The Desert of Arizona
Clear 78 Degrees 3:53 a.m.
Instead of starting off the week with something light and fluffy, how about we just dig into the deep stuff?
The clock of your life is ticking away right now, so on one level, this Monday we find ourselves living here is kind of serious.
That brings me to a simple question:
Are you living the life you truly want?
A lot of people say they don’t know what they want. And while that’s probably true for some, it’s really not that hard to figure out. You sit, in quiet, for a while. Things start to bubble up from within you. You reconnect with that voice inside that IS the real you. (Your true voice isn’t the one that’s chattering in your mind, it’s the one that’s aware of the chattering in your mind.)
The hard part is being OK with what you want. It’s hard to want that and pursue that in this world with everyone and everything telling us we should want something else.
If there’s one thing that humans consistently do, it’s pursue what they want.
We’re just wired to do that.
But it doesn’t really come out that way in reality. What happens is that we pay lip service to pursuing things we don’t really want. We try, half-heartedly, to do those things… as though some teacher or authority figure is watching.
And then, when things don’t pan out, we dream about what could be, if only…
“I want to start my business, it’s just kind of slow getting off the ground…”
“I want to invest more time in my health, but ‘life’ always seems to get in the way…”
“I want to spend more time with my family, but I have to get all this work done first…”
“I want to be with my kids. And because of that, I’m going to work 19 hours a day for the next 20 years so I can do that. THEN I’ll be all set!”
“I meant to start my website last year but then I got busy…”
If there’s one thing that helps walking this path of the Incomparable Expert, it’s congruency. Congruency of intention and action. But congruency is not an event, it’s a constant process.
When I find something that is out of whack between what I SAY I want and what I’m doing, I’d better fix it as quickly as possible.
Sometimes it takes a little while for me to notice, sometimes it’s immediately obvious.
What do you really want? This is a simple question. But you have to be willing to dig away the layers of CRAP the world has deposited over your true wants.
What you’re supposed to want is a dead end. What you really want is the gold.
It’s OK to want what you want and no more or less. That leads to LIFE. That leads to you waking up each day as steward of a creative force that is far beyond the power of you the individual.
It’s NOT OK to betray yourself. That leads to DEATH. It leads to waking up each day feeling empty, broken and lost.
Not long ago, I wrote an issue of the Field Report about a man named Srikumar Rao. That’s pronounced SREE-ku-mar. He’s a guy who figured out what he truly wanted and pursued it in spite of what others said or thought.
You think that doesn’t lead to success? Well, his long list of accomplishments, his teaching at Columbia Business School, the London Business School and his contributing editor status in places like Forbes magazine are just a few pieces of proof.
Here’s pretty much how he summed up the definition of success:
“You are successful when you wake up in the morning with a deep sense of wellbeing, you are doing what you are put on earth to do… you have a deep knowing.”
If you want more proof, subscribe and read the issue. It’s available to all subscribers in the archive.
WHAT your priorities are is not the important part. Those are completely up to you and pretty much beyond reproach. Any person who would spend time judging the priorities of someone else is not someone you want to be around.
The important part is whether or not your actions are in alignment with your priorities.
That’s a simple “yes” or “no” question. There’s no in between.
Are they or are they not?
Have the guts to give yourself the honest answer and then go from there.
The bottom line is no one cares about this but you. So if you spend your life saying X is important but then not taking action congruent with that priority, no one but YOU loses. You just lie to yourself and suffer because of it. No one but you is even paying attention.
This life is your show. It’s the gift you’ve been given and you’ve been placed in the starring role.
Whatchya gonna do with it?