“Is this all there is?”
There comes a point in many of our lives where we ask this question. We’ve checked all the boxes we were told to check, yet something is missing.
Something is “off.”
We live lives that aren’t aligned with who we are and who we long to be, and we struggle to see a way out.
We exist, but we’re not living.
How did we find ourselves here, and more importantly, how do we break free?
To answer this effectively, we must look at the 3 Stages of Life:
Stage 1:
Childhood Creation:
We live in our imaginations, and they run wild.
Everything is possible; our imaginations defy conventions (because we don’t know what that even means), and they can even defy the laws of physics (because we don’t know they exist).
No one’s told us that’s not how things work, so we can create whatever we want.
We accept ourselves unconditionally, live from within, and are as free as we ever will be.
Stage 2:
Adult Chasing.
We chase the things we’ve been conditioned to chase and believe will make us happy and accepted by others.
This can be, but is not limited to:
Jobs, money, status, power, materialism, and pleasure.
Everything we chase is external, and we chase for two reasons:
1. How we believe we’ll feel when we achieve/acquire the object of our desire.
2. How others will perceive us because we’ve achieved/acquired the object of our desire.
We chase externals because we’re chasing happiness and acceptance, and by doing so, we run from our true selves and decimate our self-image.
When we chase externals, we’re confined to complacency and what we believe will make us happy and accepted; anything outside of that is terrifying.
Our lives are limited by the boundaries of our beliefs.
Stage 3:
Adult Creation:
This is a rarified stage experienced by very few.
We connect deeply with ourselves and begin the journey of becoming who we want to be and creating the lives we desire.
We cultivate what we have been chasing all those years: a sense of mission and meaning.
We experience the overwhelmingly beautiful fulfillment of knowing our unique skills and talents are utilized to their full potential toward a meaningful craft that serves something more significant than ourselves.
We cultivate the peace and freedom born when we embody who we are and share it freely with the world.
We may never reach the unadulterated freedom of childhood, but we come damn close.
Why is Stage 3 rarified, and why do we stay stuck in Stage 2?
Stage 2 is the Golden Treadmill of happiness, and there are 3 potentialities in this stage:
- Denial: We stay on the treadmill, engaged in a never-ending chase, in a race we can’t win. The finish line is a moving target where enough is never quite enough. We’re on a treadmill trying to catch the horizon and too blind to see the futility of our actions.
This path leads to dying with regrets.
2. Self-Sabotage: Life will knock us off the treadmill. Often when our chase of money, status, and materialism doesn’t deliver the feelings we desire, we chase other behaviors (Alcohol, drugs, affairs, porn, social media, etc) to attempt to fill the success-sized hole in our lives.
These behaviors may lead to job loss, divorce, DWIs, drug addiction, arrests, death of a loved one, or disease.
3. Clarity: We assess our lives and understand that what we’ve been doing isn’t working. We know that if we don’t change, nothing will change.
So, we make the incredibly empowering, conscious decision to step off the Golden Treadmill and onto the path of mission and meaning.
Number 1 is easy. It’s a life on autopilot; it’s complacency. And it’s woefully unfulfilling.
Number 2 is knowing that life isn’t what we want it to be but not being able to get out of our own way to create what we want to create. So we blow it up.
Number 3 is one of the most challenging choices we’ll ever make.
But if we want to stop asking, “Is this all there is?” it’s the path we must take.
We don’t want to wait for Number 2 because we don’t know what that will look like, nor is it a guarantee for change.
How do we choose Number 3 and leap from Stage 2 to Stage 3?
We must reinvent ourselves from a chaser of happiness and acceptance into a creator of mission and meaning.
There are 3 steps of reinvention:
Connect: This is when we stop looking externally for answers to internal conflicts and desires. We practice self-inquiry; we understand what truly matters to us, our values, and who we want to become.
We connect deeply with ourselves and discover our unique abilities, talents, and life calling.
Create: This is when we take what’s been inside of us (possibly since childhood) and bring it into existence.
We commit to applying our unique abilities and talents to create and breathe life into our calling.
Contribute: This is when we give back to the world that allowed our vision to come to fruition. We share our creation with the world in service to something more significant than ourselves.
Bonus Contribution: When we document our journey in a journal and share how we got from A to Z with others – they can do the same.
Two incredible transformations occur when we reinvent ourselves from chaser to creator.
The happiness we were chasing all those years?
It ensues as a natural by-product of living a life of mission and meaning.
We no longer chase acceptance from others because we’ve connected with the only person’s approval we ever needed: ourselves.
When we accept ourselves fully and deeply as we are, we experience the freedom we need to create the life of our dreams.
When we connect, create, and contribute, who we transform into is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
The impact we have on others is the reward.
Stop Chasing.
Start Creating.
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