In the 1st half of my life, I looked to the world for clues on how to live.

I looked to family, friends, neighbors, strangers – really anything in my purview.

Some of the clues were blatantly obvious:

✔️ Get a good job at a good, solid company.
✔️ Work your ass off, and climb the corporate ladder.
✔️ Make lots of money.
✔️ Buy the stuff that will show others you make lots of money.

Some of the less obvious yet seductively persuasive clues:

🛑 Work isn’t fun.
🛑 You are your job.
🛑 Don’t aim too high; that’s not for you.
🛑 You can’t make money pursuing your dreams.
🛑Making money as a creative is really hard and not for you.
🛑 Health insurance and a 401k are some of the most important things.
🛑 It’s all about retiring comfortably.
🛑 You can start living when you retire.

🛑 Stuff will make you happy.

There are plenty more, but these are the ones jumping out to me now.

So, I took these clues and designed a life I believed would get me what I wanted.

A funny thing happened, though.

I hit the targets, checked the boxes, and even exceeded some of them, and yet, it didn’t get me what I wanted.

Something was missing.

But that didn’t make sense. I was following the accepted plan, so everything should be great, so why wasn’t I?

Maybe I wasn’t doing enough of it? Maybe I needed more of everything? That’s got to be it; I was on the right path; I just needed to do more.

Maybe I need to chase a little harder.

More stuff, more money, and the more empty I began to feel.

Something was missing.

I was too invested in the plan to see that the plan wasn’t working. Because it had to work, it worked for everyone else, and the alternative was fucking terrifying.

The alternative was to drop the plan, start from scratch, and do what I was being called to do. And as the years ticked by, that whisper grew louder.

Be creative, finally sit down and write the screenplay that was burning my brain, take one of my million invention ideas, and really do it.

I was being called to become who I wanted to be – and who, deep down, I knew I was.

But that flew in the face of everything I’d built my life on; it went against the clues, it went against my family, friends, and society’s beliefs, it couldn’t be right.

I was afraid, so I chased the old plan, never fully invested in creating a new plan, and crashed harder than most.

I chased externals all the way to federal prison, losing everything material along the way; I lost my identity, and I lost my will to live.

Looking at it now, I see it was the ultimate escape from a situation I didn’t know how to escape on my own.

I was fortunate; life knocked me off the golden treadmill I was on. I don’t think I would have had the courage to step off of it alone.

With all the externals gone, I was presented with a choice.

Look to the outside world for clues on how to build a new life, or listen to the clues that had been inside me all along.

The external clues are seductive in their ease. Pursue the accepted path, and you’ll get where you want to go.

I tried that, it didn’t work.

I wasn’t interested in chasing money and stuff; I wasn’t interested in chasing the superficial. I was being called to more, and two words rose above the noise.

Meaning
Service

My old life lacked meaning, and it certainly didn’t give back to anything outside the checks I wrote to charities that mattered to me.

The old plan wasn’t going to create my new desires.

The second half of my life has involved going within. A few years back, I wrote a line that I still connect with to this day:

I had to go in before I went out.

What this means to me is this: I had to connect with myself on a level I’d been avoiding in my 1st half.

Who did I want to become?
What truly mattered to me?
What did I stand for?

What dreams had been calling to me all those years that I buried under a pile of my fears and imprisoning beliefs?

What if I created a life of my own design on a foundation of my internal clues?

Because it became blatantly apparent that living from the outside in and expecting to live how I wanted to live didn’t work for me.

Externals will never provide the enduring internal emotions I was craving.

I might was well expect cows to produce apple juice.

So, maybe living from the inside out was worth a shot.

It turns out it was.

Here’s why:

When I looked outside myself for clues on designing my life, I ignored the most vital component of living an extraordinary life.

Myself.

The old plan had no room for me; in fact, all the answers were anything but me. They were “out there.”

Chasing externals and ignoring internals are the most inauthentic ways I can think of living life.

No wonder I was unbearably uncomfortable in my own skin and chased escapes wherever I could find them.

I was literally telling myself that everything outside myself was more important than what was inside myself.

I was sacrificing the best parts of myself, my potential, for stuff that holds no meaning other than the meaning I assign to it.

What I’ve learned is this:

Crafting a remarkable second half is simple; the execution is challenging.

It required me to drop the old plan and design a new one rooted in what makes me feel most alive.

The most challenging thing for me was learning to be comfortable in the empty space between dropping the old plan and not having a fully formed new plan.

I had to learn to live without an identity as I molded a new one.

An identity is the internal, stable mental footing we walk upon. Without it, I felt empty, alone, and scared.

I realize now that I did have an identity all along; it felt like I didn’t because of where I believed my identity came from.

The old plan was rooted in chasing externals; I’d conditioned myself to believe my identity was the outcome.

The new plan drops the chase and seizes the gauntlet of creation.

My identity isn’t the outcome, which, no matter how hard I try or believe, is totally out of my control.

When I focus on creating, my identity is that of the man who’s becoming the man who creates outcomes.

My second half is an act of becoming. It’s stripping away all that’s not mine to get to the core of who I am.

It’s a journey of ever-evolving layers of authenticity.

And it’s all connected to the most potent premise of living an extraordinary life I know:

Stop Chasing. Start Creating.

📣 Check out the Reinvention Reset.

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