I stepped out into the chilly fall air, and the chaos of 5:30pm New York City whipped around me.

 

Thousands of people streamed from their Financial District offices, rushing to begin their journeys home for a few hours of life, before they repeated the cycle again.

 

Until today, I had been one of them. Commuting half asleep on the subway, almost an hour from south Brooklyn, to a job that paid the bills and offered fleeting moments of fulfillment.

 

I leaned against a big marble building, sheltered from crowd, so I could pull out my phone.

 

Dozens of notifications buzzed the same message: you’re going to regret this.

 

I had just walked out of what was by all accounts a “dream job” – a liveable wage, an opportunity to use my skills, to network with high powered people, to have early stage equity in a start-up.

 

My mind was racing, my body was shivering, but deep inside I was strangely calm. I had less than $1,000 in my bank account, no idea how I was going to make rent in two weeks, and yet, beyond logic, I knew I had made the right choice.

 

How did I end up here? There were three parts to the situation: 

 

Part 1: The job. Before this job appeared, I had already felt a growing inner knowing that I wasn’t supposed to be working for anyone else. But I didn’t have a roadmap for creating my own business, I didn’t understand my gifts, and I was SO used to relying on someone else to cut my paycheck. So, I took the job, justifying it because I was technically a contractor, not an employee. I felt like I had more independence, but I was still expected to be in the office 5 days a week. And, most importantly, I was under the energetic authority of someone else, making the CEO’s vision happen, disconnected from my own.

 

On top of that, my expertise was actually the backbone of the company’s core offer. I saw myself as lucky to be there, meanwhile, they knew they had hit the jackpot – a smart kid with amazing gifts who didn’t see himself as worthy or good enough to create something on his own.  

 

Part 2: God. Earlier that year, I had stopped drinking, began meditating in earnest, and started saying a daily surrender prayer: God, my will to Thy will, please align my life with the divine plan. After years of playing small, shutting off my spiritual awareness, associating God only with the oppressive religion in which I had grown up, the momentum of my destiny path was picking up. It was like my soul was waking up with my body, saying, hey, you’re here for more than this, it’s time to get going. 

 

(For my astrology nerds, yes, this was a few months before my Saturn Return!)

 

Through my daily practices, I had begun emanating a strong and consistent signal: I’m willing to change, I’m ready to see my true power, I’m willing to become who I really am. I didn’t know it yet, but the ripple effect of that intention would remove not only this job, but also my longest romantic relationship to date, 99% of my “community,” and the little money I had.

 

When it’s time to stop hiding, it’s time to stop hiding. Everything that’s been in the way will get removed. This is what I now call the “divine demolition.” My soul had planted the TNT and lit the fuse without my human self noticing.

 

Part 3: Money. Why was I leaving with so little in the bank? Because, frankly, I had money issues! I had a major “upper limit problem” as Gay Hendricks would say. After a brutal childhood and young adulthood of surviving on my own, my nervous system’s “normal” was lack, limitation, and stress. Even when I would save up a little money, something always seemed to happen that would bring me back to zero. Plus, I had spent my formative years in anti-capitalist circles that equated the behavior of the worst corporations with all forms of commerce.

 

My nervous system said: I lack safety and security. My mind said: I don’t want to be a bad person with money so I’ll survive on as little as possible and I won't even consider entrepreneurship. The only possible result of that combination is paycheck-to-paycheck living.

 

So, this equation of overriding my intuition + praying to be shown my path + rejecting money all culminated in a perfect storm of me learning that the CEO was serially lying to employees, clients, and investors. I knew I could not continue to be a public face of an organization that was preaching one thing and practicing another. This chapter was over, whether I liked it or not.  

 

I walked into the CEO’s office and told her that I was done, effective immediately. Minutes later, there I was, shivering as I made my way to the Q train, with that slow-mo feeling you get when you know your whole life is changing and you're going to remember this moment forever.  

 

Later that week, she called me to offer me $100,000 to do one more month of work. They wanted me to document the entire methodology that I was teaching our clients (which no one else in the company understood), so that they could create a product based on my IP.

 

$100,000 was more than I had ever made, seen, or considered a possibility in my life. My take-home pay was only about $4,000/month.

 

Friends thought I was crazy for turning down a life-changing amount of money that I objectively needed. And my former colleagues tried every possible angle to persuade me to stay.

 

I knew I had to say no.

 

It was a classic “deal with the devil” situation. Give away a little bit of your eternal essence for some temporary security. (I still shudder thinking about what would’ve happened if I had taken that deal – an aspect of my life’s work would probably be an AI product that I have no control over.)

 

There was no going back. But the path forward was unclear. 

 

How would I make rent? What was I actually doing with my life? Would I start a business? What did “starting a business” even mean? 

 

A part of me knew I would figure it out, but how?

 

The story continues in the next email.

 

Until then, sending love,

Aaron

 

 

This email was written 100% by me, Aaron Rose, without AI.