Getting good grades.

Going to a good school.

Graduating with honors.

Going to a top law school.

Working in a top law firm in a highly rated department.

Getting married.

Buying a house.

Having a child.

Getting promoted. Getting promoted. Getting promoted and relocated.

Becoming a partner in a big consulting firm.

Buying a bigger house.

Buying a luxury car.

You get the idea.

At some point, I started to figure out that the temporary happiness that I got at each of the steps toward my supposed success was followed by more stress. And less actual happiness.

It took a long time to figure that out. And a lot of ups and downs along the way. I lost my father when I was 23. My first marriage ended when I was 37. I lost my job (the first time) at 38.

But not pushing myself, which looked to me like settling, like mediocrity, looked ever worse.

There was no way out of the prison I had built for myself. I could be miserable on the inside and successful looking on the outside. Or I could be miserable on the inside because I was no longer successful looking on the outside. I went through both of those, and then, slowly, I went through to something else.

Because there is something on the other side of that struggle for success. Something that looks a lot more like freedom. Something where you can actually be you, where you can do good work, where you can make good money (more money in the job you felt stuck in), where you can be happy while doing something you love.

The thing that most gets in the way of this is the belief that it is not possible. But it is. I have created it, and so have my clients.

The people who come to me have gotten to the point where they simply can’t take another day of the prison they have built for themselves.

I do not free them. I show them how to free themselves. How to create the thing they most want.

Are you ready to create that? Because it’s waiting for you. But you have to commit. To letting go. To seeing that you are already free, that you can choose and create from freedom. That seeing can happen in an instant.

Are you ready to begin?

No matter what kind of person I am working with or what kind of challenge they are facing, there is a very good (99 plus percent) chance they are living into at least two BIG lies.

We have been told that stuff “out there” will make us happy, and that the way to get stuff out there is to make other people like us.

So we show up how we think others want to see us, to get stuff that we don’t actually need.

And we wonder why we feel like we are missing something.

First lie—you do not need anything “out there.” There is no out there, first of all. Your entire experience of the world is internal so there is nothing out there that can make you happy because there is nothing out there that you ever directly experience. Your experience of life is 100 percent your thinking about life.

Second lie—that you need to be anything other than who you actually are.

The journey of our lives is not the journey to get stuff. It is the journey to being who you actually are, rather than pretending to be someone you are not to get something you don’t actually need.

So, if it isn’t already obvious, most of us are living backwards. We are pretending to be who we are not to get things that we don’t need.

Do you see why you aren’t happy?

The ONLY thing that will ever make you happy is to experience who you REALLY are. You are literally MADE OF happiness, if only you could actually see and experience it.

The work that I do with people shows you that directly, so that it becomes abundantly clear.

You see that at your core, you are a creator. You are creating whatever you are experiencing as your life right now. Innocently, but directly. And you can create something different.

Of course when you see that you are the capacity to create, any sense that you are not enough simply falls away. If you can create anything, how could you be missing something?

And when you create just because you really want to, and not to fix anything lacking in yourself, you end up getting all the things that you thought you needed to make you happy. Your happiness, the purity of your creating, brings all that other stuff to you automatically.

Did that bring up something in you? Then I hope you will keep reading. Because so often our culture teaches us that desire is bad, that desire will take us over if we let it, that desire will take us to dark places.

This might be true for cravings. For addictive behavior. For things that we compulsively use to numb our pain.

I am speaking of something different, and I want to create with you the possibility that this deeper, quieter form of desire is actually a road map to what you really want.

The first thing I do when I work with people is to show them that most of what they think of as solid and real about the world is actually stories they have innocently created or believed and then treated as the truth.

When people get that their experience of life can never be of the outside world, but can only happen inside their brains, something changes. They see that, “the world” is actually new and different with every moment and every new thought. And then something interesting often happens.

The desire to control that experience begins to dissipate. The experience itself becomes lighter, less serious.

Trying to control your thinking feels so much heavier than simply seeing it as thinking that will ebb and flow as you give it time and space.

The thinking itself, so insistent before, begins to quiet down as your need to control something that isn’t even real begins to lessen.

And over time, what emerges in that new quiet is something that looks a lot like desire.

You could call it a lot of different things. A mission, a calling, a purpose.

You want it just because you want it.

Sometimes it’s just a glimpse of a next step.

Take it. I promise you, more will be revealed. Another step, and another one after that.

This is the gift of desire. And it might be the most precious gift that we can receive.

What is the tiniest glimmer that you can see? The smallest action that you can take?

The gentle encouragement that’s always there?

Are you ready?

As I talk with people about my new group coaching experience, “Creating What’s Next,” I am noticing a distinction that is becoming more and more obvious.

The distinction is between being ready for something, and being ready to be ready.

An example of this is when you are not actively looking for job, but then a recruiter calls and suddenly you are all ears.

You really want this to be the right thing. You want it to work.

Because you are ready to be ready.

If you were truly ready, you would have already updated your resume. You’d be networking, and interviewing. You’d be actively creating whatever you wanted to create next.

Being ready moves you into that uncomfortable zone. Because truly being ready means you accept the fact that you don’t what is going to happen next. You don’t know how it’s going to work out. And yet you are taking action anyway. You are in the act of creating.

Most people never admit to themselves that they are ready, for that very reason. They don’t want to step into the unknown. It’s too uncomfortable. It’s too scary.

But are they ready to be ready? Are they willing to entertain offers? Are they willing to make a change if it is easy and not too uncomfortable?

You bet.

Early in my coaching career, I talked to someone for whom every job change had been because a recruiter called. She had never initiated her own search.

What had she given up in that? She had ended up with a series of very similar, uninspiring roles at uninspiring companies. She had made essentially no career advancement, despite her obvious talent, in over twenty years.

What are you giving up?

When you are ready to be ready, you are willing to sign up for someone else’s idea of what is best for you.

When you are actually ready, you are ready to own what you want to create. Even if you don’t yet know what that is or how it will work out.

If you and I have a conversation, I can tell pretty quickly how close to ready you are. If you are ready for someone else to save you, imagine how much more powerful it will be if you save yourself.

With a group of people who are all working toward the creating the same thing—the highest, most powerful version of themselves that they are currently capable of.