Salary and Incentives

I had a conversation with a girl at one point where we talked about incentives. All these things that you could do: make more money, ask for a promotion, start a new business. The blocking point always comes back to the fundamental question, why?

Her incentive was so that she could stay home and have more sex. Gotta love progressive thinking ;)

In all reality, she is leaps and bounds ahead of me. My life has become a trap of accepted losses. I've trained myself into thinking I have to stay where I am so I can pay the bills with a potential future upside. My focus has become minimizing expenses instead of promoting growth.

Not sure how to incentivize my way out though, since all options seem to contain the subset of working at a job I hate for 8 hours a day until the transition can occur. The decision around if it can happen or not is also centered around a choice made by someone else, unless I miraculously determine how to make someone else do what I want them to do.