“I’ve fought long and hard for most of my life to acquire a certain level of accomplishment, only to realize that what I’ve been focused on acquiring has always been in my possession lying dormant and all that I had to do, was to appreciate its presence in my life for it to come alive and take me to where I needed to go.”  ~ Raj Girn, Founder, The Open Chest^® Confidence Academy

Hi Friend,

Are you always finding that no matter how hard and long you work that you’re constantly fighting a race battle with yourself by trying to get to that next crucial stage in your career and/or personal life without appreciating what you have already accomplished? If that’s you, then I know you intimately! Be warned, this is a rather long missive this week . . .

As an A-type personality myself, this has been one of the most challenging aspects of my life, where I’ve been at loggerheads with the version of myself that I feel that I should be (have accomplished), to the reality of who I was (had accomplished).

For some reason, even though I had accomplished more than my younger self had ever thought possible to even dream about, I somehow always felt shorted by my own volition to be better and bigger today than I was yesterday, without taking a health check on how far I had come.

I realized that this was because I had always kept one eye on the future (what I was driving towards) and one eye on the past (what I was driving away from), thus forsaking the here and now (the only reality that I could change). It wasn’t until I implemented a daily pray (talk to my higher self) and meditation (hear back from my higher self) practice, that I realized this and how it was keeping me from any semblance of peace in my life. I also realized (which was even more harrowing a discovery), that:

“It wasn’t even the accomplishment that motivated me, but the adrenaline of being on the hamster wheel that was fast-tracking me to succeed in business, but nose diving me into failing at life.”

I knew that I had to find another way to succeed at both (because I wasn’t about to trade in one for the other), and it was at this intersection that fate tested my faith in my sobriety. In 2016, my mother went through an unexpected health situation that shook me at the very core of my being, which led to a deep (and private) depression in me that resulted in my career and life taking a standstill (of sorts) as I fell deep and wide and tall into myself.

My mother had always been the strongest person that I had ever known (a story for another day) and to see her in this foreign avatar was something that I simply couldn’t and wouldn’t accept. In constant turmoil, I searched for solutions to her recovery, because as an entrepreneur, that’s how I’m wired to think – always putting out fires to that next step up the ladder of success. But here, after 4 years of desperately searching from science to spirituality, I pulled myself out of the self-proclaimed hole (depression) that I had dug for myself, to the stark realization that this was in fact what fate had commissioned for my mother’s entry into old age.

Moreover, I realized that the solution wasn’t to reverse things but to come to terms with them. It was only then that I realized that some things are not meant to be solved (ended), but rather, they are meant to be nurtured and learned from (lived with), with a goal towards coming to terms with that which you cannot change, because it’s not yours to change. It’s this which opened the door to my relationship with this novice idea (to me until then), that the human journey is here to experience life and to accomplish ‘peace’.

So the question remains: “Have I gotten off of the hamster wheel for good?” Heck no, I’m an ENTJ personality, LOL! But it has found a home in emerging only when it’s needed, rather than to feed my hunger for adrenaline (drug of choice).

I’ve found that Dr. Shefali encapsulates everything that I’ve shared here quite succinctly. She says in ‘The Conscious Parent’, that:

“Life is to be experienced, not fought against, run from, or engaged half-heartedly. Though we may wish to make changes in the future, to be conscious is to be with an experience as it’s unfolding, rather than thinking about how we would like to change it. Taking charge of our life so that we alter the quality of our experiences in the future comes after an experience.”
~ Dr. Shefali 

If you’re grappling with habitual angst that’s standing in your way to getting to that next crucial stage in your career or life’s journey and you need assistance to move it out of the way, contact me to book a free, no-obligation discovery call: [email protected] and let’s see how I can help you break things down to better understand them, because with knowledge comes understanding, and with understanding comes the motivation and path to moving past it – something that I have personally done and helped many people do for themselves! 

See you next week!

“It wasn’t even the accomplishment that motivated me, but the adrenaline of being on the hamster wheel that was fast-tracking me to succeed in business, but nose diving me into failing at life.”