4. Build a Large Emergency Fund and Don’t Touch It
In addition to having a lower baseline rate of expenses, it’s critical to build up a personal safety net that lets you sleep easier at night. A healthy emergency fund doesn’t make you invincible, but it does protect you from large, unexpected expenses that threaten to push you back into the rat race.
5. Diversify Your Income Streams to Reduce Dependence
I’ve been blessed with a handful of jobs I’ve enjoyed and employers who have treated me very well. I continue to enjoy and benefit from those relationships. However, I never want to depend on any one income source for my family’s livelihood. For reasons outside my control, any one of those jobs could be gone someday, and replacing that income may be difficult. Even a small source of side income provides a helpful buffer.
6. Invest in Relationships More Than Anything Else
Knowing what you don’t want in life isn’t enough. To stay motivated toward a goal, you need to combine that with a positive vision for the kind of life you want to live. Not in some abstract way—think about what you hope your life looks like on an hour-by-hour basis. As a starting point, I recommend making relationships central to your idea of a good life. Your relationships with family, friends, neighbors, and your creator have long brought joy to countless people throughout history.
On the other side of the rat race is a life richer in all that matters most. It’s something of a truism, but so many of those gifts are cheap or even free. All they require is enough time to enjoy them and a mind that is not warped by the demands of the rat race. Love, friendship, health, beauty, generosity, and adventure—those are things worth living for.
