Have you ever had the feeling that something is…
off?
Not terribly wrong.
Not call-the-therapist-I’m-having-a-crisis wrong.
😂
Just…
something.
You have a good life.
Maybe a very good life.
You’ve worked hard. You’ve built a successful career or business. You’ve accomplished many of the things you wanted to accomplish.
Perhaps you have a beautiful home.
People respect you.
You have friends.
You travel.
You have enough money.
From the outside—and perhaps from the inside too—there is a lot to be grateful for.
And yet, every once in a while, usually when things get quiet…
there it is.
That feeling.
What is it?
Maybe You Don’t Even Have Words for It
Maybe empty isn’t the right word.
Maybe it’s restlessness.
Maybe it’s a little sadness that doesn’t seem connected to anything.
Maybe you’re bored.
Maybe you’re longing for something, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re longing for.
Or maybe it’s just a question that floats through occasionally:
Is this it?
And then your mind gets involved.
Oh boy.
😂
What are you talking about? Look at your life!
You have everything you wanted.
You should be happy.
There are people who would give anything to have what you have.
All perfectly reasonable.
So you push the feeling away.
And get back to work.
That usually works.
For a while.
We Can Be Very Successful Without Knowing Ourselves Very Well
I spent many years coaching successful people.
Executives. Entrepreneurs. Leaders.
Very intelligent people.
People who could solve complicated problems, run companies, manage hundreds or thousands of employees, make decisions involving enormous amounts of money.
And do you know what always interested me?
Not the corporate stuff.
😂
Leadership styles, time management, corporate numbers…
Oh, I could coach around those things.
But they weren’t what fascinated me.
I wanted to know what was happening inside the person.
Because that’s where I often found the really interesting stuff.
I remember one executive in particular.
He was extremely busy.
He worked long hours. He brought work home. There was always something that needed his attention.
Sunday was really the only day he wasn’t working at his job.
So naturally, Sunday was his day to relax.
Right?
Nooooo.
😂
Sunday was lawn day.
And house day.
And chore day.
He was constantly doing something.
Now, we could have talked about time management.
We could have looked at his work priorities.
Where could he delegate?
How could he organize his schedule more efficiently?
Blah, blah, blah.
But I was curious about something else.
Why are you mowing the lawn?
And somewhere in that conversation, we discovered something.
His father had always mowed the lawn.
That’s what a man did.
That’s what you were supposed to do.
And this highly educated, intelligent, successful middle-aged man had never questioned it.
Think about that.
He had probably questioned thousands of things in his professional life.
Analyzed them.
Evaluated them.
Challenged assumptions.
Made difficult decisions.
But somewhere inside him was this little rule:
A man takes care of his lawn.
And that one had slipped right through.
He didn’t choose it.
He inherited it.
We All Have a Sunday Lawn
I love that story because I think we all have them.
Our own versions of the Sunday lawn.
Things we do because…
Well, because that’s what you do.
Ways we behave.
Things we believe.
Responsibilities we assume.
Definitions of success we’ve adopted.
Ideas about what makes a good husband, wife, mother, father, leader, woman, man, friend…
Rules about money.
Rules about work.
Rules about rest.
Rules about who we’re supposed to be.
And some of those rules may serve us beautifully.
But have we ever actually looked at them?
Have we ever asked:
Do I believe this?
Do I want this?
Is this important to me?
Or my favorite:
Is this me?
The Outer World and the Inner World
I’ve always been fascinated by our inner world.
Even when I was coaching people in the corporate world, that’s where I wanted to go.
Not because the outer world doesn’t matter.
Of course it does.
We have jobs and mortgages and responsibilities and relationships and lawns that occasionally really do need mowing.
😂
But we can spend decades becoming masters of our outer world without becoming particularly curious about the person living inside it.
We learn how to succeed.
How to achieve.
How to solve.
How to produce.
How to lead.
How to make things happen.
And sometimes we’re so busy creating the life we’re supposed to want that we never stop long enough to ask:
How does my heart feel about the life I’ve created?
That’s a different conversation.
Maybe That’s What the Feeling Is Asking For
I don’t know what that little gnawing feeling means for anyone else.
And I certainly don’t think it automatically means:
Quit your job!
Sell your house!
Move to an ashram!
😂
Good grief.
Maybe nothing in your outer life needs to change.
Maybe everything does.
You don’t know yet.
That’s the point.
Perhaps the feeling isn’t an answer.
Perhaps it’s an invitation to become curious.
Instead of immediately trying to get rid of the discomfort, what if you sat with it?
What are you trying to tell me?
Maybe you write.
Walk.
Sit under a tree.
Create something.
Spend some time without your phone.
Talk with someone who isn’t trying to fix you.
Or simply sit quietly long enough to notice what comes up when you’re not accomplishing anything.
That last one can be surprisingly difficult.
😂
What Happens If We Don’t Listen?
Maybe nothing dramatic.
That’s important.
I don’t want to manufacture some terrible consequence to frighten you into examining your inner world.
You can ignore that feeling.
You can stay busy.
You can continue being successful.
You may continue having a perfectly good life.
But I think there’s another question worth asking:
What might it cost me not to know?
Not necessarily in money.
Or career.
Or relationships.
What might it cost inside me?
Five years?
Ten years?
Twenty?
Perhaps one day we discover we’ve become extraordinarily good at living a life we never completely examined.
Not a bad life.
Maybe even a wonderful one.
But how much of it did we consciously choose?
And how much of it is our Sunday lawn?
Do I Love Myself Enough to Find Out?
That may be the question underneath all of this for me.
Because exploring our inner world takes something.
Time.
Attention.
Energy.
Sometimes money.
Sometimes courage.
And perhaps most of all, a willingness to not know for a while.
We’re so accustomed to wanting answers.
What’s the problem?
What’s the solution?
What’s the plan?
How long will this take?
😂
But our inner world doesn’t always work like that.
Sometimes we have to enter without knowing exactly what we’re looking for.
And perhaps loving ourselves means deciding we’re worth that exploration.
Not because we’re broken.
Not because our lives are wrong.
Not because somebody else knows who we’re supposed to become.
But because something inside us whispered:
There’s more here.
And instead of drowning it out with another meeting, another goal, another achievement, another Sunday mowing the lawn…
we finally say:
Okay.
I’m listening. ❤️