After graduating first in her class from Georgetown, Brit Marling got her dream job as an investment analyst.
She had an eye-popping salary and a safe path to a safe future.
But there was a problem: She was dying on the inside.
She’d sit in a cubicle all day, stay awake as many hours as she humanly could, and crunch numbers.
Then she’d go home and cry. Not just a few tears, but the type of existential sobbing that comes from deep within to tell you that something is very wrong.
Seeking answers, she consulted a doctor who diagnosed her with depression and prescribed antidepressants. She filled the prescription and put the bottle on her nightstand.
But she couldn’t bring herself to take the pills. She’d come home every night, stare at the bottle, and think to herself, “This just doesn’t feel right.”
Her job was eating her alive on the inside and the advice was: Just pop one of these pills. Numb your body’s natural reaction to an unnatural work environment. Keep participating in business as usual.
Marling had a choice.
She could swallow the pill and keep her safety net—even though it was suffocating her soul.
Or she could ditch the safety net, reimagine herself, and begin walking on a high wire into a much less certain, yet more aligned path—one that would involve leaving her job and reconnecting with her love for filmmaking.
She took the unsafe path. Marling moved to LA, began writing screenplays, and became one of the best independent filmmakers of our time—co-creating and starring in series like The OA and A Murder at the End of the World.
Sure, there are plenty of people who, like Marling, chased a dream and didn’t make it. But there are also countless people who stayed on the seemingly safe path and still failed. In an era where companies pivot overnight and industries are disrupted at breakneck speeds, jobs once deemed “secure” vanish like smoke.
Consider what happened to Jim Carrey’s father, Percy. Carrey says his father could have been an amazing comedian. But Percy assumed that it was foolish to try to make a living with comedy, so he made a safe choice and took a job as an accountant. He was later fired from that “safe” job, and Carrey’s family became homeless.
The safe path can be the dangerous path. Not just because the safety it provides is often an illusion—as in the case of Percy Carrey.
But the safe path can lure you away from walking your path.
The safety nets we weave around ourselves turn into straitjackets. We spend our life only where the net lies below, certain it’s the only place we’re safe. “Stay here,” a cunning voice whispers, “anywhere else is too risky.” So we play small, avoiding the leaps that the net can’t promise to catch.
You weren’t put on Earth just to be safe. (Spoiler alert: No one escapes life alive).
You didn’t arrive here to take one perfect step after another, climb one rung after another, until you arrive at death, right on schedule, having ruffled as few feathers as possible.
You’re not meant to spend your life waiting on the sidelines, wondering when it will be your turn to start playing.
You might think you have forever, but you don’t. Close your eyes for a moment and picture yourself on your deathbed. You’re 30 minutes away from your last breath.
Answer this question: What do you regret not doing?
Now go do that thing.
“You can fail at what you don’t want,” as Jim Carrey says, “so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
P.S. Feeling stuck on the “safe” path? You don’t have to tackle the shift alone.
My wife Kathy is hosting a free masterclass, Turn Your Day Job Into a Dream Job. If you feel stuck in a soul-sucking job, this one-hour masterclass is designed to light a fire under you and show you exactly how to start shifting to a career that you love. Last time she held the class, over 350 people joined, and the feedback was nothing short of amazing—think “wonderful,” “powerful,” and “I finally know my next steps!”
You’ll learn:
✅ The 5 biggest career traps that keep people stuck—and how to avoid them
✅ How to stop thinking about changing your career and actually start doing it
✅ A surprising strategy to break through fear and confidently step into a new path
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