As I was moving up in my career I relied on three strategies to succeed at work. To get good reviews, to get promoted, to get the sale.

The problem with all of these strategies is that they work.

Until they don’t. Until they exhaust you.

You might not even be aware of them. I know I wasn’t. But now I see them everywhere.

What are those strategies?

Outpleasing

Just say yes to everything anyone ever asks of you. What could be wrong with that?

There is nothing wrong with outstanding customer service.

There is nothing wrong with making sure your boss or your client is happy.

Except that sometimes, that means NOT saying things that actually should be said.

Not telling the truth, avoiding conflict, and continuing to do things that make no sense because you don’t have the courage to challenge them.

Ever been afraid to tell the client that what they want will not work? And then lost the client when it didn’t?

Ouch.

Out pleasing may look like it works. But at some point it will fail. Often spectacularly.

Outworking

When I was a law firm lawyer, I made sure that I had more total hours than anyone else in my department. And my billables were always high, too.

You need me on a weekend? You need me to stay late? I’m there. Mr. Dedication.

When you are doing the same thing as a lot of other people, outworking them is a tempting way to differentiate yourself.

The challenge, like the other strategies I am going to discuss, is that it most likely is not sustainable. At my law firm, I fell into a destructive cycle of caffeine during the day and alcohol at night and never feeling fulling awake and engaged.

I created the APPEARANCE of working hard (and I WAS exhausted) but I was not really producing much. It fit the law firm model, but it FELT awful.

Outsmarting

This is the one I run into most with founders and even CEOs of larger companies.

When you start your own business, BY DEFINITION one of the reasons you are doing it is because you think you have a better way.

A better idea, a better process, better code.

And it can be easy to think that if you were hired as the CEO, it must have been because you are really, really smart.

But if you have a head of sales, a head of product, a head of finance, a head of IT, are you really trying to tell me you know more than ALL of them? If you do, you don’t hire very good people.

One of my CEO clients told me he only owns two things—culture and vision.

Everything else has a smarter person than him in charge of it.

He grew the company and sold to a strategic buyer. You can do the same.

What To Do Instead?

If you find yourself doing these, and getting burned by them, there is an answer.

It’s not perfect. But it is perfect for you. And you will find the perfect people to help you.

You have a perfect leadership style, just waiting to be revealed.

If this resonates, let’s talk.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, this journey from knowing all the answers to questioning what to do next, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

I was taught that I shouldn’t want things.

But as humans, we seem to always want more. We reach one goal, we get a few moments of satisfaction, and we almost immediate start thinking, “What else?”

Culturally, we are told that wanting more is bad.

That wanting more is greedy and selfish.

That wanting more is wrong when others are suffering.

That wanting more is somehow taking from those who have less.

That at some point, once we have “enough,” we will stop wanting.

I have never found any of these things to be true.

Wanting More Is Your Very Nature

How often in your career or your life have you ACTUALLY been content. For more than a few moments, anyway?

It has been a rarity for me. Every time I thought I was getting close, like I thought I had a goal that would finally be enough, it was both elusive and illusory.

Why couldn’t I ever be content? I already have so much more than so many. Why is it that I have to be so selfish and greedy?

But what if selfish and greedy is the lie? What if your own innate desire and capacity to create is the truth?

What if, instead of fighting it, we accepted it as part of the design, as part of what makes humans special in the first place?

I have found at least three benefits to always wanting more.

Wanting More Leads to Creating More

The more I want, the more I create. I am here to serve and in that service I create and create that others can create more as well.

What game is it that I would like to play? What game is it that you would like to play? What would be fun to create just to have the experience of creating it?

Now multiply that out over your lifetime and the lifetimes of all that you touch. What is created simply from that desire to create?

Yes, there are those who create mostly for themselves. Who create mostly from the fear that they are not enough.

But those who see that their very capacity to create makes them virtually unlimited see that the illusion of not-enoughness is created, too.

We are always creating—that is the essence of being a human. Embracing that, in my experience, does not lead to contentment, but to even more creation and capacity to create.

Wanting More Leads To Being More

Whenever you create something new, there is some part of you that must be created as new in the process of that creation.

In other words, when we create, we create ourselves as well.

In one of my early roles at my consulting firm, I had to give talks to fifty or more people at a time. I had to answer questions about technical developments in the space that I was working in (employee benefits and tax law).

I was terrified of public speaking. At first. But I learned to enjoy it, to create a version of myself that loved speaking. Now I love speaking to audiences of any size. The energy that I once interpreted as stage fright is now the excitement of getting to play a big game.

I am guessing the game that you play today is very different than the game you played ten or twenty or thirty years ago.

Because you have created a new you, just as you have created other things in the world.

Wanting More Leads To Giving More

My favorite part of wanting more is how it enables me to give more. My coach told me that he has noticed that as he gives in the world, he is given more back. And that the cycle repeats—giving enables more giving.

He has created the capacity in others to give billions of dollars to meaningful causes. Dollars that would not have been created without his work.

All of that started with his desire, and the desire of the people he works with.

Wanting was the key to all of it.

Wanting Is Your Roadmap

We are trained from a very young age not to trust what we want. To think that it is selfish or greedy or that we will hurt people in the process of going after it.

It is true there are people who are willing to hurt others to get what they want.

But what I have found is that, in most cases, going after what you want actually results in you GIVING rather than taking.

If you charge for a product or service, you have to create more value through that product or service than you charge for it.

If you run a company at some point you hire people. You create jobs, you create certainty and happiness for tens or even thousands of people.

Even as you spend the money you are making, you are giving that money to others for the value they are creating for you. Wanting more leads to being more and giving more, almost every time.

TRUST what you want. Do everything you can to go after it. Be fearless. I have never seen someone truly want something that they did not have everything they needed to create. You CAN do it. The only question is whether you WILL.

The discomfort you feel, that sense of “Can I really do this?” is a sign that you are exactly where you need to be.

The universe is offering. Will you accept the challenge?

Wanting To Go Deeper?

Does this sense of honoring what you want resonate? More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

I watched my favorite movie, The Matrix, on Sunday (in honor of the 25th anniversary of its release).

It’s a movie that played a big part in a time in my life when I was going through many changes, including going through a divorce. I have seen it countless times. But this time something resonated around my own journey and that of the founders I work with.

Morpheus has taken Neo to see The Oracle, who he believes will tell Neo that he is “The One,” the human who will finally free everyone from The Matrix—the computer simulation created by yes, AI, to enslave humanity and use them as a power source.

The Oracle asks Neo if he thinks he is The One.

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

To which The Oracle responds, “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Being The One is just like being in love. No one can tell you you’re in love, you just know it. Through and through. Balls to bones.”

Many of the founders I have met and worked with know this feeling. Much as I knew it when I decided to start a coaching business.

Just Knowing

Founders often know, through and through, balls to bones, what they have to do. They know their purpose. What they are here to create.

Sure, there might be hesitation, even fear. There are typically voices of inadequacy and doubt and “being reasonable.” But they choose not to listen.

Over and over again, they decide to move forward. To keep going. They might pivot, or fail. The first three or eight or twenty tries might not work.

I have known founders who have almost lost their businesses. Even declared bankruptcy before turning things around. Yet they kept going, and ultimately succeeded. They were not willing to give up. They just knew they could find a way.

What Have YOU Just Known?

You might not be a founder of a business. Or you might be on your third exit. But I bet there were times, whether you acted on them or not, where you “just knew.” Without knowing how or why.

I want you to think about those times. Then I want you to conduct another experiment.

What Do You Just Know Right Now?

I bet that when you are quiet, when you can hear behind the noise of the repetitive thoughts in your head, the chatter that reminds you to stay small and be reasonable, there is something you already know to be true. You could think about it as your mission, or your purpose, or simply a next step that you just know you need to take.

But it is something you just know that if you keep going, if you keep trying, you CAN create.

You CAN Do It, But WILL You?

I know that many of my clients CAN do great things. They have the capacity, they have the intelligence, they have the persistence.

But I have no control over whether they WILL.

CAN is about persistence.

WILL is about resistance. And seeing through that resistance.

WILL you honor what you know? WILL you keep going, despite the fear and the voices in your head? WILL you see that it is only your thinking that is holding you back?

WILL it be helpful to have someone alongside you who believes in you even more than you do?

If you’ve taken up this challenge, let me know in the comments.

Want To Go Deeper?

Does this resonate? More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.