There’s a reason that the fruits of success are often called “trappings.”

This was recently brought home to me during an interview that Tim Ferris did with one of my favorite coaches, Jerry Colonna.

And it hit me how many of my clients resist change because of the trappings of success.

“I can’t jeopardize my [salary, title, status in the community, standing in my family, etc.]. So while I hear what you’re saying, I can’t possibly change yet.”

A CEO client of mine and I have this conversation every week. It is as if he is at a precipice, and is terrified to jump. He sees that there are two changes he simply must make to reclaim himself, and to let his business expand. To stop the damage that is surely happening as, in his words, he runs his engine at 12,000 rpm. And yet every week he comes to me with valid-feeling excuses about why he took no action.

These trappings truly do trap us.

There’s a loud “achiever” voice that insistently reminds us of all the things we haven’t done and all the ways in which we are still inadequate.

Have you heard this voice?

While it may reflect a story from your childhood or your community or your profession, this voice is not you. Not even close.

There are other voices, other parts of you that are wanting to be heard, too. These voices are quieter, and often, they don’t even use words.

And if you don’t listen to them, to their pleas to take care of yourself, to connect with your loved ones, to notice the staggering beauty in each moment, to know beyond doubt that you are precious and loved and always have been enough, they will get louder.

These voices love you just as much as the achiever voice, and if you are willing to fall into their warm embrace your life will truly become extraordinary.

And if you don’t, they will not hesitate to use exhaustion or even illness to get you to listen.

The trappings of success are all the things that make you look good. But they won’t make you happy. I suspect you have already figured this out.

The only questions are when will you act, and what will you have to go through before you do.

I used to write about things like big visions and impossible futures.

And while I still believe in both, my experience is that many people tune out when I write that way. It feels too daunting. Life is already hard, and now you’re asking me to dream bigger?

Maybe my “impossible future” is that I want things to be just a little bit easier. A little less overwhelming.

That’s where “What if?” comes in.

My experiment with “What if?”

My experiment with “What if?” is actually a pretty big one. (At least if feels big to me.)

“What if I could create an abundant life in a beautiful place doing work that I am passionate about with people I love?”

Your “What if?” might involve moving across the company and changing careers at age 50 (as mine did).

It might be bigger. It might be smaller.

But “What if?” conveys a sense of play that seems to work a lot better than planning.

The folly of five year plans

For one period of my life, early in my career, I would wake up every morning and think about my five year plan—where I wanted to be, what title I wanted, how much I was going to be making, and so on.

Every morning.

And it only took me about fifteen years to figure out that I had no idea what was going to happen in five years. When I was a partner at a global consulting firm, I had eight jobs in 15 years. Sometimes, I left home one day with one job and came home with another. I planned for very few of those jobs. One day I actually came home with the news that we were going to be moving across the country.

What’s that quote? “People plan and God laughs?” Somehow, the universe always seems to provide what is needed, yet it does so in ways that I could never predict. (See my “what if” above.)

“You don’t need to know how.”

I recently had an insight that felt, in my bones, one hundred percent true, while at the same time going completely counter to my past tendency to come up with five-year plans every morning.

You see, I’ve felt compelled to write, to share, to dive deeper and deeper into these topics of how we find our way in the world, how we become more human, how we lead from a place of authenticity and even love.

And yet there are days where I send email after email to total strangers and have no idea what to do next.

There is still that muscle in me, still that tendency, to want to know what to do. To want to make sure that I am “working hard,” so that I can “earn” this thing called “success.” I want know how things are going to turn out and when I am going to have “made it” down this new path, this “what if” experiment that, seemingly at the universe’s urging, I created for myself.

But the insight was this—

“You don’t need to know how.”

I don’t need to know how this is all going to come together. And, when I can trust, there is great peace in this.

Your invitation to the universe

I believe that this system that we are all part of is perfect at bringing us exactly what we need exactly when we need it. And when I look at the biggest gifts in my life, I had no idea when or in what form it would come. I did what I felt I was supposed to do, and then the universe, time after time, did its part.

“What if?” is your invitation to the universe.

“What if?” is the invitation that every one of my clients has made.

“What if I can make more money working for an organization with a mission that inspires me?”

“What if I can create new line of business while my employees take over the existing one?”

“What if I can be the leader my organization needs?”

“What if my team can be as committed as I am?”

While the universe never seems to answer in exactly the way that I (or my clients) expect, it does always seem to give us exactly what we need.

And if you’d like a guide as you live out your version of this mystery, I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

 

Last post I talked about noticing the fact that, a lot of the time, we are doing things to convince ourselves that we are enough, or to cover up the feeling that we are not enough.

And I suggested that when we see that, our experience begins to change. Life begins to feel a little lighter, a little less serious, a little more joyful. We begin to see the exquisite dance that is always in motion around us and in us.

When we create from that place, our unique gifts tend to show up in their full glory.

There are some classic questions that get at this—

“What would you do if you could not fail?”

“What would you do if money were no object?”

“What would you do if you never had to work again?”

In my experience, the reason that these questions are so powerful is that they are already true.

You cannot fail

You cannot “fail.” What you might define as failure is simply an experiment that has gathered data. How you use the data defines whether the experiment is a failure, not the data itself. The Wright Brothers tried hundreds of times before the first successful flight. Thomas Edison’s team tried 1000 times before they had a working light bulb.

Similarly, as Silicon Valley can attest to, money is never an object. If you have a good idea and do the work you can raise any amount of money you wish.

For most people, the answer to these questions has something to do with the unique capacity that each of us has to create. And the joy that we receive in that act of creation.

But of course creation is not and cannot be all joy. Unless you see joy as something that is deeply present, no matter what, like the energy of life itself.

You can have anything you want

Another of my favorite quotes is from the spiritual teacher Byron Katie—

“You can have anything you want, as long as you are willing to ask 1000 people.”

Creation plus commitment. These seem to be the requirements. The universe seems to respond when we create something and stay committed to it. When we say or do something that might be seen as crazy, over and over again, until it becomes the accepted wisdom.

This is what I strive to do with my writing, my coaching, my teaching. To help you think just a bit differently, to see just a bit differently, knowing that at some point you might have an insight that will change the world.

Here’s another question for you—

What would you be willing to devote your whole life to, in joy and in suffering, even if you never succeeded?

What must you do no matter what?

That’s your gift. Keep bringing it.

 

Now that it’s biking season again here in Colorado, a thought experiment comes to me.

What if you were riding your bike and no matter what happened, you ended the ride with a flat tire?

At the beginning of the next ride, you might think, “This time, I’m going to make sure that the tire doesn’t go flat. I’ll put in more air than I did last time.”

Still a flat tire.

“I’ll put in twice as much air this time!”

Still flat.

You wouldn’t continue that for long. You’d see pretty quickly that if you have a flat tire, you need to fix the leak.

But in the rest of our lives, we do this all the time.

We think that there is something outside of ourselves that will make us feel better. Make us feel worthy.

If I get this job, or this house, or run this race, or create this company, or have this much in the bank…

And when we get there, we feel, momentarily, that everything is ok. That we are ok. We feel that just long enough to think that this strategy works.

And then the nagging feeling comes along again.

Just like the tire, we feel full for a moment or two. But soon, we’re flat again.

When it’s your bike, you repair the tire. Or get a new one.

When it’s our thinking, though, most of us don’t see that possibility.

My teacher, the late Doug Silsbee, once said, “If you don’t think you have imposter syndrome, you’re not looking hard enough.”

He’s right. I see this especially in high achievers. The people who seem to do the most in the world, who seem to have it most together, are most likely to have a deep sense that, in some fundamental way, they are not enough. My experience is that most people suffer from some version of this.

We don’t see the impact that all the versions of “You are not enough” has on us. You are not (smart, attractive, hard-working, accomplished, wealthy, etc.) enough. For most of us, our lives are unconsciously run by that thought, and we alternate between trying to prove that it’s not so, and trying to cover it up.

“You are not enough,” though, is just a thought. Yes, it’s a thought that most of us think, or feel, a lot. (And that our consumer-driven society spends a lot of time and effort trying to perpetuate.) But it’s just a thought, just a feeling. And for most of us, it’s a deeply implanted story that our parents told us in a well-meaning effort to protect us, by getting us to try harder, to get a respectable job, etc.

When we are in that feeling, we tend to make different choices. We tend to put pressure on ourselves, to defend our decisions,  to do more, or to exhaust ourselves as a way of convincing ourselves that we are enough, that we are ok.

Or we try to cover up the feeling with food, drink, entertainment, or even drugs.

We’re putting air in a flat tire, instead of patching the hole. And then wondering why the tire keeps going flat, why we have to keep doing more, more, more, why we are overwhelmed and exhausted.

The good news is that when it comes to thinking, you don’t actually need to change anything. You don’t need to figure out a way to stop thinking that you aren’t enough, or to do affirmations that you are enough and then deal with the disappointment when they don’t work.

You only need to become aware. Just becoming aware of the thought, and seeing that you have made decisions based on that thought that you don’t make when that thought isn’t present, can be enough.

Try it. Notice how often you have a version of that thought. And what you are doing in response. Notice what decisions you make when that thought isn’t present. When you see and know that you are enough.

And let me know what you see.