> But tricking yourself psychologically into a hard working employee is as crazy as it gets. You are not supposed to feel happy for being an employee and making money for someone else, because you are not in control of your own life.
Fortunately there are no rules for what you are supposed to feel happy about. If you are convinced that being an employee means you should not be happy, then that's a (painful) psychological trick as well. Even if you run your own business, you still have customers to satisfy, so are they in control of your life? Regardless if you work for yourself or not, you are always working to provide value to someone else. You are always selling yourself; your abilities & time.
Or, to put in a different thought, we are all subject to the physical realities of the world we live in, and we barter and trade what we each have with one another to better control the world itself, while being controlled by it simultaneously.
Fortunately there are no rules for what you are supposed to feel happy about. If you are convinced that being an employee means you should not be happy, then that's a (painful) psychological trick as well. Even if you run your own business, you still have customers to satisfy, so are they in control of your life? Regardless if you work for yourself or not, you are always working to provide value to someone else. You are always selling yourself; your abilities & time.