Why My Life Doesn’t Change No Matter How Hard I Work

Have you ever had a thought like this?

You worked late again today,
but it doesn’t feel like your life is getting any better.

You believed that if you kept working hard,
things would eventually change.

And yet—strangely—
no matter how much you try,
your life can still feel stuck in the same place.

This is a story about
why life doesn’t change
even when you’ve worked hard at a company.

I started thinking this way
only after I left—
after time had passed and the dust had settled.

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I. If I Ever Got Hired Again

I started a small business based on what I’d been doing for years—
not too long ago.

After spending twenty years in a company,
I was surprised to find that even now—
paying my own office rent—
I still find myself waiting for the weekend.

In some ways, it doesn’t feel that different from my old life.

I have a friend who left around the same time I did.
We meet sometimes and end up talking about the same thing.

“If I got hired again…
I think I could do corporate life so much better than before.”

“Yeah.
I feel like I could actually do it well now.”

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II. What “I Could Do It Well Now” Really Means

When you belong to a company,
your daily rhythm slowly adjusts to it—
and so does your emotional center.

So when we say,
“I could do it well now,”
we don’t mean we would work harder.

It means we’ve learned something else:

We’ve learned how to separate work from life—
how to keep a healthy distance.

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III. An Employee Is an Employee, and an Owner Is an Owner

There was a time when I treated my job as if it were my entire life—
bringing home both the joy and the stress.

Even after work,
I couldn’t stop thinking about the company.
And those emotions inevitably reached my family.

But an employee and an owner are not playing the same role.

The owner is the one who invested capital.
The employee is the one who provides labor.

In the end, the company’s profit belongs to the owner.
And I was simply a well-employed worker.

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IV. “If the Company Does Well, I’ll Reward You”

I used to believe that if I delivered results,
I would naturally be paid more.

And if the company grew,
I assumed my life would rise with it.

But reality wasn’t that simple.

Working hard doesn’t guarantee results.
Even when success comes, the money is still the owner’s money.
And how profits are shared is always the owner’s decision.

Above all,
people’s hearts change—
more easily than we want to admit.

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V. If I Had Known Earlier

Why didn’t I understand this simple truth for twenty years?

Why did I desire the owner’s profit as if it were mine?
Why did I carry stress home after work—
showing my family a worried face?

Only now can I say this honestly:

“If I ever got hired again…
I think I could truly do it well.”

And by “do it well,” I don’t mean living for the company.

I mean being able to keep a distance—
so the company can’t take my emotions and my life with it.

I mean honoring my work contract—
not only with my body, but with my mind.

A life where I can be more faithful
to myself and my family than to the company.

That’s what I can finally see now—
clearly.