What is your job like?  Do you spend forty hours each week in a greasy restaurant?  Is a good part of your life spent on a factory floor?  Do you claim dominion over little more than a cramped cubicle?  Are you behind the counter of a retail store selling things about which you could care less?

No matter what your job is like, it probably does not provide an optimal environment.  Even if you do have a great office with a comfortable leather chair, some of those chrome balls to click back and forth when you are on the phone, and a framed motivational print featuring full-color photography of Mount Everest, there is probably somewhere else you would prefer to be.

No matter where you put in your hours, there are hassles getting there and back.  Scraping ice and snow off a car windshield in February.  Leaning on the horn in rush hour traffic every Friday afternoon.  Maybe you get packed into a subway like a sardine in a can or have to share the bus with a collection of unsavory characters.  It might only take you a few minutes to get to work, but you may also be one of the horde of commuters who spend hours of their lives each and every day just coming to and from the job.

There is an alternative to all of that ugliness.  Wouldn’t it be nice to roll out of bed, click your fingers and be at work?  When the day was done, you could be sitting on your couch or playing with your children in the blink of an eye.  That would be great, wouldn’t it?

And the workplace itself?  Imagine having a bed nearby for a mid-day nap if you needed one.  A full refrigerator stocked with the kind of foods you enjoy would make for a better lunch than your usual brown bag feast, the company cafeteria or another fast food place.  It would be awesome to replace that horrible, dull background music with the kind of tunes you really enjoy.  Oh, and since we are thinking of a comfortable workplace, let us make sure we do away with dress codes, too. 

Well, we have presented two options.  The traditional work environment that has long, and always will, inspire a series of gripes, is the one we already know.  Our fantastic alternative sounds a lot like paradise.  Or home.

It is home.  It is possible to work there, too. 
Thousands of people have given up messing around with traditional jobs and all of the associated discomfort and hassles and have found refuge in running their own at-home business.  They get to enjoy their surroundings, avoid traffic, and make the most out of every day without expending time and effort just to clock in.  Some are telecommuters.  Others own their own businesses outright and operate them from a desk in the den or kitchen breakfast nook.

Those who work from home also gain some other significant advantages.  They control their earnings and the money can be very good.  They control the whole operation, giving them an unparalleled sense of job satisfaction.  They make their own hours–the ultimate in flexibility.  They do not commute; increasing their efficiency and the amount of time, they have available for recreation and family time.  They do not have to kow-tow to anyone and get to establish and implement their own rules and policies instead of relying upon middle managers who do not seem to have an idea of how things really work.

Are you ready to get out of your current workplace and into something a bit more comfortable?  Are you tired of wasting countless hours just getting to and from a job you do not really enjoy?  If so, it may be time for you to investigate joining those who have found working at home to be the perfect solution.  Take the time to find and read some valuable information about working from home and decide whether you are the kind of person who would benefit from having all of the comforts of home as your workplace.

Are you working for someone else or do you write your own paycheck?  If you are an employee instead of an owner, you may be limiting yourself more than you realize.  As long as you continue to work for someone else, you can be held back in a number of ways.  Consider some of these unattractive facts about being an employee.

First, you are never in control of your own destiny.  There is a longstanding myth that if you work hard enough and do a good enough job, you will work your way up the corporate ladder to a position of wealth and relative power.  Some people do manage to climb up from entry-level positions to management posts, but most do not.  Somewhere along the line, we decided to pretend as if the exception really is the rule.

What happens if the company’s sales force fails to close enough deals to fuel expansion (or even maintenance of the status quo)?  What happens if your boss decides to model his behavior after Kenneth Lay or the other once-successful heads of Enron?  All of your hard work goes up in a puff of smoke.
That holds true on more “down to earth” levels, too.  If the person in the cubicle next to you decides to play video games instead of finishing his report or happens to come down with a nasty case of the flu, the forty hours of hard work you offered will not be enough.  You will be on-site Saturday afternoon picking up someone else’s slack.  You will be telling yourself these extra hours are greasing the promotion track, but you have no way of knowing if that is true.
That is because much of that will depend on the personalities and attitudes of those who outrank you.  You are at the mercy of middle managers who may or may not like you or who might have an inaccurate perception of your value relative to other employees.  Your future becomes a matter of corporate politics.  That is not a reassuring thought.

Second, you will always be capped off.  Unless you rise to the top, amass a huge fortune, and then somehow buy out the company, you will always be an employee, serving at the behest of a boss who can release you at any time.  You will never really get to be in charge.  You will never truly control your future.
Sure, you might have authority over some aspects of your division.  You might get to hire and fire a few people.  Who knows, you might even get a company car, good benefits and a gold-plated watch at age sixty-five when you finally decide you have punched the clock for the very last time.  You can gain little pieces of control, but you will always be at the mercy of people and powers that outrank and control your financial and professional future.

Third, you will never know what you might have really been able to accomplish.  You only get one chance at life, and it seems almost sad that you can spend it without ever really testing yourself, your ideas or your skills.  Nonetheless, that is what happens to those who remain employees. 

When your working days are over, do you want to know that you were part of a company that did well or performed poorly based on the actions of many other people and forces over which you had virtually no control?  Some people are comfortable with the idea of being a good cog in a successful machine, but others want more.  They want to know that they were capable of building something that mattered to them.

Of course, the right person can shed those limitations.  The right person can decide to start their own business.  They can slip away from a dead-end, low-paying job or a nice comfortable corporate existence and take a chance to work without externally imposed limitations and hindrances.  There are varieties of ways to do that.  One of the most popular and successful is by escaping the workforce and establishing a home-based business.  It can be a wonderful way to reach for something more.

Almost all of us like the idea of working form our home.  We already feel as if we do not spend enough time there and that we log far too many hours at work.  We also like the idea of being our own boss, controlling our own destiny, earning more and having a deeper sense of job satisfaction.
However, many of us are afraid to take the next step.  We wonder whether we have the skills and make up necessary to run our own at home business.  It is not that we are afraid of running our own show.  Instead, we are more worried about whether we have what it takes in the first place.  There are many people willing to show us opportunities and plans for a work at home business, but no one is willing to make sure we are the kind of people who could ever implement those strategies successfully.

There is no simple way to determine whether you could successfully operate your own home business.  You cannot take a test that will reveal the answer in the form of a numerical score.  No one can look into your eyes and somehow sense your chance for success.  There are, however, a few things you can do to get a better idea of your abilities and whether or not they match up with home business success.
The perfect candidate for a work at home career has a few character traits.  Take a look at these three personality characteristics often associated with successful work at home entrepreneurs and see how you measure up.  There may not be an easy answer to the “can you do it” question, but evaluating these traits might give you a good idea of your ability to be your own boss.
A willingness to work is essential.  Running your own business, especially in the early phases, will require more time and effort than being someone else’s employee.  The rewards are greater, but they only arrive after a great deal of diligence.  If you do not consider yourself a hard worker already, you need to decide whether having personal ownership over your career future would inspire you to become one.  Those who are not willing to put forth a serious and extended effort may not be able to make it as an at-home entrepreneur.

Those who succeed have a willingness to learn.  One of the most exciting things about running your own business from home is the learning opportunities it presents.  In order to succeed, you will need to learn and develop a series of new skills.  Those who do well with their own enterprises are the kind of people who relish these challenges and look forward to the financial and personal growth opportunity that learning provides.

Running a successful work at home business also requires a burning desire to succeed.  This is probably the most important shared characteristic of those who have excelled while working from home.  They did not just feel like running their own operation and working from home would be a nice idea.  They felt a strong need to come up with a solid business plan and to implement it.  Their desire carried them through challenging days and made the moneymaking days even sweeter.

If you are thinking about starting a business from home, ask yourself a few questions and answer them honestly.  Are you willing to put forth an effort?  Are you willing to learn new things?  Do you feel strongly about taking control over your own professional life?

If you answer those three queries in the affirmative, you are a prime candidate for running your own home business.  Three “yeses” don’t guarantee a million in net profits six months later or a long successful future after three or four days of sweat, but they do show that you have the kind of make up that can produce significant positive results.

As much as we might want to believe otherwise, running a home business may not be for everyone.  It is, however, a great choice for those who want it badly enough and are willing to work and learn to make their home business a success.