I hear this from midlevel managers.

I just heard it in a conversation in my remote office.

But I also hear it from CEOs.

It’s hard to lead from this place. Because you’ve given up all your power. To your manager, to your board, to your investors.

I had a client a couple of years ago who was passionate about creating a new role for herself in a large organization. That organization had no one who was looking at a critical and rapidly growing area for the firm. An area that will have an outsized impact on the organization’s success over the next few decades. Yet no one was managing this area on behalf of the firm.

My client saw the opportunity. She was able to make a strong business case for investing in the area.

And she decided she was the one to lead it, because of her passion, and her willingness to do the work to become a global expert.

She had been in a sales role, so making a business case, across a large organization, was something she was exceptionally good at.

Still, it took her more than a year to convince the organization to create the role, and she had to be willing to do it part time, at first.

But she did it. She didn’t wait for permission. She created, and persuaded, and iterated. Again and again. Until she had what she wanted, which today is a full time senior role in the organization. Her responsibilities have been broadened three times since she was willing to start part-time.

All because she was determined to create what she wanted and sell the benefits to her organization. Instead of asking permission and waiting and hearing no and then complaining that she was helpless.

You are not helpless. You are powerful beyond measure. So powerful you are able to create yourself as helpless despite all evidence to the contrary. And believe you are helpless because it feels safe, even though it feels dead, too.

Do you know what you want? Are you willing to ask for it? To create it? Are you willing to persuade others of the broader benefits of what you want to create?

And are you willing to keep doing it, over and over, until you’ve created what you want?

I remember when my dad died. It will be 34 years in July, and I still think about him every day.

At the time of his death, I was convinced that I could not survive without him. That I would fail at taking care of my mom. That my life would never be the same.

I was devastated.

I had just finished my first year of law school. I was working in a law firm in Chicago, and I was spending as much time as I could at my mom’s home in western Illinois, helping her to create a new life without her lifelong love. It was hard, and I was suffering. A lot.

But when I was back at work, most of the time at least, I seemed okay. It was disconcerting, actually, how well I was doing.

What I noticed then is that when I wasn’t thinking about my dad, I was actually doing well.

I could have seen then that reality, my reality anyway, is only what I’m thinking about, what I am aware of in the moment, and that it is constantly in flux.

What I saw instead was this idea that I should think about my dad more, that I could be a good son, to him and my mother, by suffering more. That I was a bad son by not suffering.

I was on a retreat recently where I was doing a lot of work with the roles that my parents had played, with the examples that they had shown me. I started talking about how many possibilities I had not seen because of that. And I said that despite that, I knew they were doing their best.

And one of the teachers said, “You don’t have to protect your parents right now. You just need to take care of you.”

And it hit me in that moment, so many years after my father’s death, how often I want people to feel better. Even if I feel worse in the process.

But if other people, even people close to me, are suffering, it doesn’t help them or me to think I should suffer, too.

Suffering doesn’t help me do my job better or become a better person.

I saw, and continue to see, that a lot of my “rules” about life are simply not true. And certainly not solid.

I saw, and continue to see, that my own “reality” is no more solid or unchanging than the clouds in the sky.

That much of the joy in life is in the seeing of that constantly shifting creation.

I’ve seen that, more and more deeply, for the last 30 plus years. The most dramatically realization, so far at least, was last July, on my father’s birthday, when the idea of “me,” simply disappeared.

“I” came back a few hours later, but I take that “I” a lot less seriously now.

When I see that I’m making up my life, making up potential futures, and then either being excited about or scared of the futures I just made up, my relationship with myself and my life completely changes.

I can see that all I am ever doing is creating. I can create a life where I have to suffer. Or I can create something different.

Can you see that space?

What are you wanting to create from there? What’s wanting to emerge?

Are you married to the same person today that you were yesterday?

Are you in the same house?

Are you in the same job, or do you own the same business?

For me, those things that look constant are what I have called my identity.

I’ve been a lawyer, a consultant, an executive, a coach. Often for years at a time.

I chose to be married to one person. Then I chose to be married to a different one.

Yet “I” am none of those things. They just are what has arisen in a series of momentary decisions that I was often unconscious of.

When I assume I am an identity, life can seem stagnant. A burden. A series of obligations that I have taken on and now must fulfill.

Sometimes to others, but often only to the “shoulds” that I have made up for myself.

I have a “career.” I am a “husband,” a “father.” And I seem to be all the thoughts that I have taken on about those made up things.

I am stuck in a world of thinking that I have created.

But if I see that I am whatever is thinking those things, not the things themselves, something shifts.

In any moment, I can choose differently. Often, I will not, but sometimes, suddenly, a new choice, a different choice, will be obvious.

Every day, my wife and I choose to continue to be with each other. Knowing that it is at least possible that one day we may not choose that.

It is the arising of the choice in each moment that is special, that makes life precious.

When I see that I am the thinker, the chooser, the creator, everything shifts, even if nothing on the “outside” changes.

The fact that my experience is being created anew in every moment means there is the freedom, in every moment, to have a different experience. In fact, a different experience in every moment is inevitable.

What shifts for you when you see that?

What might you choose differently now, just because you see you can?

I was talking with one of my clients about his frustrations with a new employer. There’s a lot he has been able to do in the new role. He has built a team and team culture that he is proud of. He is beginning to see some changes in the broader organization due to his efforts.

But there are still a lot of frustrations with things that he doesn’t feel like he can change.

When I asked him what the “wrong reasons” were, he was pretty clear with me–

Money.

Stability and security.

Not having to make another move.

Having enough for college for the kids, his own retirement, and some extra just to do fun things with.

When I asked him with the “right reasons” were, he was at a bit of a loss.

He doesn’t know what he actually wants. He knows he likes building a team. He likes winning. He likes a lot of the relationships he has built.

But other than that, he seemed to be at a loss. Happy with how the organization has treated him, frustrated that he is not yet making the impact that he would like. Feeling like a bit of a loser while the organization seems to see him as a winner.

Now it could be that for you, money and security are the right reasons. It could be those are the right reasons for him, and he just hasn’t realized it yet. It could be that something else will emerge, something related to his desire to have an impact, or something else entirely.

But the biggest question that most of my clients struggle with is, “What do I want?”

Not what is expected of me.

Not what will make me look good.

But what do I actually want?

Just because I want it?

When you are able to see that, and create from that place, everything will change for you.

What do you want? Just because you want it?