The Rat Race and How to Escape it
Do you find yourself getting up at 5 in the morning and getting home at 8 at night after driving two hours in rush hour traffic? Then you only have time to sleep for six hours after eating a quick unsatisfying dinner? Do you find yourself working to get a new gadget or a new house and it is already obsolete? Then, my friend, you are in the rat race. The rat race is a desire for either power or a desire to gain more material things than what you already have. One of these things can be a desire for a higher position in your organization or a bigger car or house. The trap of the rat race is the more you achieve financially or career-wise, the more you want. Put in another way, when a person gets a big house, there is a brief moment of euphoria at the achievement of obtaining a bigger house. When this feeling subsides then you try to fill this emptiness with another gadget or object such as a new car, a new stereo, or a TV all in the effort to attempt to impress people you do not like (Garg 2020). Getting out of the rat race is difficult however it is possible; in this article, we will show you how to get out of this rat race to live a more fruitful life.
The rat race affects us in different ways according to class and personality traits. If one is poor the rat race would be the fight for basic needs. These needs would likely be the need for fancier clothing, shoes, or accessories. They would likely sacrifice rent or other necessities all in the effort to impress their peers. With the sacrifice of necessities therein lays the fight for survival. One would have to work harder to meet their needs whilst attempting to impress others. This is not to say all poor people do this however, this is a fairly common trait amongst the poor.
The rat race among the middle or upper middle class would like more like the rat race you might associate with the term rat race. They would buy a bigger home to impress others once they receive a level of financial success. The main concern for these groups is upward mobility from the middle class to the upper class. A person can envy their rich friends for example and attempt to emulate them by purchasing expensive merchandise. Families might force their children to engage in activities in order to impress their neighbors. For example, a parent might push their child to participate in piano practice or fill their children’s schedule with extracurricular activities their children might not like. In the context of one’s career, a person can work relentlessly or engage in Machiavellian activities to undercut their co-workers in the hopes of higher pay or promotions. Once they achieve their higher positions, they would have to work harder to receive another promotion and the cycle continues.
The rat race among the rich would look somewhat different than the middle class and especially the poor. Here, the main issue is legacy; the urge to preserve the family name. The children of the rich are taught to preserve the family name and to build on the wealth the previous generation had accumulated. There are some similar traits of the rat race in the upper class; for example, people would work hard to achieve material success in order to impress others. They would buy a fancier car or a yacht in an attempt to impress their friends and family. The key difference between the poor, middle class, and the rich is the rich for the most part tend not to work for money; they would have mechanisms in place to gain more money such as real estate and stocks and bonds. And with the middle class and the poor, tend to work for money. In essence, the poor and middle class seem to have less of an opportunity to escape the rat race than the rich.
The rat race has an adverse effect on health and health outcomes in most people. According to Jitender and Sharma (2011), the stress of being in the rat race would likely lead to depression and anxiety, and other physical symptoms. These symptoms include sleep disturbance, physical pain, muscle tension, and frequent urination. Also, the depressive symptoms can lead to increase suicidal attempts and ideation. For example, it was found that suicide alone was responsible for over 800,000 deaths worldwide in 2010. It most commonly was found in people ages 15-30; which is the second cause of death in this age range. The first would be accidents. In the United States, although the rates of suicide have decreased some over all over the past two decades, the rates of suicide have increased by 2.0% in the same time in females ages 10-25. The most common causes are the inability to find romantic partners and lack of career success (Garnet at. El 2022). The rat race could affect the quality of care one receives. In England, a study had been conducted on the adverse effects on doctors who receive pay for service improvement. On the surface, it sounds wonderful. Doctors should have improved pay based on results. However, there is a more nefarious effect. The doctors are paid by the patients they see and are told how many patients they see. This leads them to be overworked, and patient care would suffer. If they see fewer patients, their pay would decrease.
How to break the cycle of the rat race? It can be difficult in ignoring the pressures to compete or to keep up with the Joneses. But if you want to get out of the rat race this is one of the things you must do. The first thing you must do is make a plan. What do you want your life to look like? What goals do you want to achieve? It is important to make a budget for your spending and income. Now, no one has ever saved their way to financial freedom, however, with wise investments, you can make a good start to achieving an escape from the rat race.
Another thing is to find a purpose for your life. Do you want to start a business? What kind of business do you want to start? Do you want to have a life of leisure where you can travel? With enough money, you can do all of these things. In the end, it is on you to do the things that is needed to get yourself out of the rat race. Of course, if you like to rat race and you find pleasure in going to work every day there is nothing wrong with that. I find my work very rewarding and I do not have any plans on stopping any time soon.
References:
Garg, Shriya How to escape the rat race by optimizing expenses. Money Fit.org August 6, 2020
Stux, Robert The Rat Race of Life: How society Imprisons the Personally Apeiron blog June 13, 2020.
Jitender, Kumar at el. Karma Yoga a philosophical rapeutc model for stress management. Journal of Education and Allied Sciences January-June 2011 Vol. 3 No. 1 PP 15-22
Bender, Keith and Theodossiou, Ioamis The Unintended Consequences of the rat race: The detrimental effects of performance pay on Health. Oxford Economic Papers Issue 33 Vol11
