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.

Even though you are likely reading this on March 27, I am writing it on March 21.

I’ve given myself a challenge. Can I step away from work for a full week? Can I do NO work the week of March 25-29?

Those of you who are founders or entrepreneurs can understand how big a challenge this is. I have a team who helps with some things but the big stuff—namely client acquisition and service delivery—is just me.

There is this nagging feeling that if I step away things are going to fall apart without me.

There is this nagging feeling that if I need to be there for my clients and prospects, serving, helping, delivering.

That I need to be checking in, “just in case.”

I help founders come from a more grounded place, but I sometimes do that at the expense of my own groundedness. When I do manage to step away from the emails and notifications, it can be to “think bigger,” which is another way of saying I am just doing a different kind of work.

Another way of being “productive.”

All. The. Time.

It’s exhausting.

Can I Take An Actual Vacation?

This week we are taking our exchange student to Washington, DC. Before moving to Colorado in 2017, I spent 17 years in the DC area, the last ten in Bethesda, MD.

We are staying with our old neighbors, visiting friends, catching up.

We are doing all the tourist stuff with our exchange student (she is from Japan and has never been to DC).

I’m sure we will eat a lot of good food. We will see our oldest, who lives there now but is about to move to Pittsburgh.

And I am going to try like anything to just be there for that.

To take time away without knowing what will happen, what will arise in that space, what will happen when I just allow things to reset.

Can YOU Step Away?

Even a day can help. Even a day can help reset your system, flush out some of the adrenaline and cortisol that make everything look like an emergency.

(That’s right—your stressed state makes things LOOK like emergencies.)

What would a day of just doing nothing bring?

No helpful reading. No strategic planning. Nothing “productive.”

“Doing” as little as possible.

I know it feels really uncomfortable to me.

Can you join me in that experiment?

Let’s compare notes.

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.