The Right Question
In a previous post https://www.garudax.id/pulse/why-success-rarely-brings-peace-townsend-, I shared how each of us lives our life within the boundaries of a ‘frame.’
This ‘frame’ represents our vision of what is possible and serves as a powerful tool for living a created life.
As we approach the ‘top of our frame’ we spend less time looking ‘up’ towards the future we are creating and more time looking ‘down’ to where we might fall.
Life at the ‘top of our frame’ feels increasingly difficult and stressful.
Reaching the ‘top of our frame’ motivates some to construct their next, bigger frame.
Highly successful people naturally build bigger frames throughout their lives.
However, even highly successful people reach an upper limit for their capacity to imagine anything bigger.
As I shared through a very personal story, the perfect life can suddenly feel unbearable.
The problem was simple
I could no longer answer the question that had always served me.
For the first time in my life, I had no answer to “what’s next?”
After months of asking “what’s next?” and coming up blank, I realized I was asking the wrong question.
I knew there was something ’next’ yet I could not ‘see’ what it was.
I decided to ask a different question: “What is blocking my view?”
We all learn a ‘trick’
Early on (typically between the ages of 5 and 12) each of us learns a specific behavior that:
- Produces positive results for us (typically connection and praise) and/or
- Keeps us safe (typically from physical and emotional trauma)
I call this behavior our ‘trick.’
Our ‘trick’ grows stronger and more powerful as it continues to produce results and keep us safe.
Over time, this simple trick becomes our superpower.
In my work with clients we go looking for the core belief that creates their success.
In most cases we can identify a memory of the very first time it appeared as well as clearly see its presence along their life’s journey.
While this superpower is often ‘why’ highly successful people achieve so much, it transforms into a heavy burden over time.
Something we stumbled upon that produced positive results and kept us safe grows into a ‘pre-condition’ for our next action.
Over time, everything that once brought us joy becomes an obligation.
Take Rick as an example…
As a child, Rick earned praise and acceptance from doing things nobody else was doing… things nobody else even thought of doing.
Not surprisingly, this ‘trick’ grew into a superpower that allowed Rick to start and build a successful business.
Not only did Rick start and grow a successful, he did so by creating an industry that hadn’t existed to that point.
As Rick approaches 50, the superpower that has served him so powerfully has become an insurmountable barrier to “what’s next?"
Imagine how difficult life gets when you can only derive fulfillment, self-worth, and joy as long as you are moving towards something nobody else has ever done before?
No matter how incredible the results of this superpower, the day inevitably comes when it feels almost impossible to move another inch.
Your ‘trick’ becomes your prison
Modern psychology considers our trick a ‘problem’ to seek-out and destroy.
Traditional therapy seeks to identify the ‘problem’ mommy or daddy or school created and make that problem go away.
While this works for most people, traditional therapy fails for highly successful people.
It fails because the ego has a strong counter-argument:
Here’s what the Ego has to say:
- That thing they call a 'problem'… well that got us here!
- What they call a ‘problem’ is our magic power.
- Don’t believe me? Look around!
- Life is amazing!
- We can’t make what got us here ‘wrong.’
- We can’t let that go.
- Do you know what would happen if that ‘problem’ went away?
Your Superpower is Blocking Your View
There is a saying: Everything that gets you here serves to keep you (stuck) there.
The superpower that ‘got us here’ traps us because we cannot imagine a “what’s next?” that doesn’t include that superpower.
Our source of “what’s next?” becomes an insurmountable wall.
We are stuck at the ‘top of our frame’
For highly successful people, there is no way over or around or even through that wall.
You can, however, make the wall disappear altogether.
I look forward to sharing that secret next week.
Thanks