Escaping the rat race is for some, a pipe dream and for others, a reality that is already taking shape. But maybe, like many people, you're still trying to decide if your current desire to get out of the 9 to 5 is just a passing phase or something you can no longer ignore. How do you know that, if an opportunity presented itself, you would do the right thing for you and either stay put in the tedium of the 9 to 5 or break out and make a go of it on the outside?

Plenty of people like the idea of working for themselves and are happy to vocalise this on a daily basis to anyone who will listen. However, when it comes to the crunch, many of the same people do not take action because they bow to both internal and external pressures; there's too much financial responsibility on their shoulders for them to become self-employed, they feel they don't know the first thing about business and don't even have a good idea for a company and, more to the point, they don't have any extra money or time to start a side business, and so it goes on. And all to often, for some, the aching desire to break the chains of corporate life just isn't there in large enough quantities to spur them on to overcome all the obstacles.

There are a group of people, however, who despite the internal voices that tell them they can't make it, they're not good enough and so on and despite the external voices telling them they have responsibilities and that their ideas are pie-in-the-sky, still feel a deep-seated sense of despair in the pit of their stomach at the prospect of remaining employed for the rest of their working lives.

Take a look at the below points and see how many of them relate to you:

• You can't understand how your co-workers and friends seem so content to stay in a job, even though they've experienced the world of work to the same extent as, if not more so than you.

• You have always felt as though you're in the wrong skin in the workplace. It doesn't matter who employs you, you feel like your face doesn't fit.

• You used to think you were in the wrong industry and that changing jobs would help remove the anxiety – it didn't. Not the first few times nor this time around.

• You don't really like to do what others say – it's not that you don't respect those in authority, but rather you feel you would prefer to do things on your own terms and in your own time.

• You feel like a caged bird, trapped by the shackles of corporate life.

• Your body clock is not suited to society's rules on working hours. Your brain doesn't engage until midday and you like to work in short sharp bursts with lots of breaks. Why does society dictate that people be chained to a desk for 8 hours every day?

• You sometimes feel tearful at the prospect of the commute to and from work.

• Your head is constantly full of thoughts of escape but you're just not sure of the how….

So, did some of those points jump off the page at you? Do you feel this way about your job, about all jobs? You'll see I referred earlier to the group of people who would potentially take actionif the opportunity presented itself'. Would you consider yourself to be in that category?

Well what if I were to tell you that the opportunities are right under our noses, every hour of every day, every minute of every hour? Alternatives to the 9 to 5 have never presented themselves to us more readily than now. The way we work is changing – the internet alone affords us the opportunity to side step corporate life in a way which would never have been possible 20 years ago. I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm definitely not claiming that it doesn't take a, sometimes, herculean effort. But what would you prefer? To put in a good bit of hard work now (you work pretty hard anyway, don't you?) to become self-employed or resign yourself to the alternative; a life of longing, what-ifs, and endless hours wishing you were somewhere else…?