There are plenty of smart, capable people out there who fall way below their potential. And they know it. In a way, their intelligence or intuition can be a curse because it makes their conclusions even more real. They know they could be making a bigger difference, knocking this life out of the park, and yet they’re stuck.
Why pursue your most extreme potential if “life is a disappointment”? Wouldn’t you just be better off aiming a bit lower? Maybe a lot lower?
As they say, ignorance is bliss. And sometimes the most perceptive or intuitive of people can also be the most disillusioned and cynical. Their conclusions can have the most destructive of impacts and partner perfectly with the best, most compelling of excuses based upon apparently sound reason and logic. But they’re still excuses.
Because, as with all of our other conclusions, we use excuses to cover our reality. We explain our lives. Again, that’s the problem with excuses. They don’t seem like excuses at all. At least not to the bearer.
Consider this. There are people who say “Money is the root of all evil,” “Money doesn’t buy you happiness,” or something similar. Maybe they go so far as to give up their job, their education, their home, and so forth, to live a life that’s less materialistic.
And sure, there’s a lot to be said about avoiding the pitfalls of consumerism and materialism and the pursuit of happiness through accumulation.
But how many people have done the work to see if they truly believe their own view? How many of them settle for their explanation to themselves, one that they’ve had so long and believe without question, without introspection? What if they are actually avoiding something? Perhaps what they are really doing is trying to steer clear of the complexity or hassle or burden or stress or morality that they associate with becoming successful or making money. Or even avoiding the chance, God forbid, that they might fail, publicly, for all to see?
I can’t pretend to know what everyone is thinking, but I’m certain that plenty of the people who don’t “want” to be rich would happily accept that million dollars or two if you handed it to them. Now, if you haven’t guessed already, this isn’t about the money; this is very much about beginning to stare your own “truths” in the face. Elements of your own life that you’ve lived with but rarely, if ever, questioned. This could apply to certain career, life, or personal accomplishments or milestones, all the way down to finally accepting something that you’ve built a body of evidence to resist, and all driven by something you concluded many, many moons ago.
“The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
I had a client who discovered her conclusion was “Life isn’t fair.” Over the following weeks and months, she pulled at that thread of justice and fairness that had weaved its predictable way through her life. She uncovered the friendships that had become fractured by it, the bosses she had alienated, her chaotic relationships with family, and her constant experience of a life she perceived as unjust.
Her marriage had faltered and ultimately died from the daily bickering and contention about who was right and what was fair in that relationship. It was no longer about love or connection or passion but rather about what was equitable. It was the lens through which she saw her entire life, and, of course, her view was not just a view. It was the truth. At least, her truth.
Imagine that life. Imagine starting every day from a view that life itself is fundamentally unfair. How could that not taint your experience of being alive? You’re already a victim in that scenario. You don’t need tragedy or mishap; you can find it everywhere. It’s all around you!
For me, I have seemingly built my life on my work ethic—but there are days when I’m just so burnt out. And all from my conclusion that “life is a struggle.” Just as it is for you, my conclusion doesn’t just seem like a noise in my head. It’s so goddamn real! That “struggle” is as tangible for me as my hair.
In my case, that conclusion drives me to fight harder and harder. Imagine what it’s like going on vacation with me! I wander around looking for things to do. There’s no relaxing, there’s no peace. I’m restless, uneasy, itching for something, anything, to allow me to engage with the struggle that life has become in my own mind.
On the journey home from any vacation, it’s already kicking in. I cannot wait to go back into the fire of that hard, hard work, like that’s going to get me out of “this struggle.” Except it never does. It just perpetuates it. Keeps it going. Life really does become the struggle I have concluded. Even when it’s good, it’s a struggle.
Don’t get me wrong. I, like you, have my days, plenty of them, when the birds are singing, my lungs are filled with optimism, and my actions are fueled by the hunger for the game. But that bottom line, the place from which it all starts, is never far away: perhaps in an hour or in the afternoon or tonight or when I wake up tomorrow.
No wonder we’re so thirsty for motivation. It’s hard to stay motivated when you think that life is a never-ending struggle. Sometimes it’s like “What’s the point?” Sometimes it’s easier to just say “Fuck it” and subconsciously resign ourselves to where we’re at in life. To surrender.
We rewrite our dreams or stuff them away in the darkness to avoid having them shattered. We keep them tucked away. For hope. For later. Maybe. We trade them in for a life less lived.
Your life conclusion will do that, by the way. It eats away at your experience of being alive. It burdens and dominates what you see as possible. When you awake, you step into an already existing reality. Your reality. Your conclusion. Life is . . . what?
TAKING A LEAP IN CONCRETE BOOTS
If you want to eventually get to exist beyond your own conclusion about life, you’re going to have to figure out what it is first. And now is the perfect time to do so.
This can be tough because these life conclusions are often the least obvious. They’re so pervasive, they’re so soaked into every part of our lives, that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what they are.
It seems to me the most important thing to uncover is the nature of this conclusion rather than specifically what it is. There’s not much difference between “Life is hard” and “Life is a struggle.” They both would have a similar effect on how one interacts with life. It’s the same with “Life is dangerous” and “Life is threatening.” Again, you would have a very specific outlook, with these sentences working you in the background like an amateur ventriloquist’s sweaty hand.
But there are times when we can catch a glimpse, when it’s closer to the surface.
When you’re pressed in life, when you’re struggling every day or every week, one or all of your conclusions will be in your face.
What is it you say to yourself about life when it’s not going your way?
When you’re having a hard time is when you’re most wrapped up in your conclusions about one area . . . or sometimes all.
When you’re up to your throat in it, these conclusions wash over you when you’re losing or failing or rejected or just not making it.
They kick in when it’s getting “too good” or too uncertain or getting you into an area of life that would require some significant reinvention. And so . . . you return to base. To the familiar. You sabotage and turn back.
Give particular attention to those times when you’re stressed out or discouraged. What are the familiar, patterned thoughts that pop into your head during those times?
If you’re not feeling that way now, think back to the last time it happened, the last time when you experienced being beat down or pressed. Perhaps you can think back to a time in your past, like your childhood, when you went through struggle, hardship, or danger, and that became the overarching or most influential experience of your young life. What did you conclude? Maybe your parents divorced, or your mom died, or you were held back a grade, or you never mad
e the soccer team, and suddenly your idea of what life is started to change.
Your childhood was peppered with the kinds of events that inadvertently steered your younger self toward a life that has some kind of flavor to it, some kind of meaning that you happened upon and bled into the deepest crevices of that magic little sponge, to be used for future guidance. What is life to you? Perhaps it’s “confusing” or “dangerous” or “too much” or “pointless.”
Finally, look at the things you want in life but that you either don’t pursue or always seem to fall short of.
For instance, what’s your current dream life? Moving to Bali or Kansas or Dublin? Is it about being thinner or taller or richer? Does it include a house or a certain car or a certain body shape? No matter what it is, it’s important for you to take note that even your dreams are lived within a certain range. They’re certainly not limitless. Where is your starting point? What problem does that “dream life” solve that’s at the low end of the range you exist in?
Don’t settle for the surface-level explanations and excuses you’ve come up with. Dig deeper.
“Your perception will become clear only when you can look into your soul.”
—C. G. Jung
That’s where you’ll find the conclusions you’ve made, the limitations you’ve placed on yourself. And you can do this for everything from your income to your relationships to your health to your hobbies to the age you want to retire.
These conclusions have bled into every element of your life, influencing both the paths you take and the paths you don’t. It’s important for you to take some stock here, to get in touch with your innermost fears and concerns. To allow yourself to slip down into the depths of your own struggle. Not to indulge it or embellish it, but to witness it. To see it do its thing. I want you to become the observer rather than the indulger. The eyewitness rather than the victim. Step way back from the Days of Our Lives drama of your sabotage and do some thinking. Piece this little mystery together for yourself.
Listen, you have made a damning conclusion about life. It’s right in front of your face. This doesn’t need to be solved but rather spoken into existence. It needs to rise from the muddled background of your thoughts, up through your consciousness, and out of your mouth. You need to say it out loud.
Life is . . .
Go grab that pen or pencil.
LIFE CONCLUSION—“LIFE IS _______________________.”
“We forge the chains we wear in life.”
—Charles Dickens
I invite you to pause now. Take a moment and ponder what we have uncovered here. Not just your conclusion about life but the entirety of everything we’ve uncovered. It’s important that you give yourself time to take stock, to let in what all of this means and what you have done with your life until now.
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The Point of the Spear
That’s what true acceptance is for a human being. When you can let something be itself without any charge or reaction around that thing.
So far, we’ve uncovered the three kinds of conclusions, the three saboteurs that are indelibly marked on your subconscious. The source of your self-sabotage.
They’re the all-consuming conclusions you’ve made about yourself, other people, and life itself.
I hope you’ve been able to bring your own conclusions to light, to do the critical thinking and figure out what they are and at least some of the ways they are keeping you stuck in this cycle of sabotage. In other words, it should be sinking in by now just how fucked you have really been, just like the rest of us!
The haze of “why” you undermine yourself should be beginning to lift. Remember, if certainty is key for a human being, then providing evidence for what you have already concluded is critical to that certainty. Your conclusions are your rock, the “truth” from where you can make sense of this world.
But where exactly does that leave you? Where does it locate you in this universe? In other words, when you put the three saboteurs together, what is your primary experience of being alive? That will be the final piece of the puzzle of understanding why you are the way you are, so that we can get to how to put self-sabotage to bed once and for all.
First, let’s lay out what it’s not. All of this doesn’t add up to a unique point of view for you. That’s way too simplistic. “Point of view” doesn’t capture the gravity, the experience, and the all-encompassing restraint of what these conclusions are doing and where they are ultimately driving you. There’s a way that being alive feels to you. THAT’S the point of the spear: what it’s like for you to be alive.
That feeling, that experience of yourself, is where your conclusions combine to form a very personal experience of actually being you, something that permeates every part of your being.
It’s not just the way you look at life—it’s the place from which you engage with life. The way you hear it, see it, smell it, touch it, are inspired by it and deflated by it. A location from which you interact with everyone and everything you come into contact with.
Instead of a point of view, it’s what I call your point of experience. The place from which you experience everything. Your distinct and unique starting point in life. No matter the future you are out to have, you are always starting from this same, familiar place, located by those three fundamental conclusions, your three saboteurs.
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.”
—Jonathan Swift
FINDING YOURSELF ON THE MAP
You can picture this point of experience as your own little marker on Google Maps.
Every morning you wake up into a world.
As soon as your eyes open you are in a familiar location, and no, I don’t mean in your bed. It’s actually more like in your head! This isn’t the world that greets you every morning but rather your unique world. A world filled with your nuances and triggers and biases from that distinct and unique point of experience that you have. You are completely shaped by those three saboteurs in a way that, until now, has been explained by you in terms of moods or emotions or behaviors or circumstances.
You’ve had those days when it’s challenging to face the day or the week or that meeting or that email or that conversation. When you’re up to your eyeballs in life and all the shit that comes with it.
Your life is a constant stream of same old, same old. No matter your dreams or hopes, it’s all from the same self-imposed starting point, and that starting point isn’t a starting point at all, really. You are in essence always behind, always at the bottom of the hill, always working your way up or toward a new goal or objective or outcome.
But what about the self-sabotage? Okay, steady yourself.
There are also those times when you get inspired by something—you fall in love with someone or get excited about a pay raise or a new job, or you get lit up by some new kind of opportunity for yourself. A new outlook emerges, and you’re starting to feel pretty good about your life and where it’s headed. In short, your present life is starting to echo with the life you want. It might not have all the pieces, but you’re on track, right?
Maybe you’re going to the gym regularly. It’s been three weeks of effort, and you’re feeling the difference.
Maybe you have stopped those self-destructive spending patterns and you’ve managed to keep an extra $20, $200, or $2,000 in your account. You’re off to a great start, things are going to plan. It’s going WELL!!
There’s a little spring in your step, a tingle in your tummy, a glint in your eye, and then . . . uh-oh.
You take a day off from the gym. You spend a little of the money you’ve set aside. You start to question that new relationship, new job, or idea you had for a business. The deconstruct begins. Sometimes it’s gradual; at other times, it’s a full-scale assault on what you have built. You start to undo your progress.
BOOM!
This is the part where the old patterns, the familiar behaviors and emotions, start to take over, and all because you are now in u
nexplored territory.
Give this some thinking. If you are truly out to live a completely new life with a host of new results, could you live that new life as the same old you? NO!
Of course not, and that, my friend, is a problem. Why can’t you? Because you are hardwired for safety, for your world to be a familiar and certain one. For the familiarity of those deep-seated conclusions no matter how unsavory or limiting they might be, to keep your existence connected to something, anything that you can make sense of, the kind of internal conundrum that supports you being distracted and occupied and ultimately lost in the safety of your own little reality.
Whatever new life you want for yourself requires you to be different. You can’t be the same you you’ve always been, but at the same time you’re also being pulled, dragged, and skewed by your three saboteurs, magnetically drawn back to that familiar point of experience. It just won’t work. To authentically change your life requires you to authentically change yourself. A new life might require you to be more patient, more loving, more reliable, more bold, more vulnerable, more loyal, more focused or dedicated, more sociable, whatever the thing is: this new area will require you to be a different you! AND YOU CAN’T DO IT!!
That “new” you would be too uncertain, too risky, too overwhelming, too confusing and unnerving to face head-on.
So, what do you do? You revert to the starting point. You subconsciously blow it up. You undermine what you have built or aspired to so that life can go back to “normal,” you can go back to being that old, familiar you and, after a while, begin the struggle all over again!
I mean, how many times have you cleaned your house or office or desk or garage, stood back and looked at the glowing magnificence of your cleaning skills, only to slowly witness it crumble under an avalanche of dirty socks, real estate flyers, and stuff you don’t want to throw out but don’t know what to do with?
Stop Doing That Sh*t Page 10