What are you really chasing?

The corner office, the German sports sedan, the Swiss watch, the latest release of the newest gadget, the club membership.

Really, deep down, what are all the externals you’re chasing?

Are they indicators of success?

Are they what proves you’ve made it?

Are they what you believe someone like you is supposed to do?

Here’s what I know about myself.

I would have said a resounding “yes” to all of those questions, while, either verbally or in a whisper to myself, saying,

“Duh, why are you asking stupid questions?”

But what I couldn’t see then, that I see clearly now, is that I wasn’t chasing success as much as I believed I was.

I was operating out of the core wound of believing I wasn’t enough, and in turn, I wasn’t worthy.

So I wasn’t chasing success, I was chasing wholeness, I was chasing a sense of completion.

I was chasing an identity.

I believed wholeheartedly that external solutions solve internal issues. I mean, isn’t that what most of us believe?

Achieve something external and be happy.

I learned the hard way, and you don’t have to: when you believe external solutions solve internal issues and operate from this model, you will never be complete.

You will chase and chase, and never arrive.

And if you’ve checked all the boxes of external success yet, something is still missing. I have two questions:

If the model worked, why are you still chasing?

What are you asking the external to fix?

If you’re tired of feeling like something is missing, and you’re ready to reinvent your next chapter, you have to slow down long enough to answer
these two questions honestly.

Even though slowing down may feel like death itself, the bullet train you’re on isn’t taking you where you want to go.

Understand this:

Nothing you want is wrong, only what you believe it will give you.

When I was chasing everything outside of myself, I was doing it for two reasons:

There’s an expression in sales: no one wants a 3/8-inch drill bit; they want a hole.

I didn’t want the object of my desire itself, I wanted and when it came to identity, felt like I needed, how it would make me feel.

Additionally, I didn’t want the object of my desire itself; I wanted how I believed others would perceive me because I’d achieved or acquired it.

When you understand that the external marker of success you’ve been chasing has a false job, you crack the wall of understanding what drives you.

You open yourself up to discover the source of your “need.”

See the core wound, do the work to heal it, and you will change your life.

The most incredible thing I’ve learned is this, and it speaks directly to one of my deepest fears pre-prison, the fear of, if I stop pursuing the external, I’ll lose myself.

Nothing has to change but the root of the desire.

Are you chasing because you need the external to bolster your identity?

Or are you operating from your intrinsic wholeness and worthiness, expressing yourself through externals?

When you return to internal sovereignty, externals stop being solutions and become expressions.

And that is how we reinvent the peace and freedom we desire in our second act.