A few years back, I was in a job I hated and I was broke. I was desperate to make a move into IT, but I had just enough money to pay my bills and eat. I wanted to educate myself, get an IT qualification, and make a career change.
The only thing I owned was a small TV, so I had a choice to make: do I stay broke and use that as my excuse to quit on my dreams or do I do something about it? As you can tell from the title, I sold my TV. The money paid for a cheap classroom IT course on computer assembly for the CompTIA A+ exam and some books.
I studied like crazy and passed the exam. I used the qualification to leverage where I was in my current job and started teaching people at work how to use the e-mail system. I took the Network+ exam next, then the CCNA, and then finally, after applying for a number of jobs, landed my first IT support role.
Rather than spend my salary on nice things, I invested it in more books and continued to study like crazy. It led to better jobs and more money, until finally I was running my own IT company.
I’m telling you this because not a day goes by without somebody telling me they are cutting back on their costs and quitting my site. Does 66 cents per day really have that much of an impact on their finances?
Here’s the thing. What priority do you give to getting some valuable certifications and making changes in your life and circumstances? What are you willing to give and give up in order to get where you want to be?
The losers in life will quit and blame their boss, their kids, their job, or their finances. The winners will use those same excuses as the motivation to get where they want to be, whatever the cost.
Have fun.
Paul Browning
It makes me want to tell people about how being made redundant and hitting a real low made me turn around my IT career through PPD.