I quit my job two weeks ago.

Switching from full-time to freelance is not only a difficult choice to make, it’s scary, because the stakes are high and rewards are uncertain. But when you reached a path where only freelancing can free you enough time to pursue your dreams from the past, then it becomes a no-brainer.

When I speak about my plans for the future, most would say I’m brave, but brave is an overstatement, as I have achieved nothing yet, merely the act of quiting your full-time job and thrusting yourself into freelancing does not make one brave, same could be said of you being hasty.

When you’re just starting out you have these great plans in your head of how each days will be spend, how you are going to split your time on different projects in the hope that one of them eventually makes it and becomes your source of passive income. But as hours drag into days, and days into weeks, the sense of urgency starts to draw quite near.

Your confidence turns sour as you sense that your previous career has also instilled in you a source of pride and achievement that is suddenly lost. The concept of having a stable full-time job is so ingrained in our culture that it feels weird not to have one. When everyone else is living in relative stability, eating out when it suits and buying whatever they want or need, you are looking at your budget sheet everyday and thinking, ‘I better start work on something soon or else I’ll be on the streets.’

You can no longer join in the conversations on housing mortgages, marriage or other kinds of materialistic pursuits, at least that’s not your priority. Your priority is to make ends meet, find a cheap place to rent, find a source of passive income, sign up that new client, retain your old clients, or else this great freelance project is going to end sooner than you think. Then once that’s achieved you can start looking at treating yourself once for a while, but a loss of a source of income could hit anytime, so you mustn’t let your contingency funds run out. Only when you are safely in the profit zone with a stable source of income, either from the new online course you created, or the new app that sent you millions in traffic, could you dare to say mission accomplished.

But thinking about the endpoint is a dangerous proposition, especially for a newstarter, because you know very well you are nowhere near that point, and reaching that point requires millions of steps and hardcore discipline. Be prepared for sleepiness nights and at the same time not letting your health fall into dangerous unrecoverable levels.

And what’s your plan? That’s a question that will start to pop up, either from your new and old friends, your family and relatives. That’s when your resilience is put into the most challenging test. Are you able to maintain your confidence, your perspective and values once the questions and doubts start kicking in? As a career-guy, you can safely cover behind the veil of security and talk about the achievements and potential your company has towards your client and the world, while earning that decent sum of salary that will put you at ease. But in the world of freelancing, you are left to defend for yourself.

And that’s when all the superficial veils start to uncover, no longer are you the marketing guy, or the manager, or whatever position and title you used to hold, you’re dragged away from your present life and thrusted into the deep end and forced to face the naked truth. Your confidence is not anymore an illusion built around what materialistic pursuits you are able to have, or your income levels, or your power and responsibilities within your company’s hierarchy, but a true reflection of how much value you see in yourself.

And only when you truly see value in yourself, and hold that confidence dear, can you start to work on a rigid discipline to make this a reality.