I was meant to feel great. All the accolades that were heaped upon me and the promise of more privilege. A month of successful leverage was a staggering feat by all accounts. We toasted the success, I took the acclaim and everyone seemed to be happy.
The Tuesday morning after
But this was the Tuesday morning after the dust had settled. There were no blinds in my office and the glass was crystal clear. I was in a fish bowl with all the younger eyes vying to be like me, to be in my position, but my face was cracking at the seams.
I rescheduled the day and left with the same excuse that I had rolled my eyes at many times before.
I didn’t go home, I couldn’t. So I took a stroll on the embankment. London was at its usual busy pace. Strangers passing by with their own locked-in world. The thought of yet another target twisted in my gut. Nothing seemed to settle. What the hell was wrong with me?
Nothing was wrong with me
It took me a long time going around the cycle to actually figure out that there was nothing fundamentally ‘wrong’ with me. The fact that I felt empty instead of joy was not a reflection on my personality but it was an indicator directing me towards something. I realised that most of the prizes I had achieved were never designed for me. It was always for the company or the relationship or for some other external motivation.
Moreover, it dawned on me that I had constructed an entire performance identity and how my life should look based on these drivers.
This isn’t a malfunction, and it’s not like it’s all for nothing because the skills and the wisdom would later become invaluable. It was just a system that was influenced by external factors.
The target was never mine
Let’s face it, these designs came from somewhere. Most of which you inherited.
You assembled the targets from that basis and then spent decades developing your skills, discipline and resilience to hit them. And the sacrifices, consider what you sacrificed over all the years.
The problem is not the effort, not your character and not your intellect. The problem was that you never once stopped to ask whether this target was of your own design. Is it any wonder that the things that we achieve can leave us feeling empty?
Your own Tuesday morning
Have you faced your own Tuesday morning feeling?
The award on the desk, the numbers in the account, the acclaim and yet everything felt the same?
That's your information, right there.
The signal
It is not necessarily a failure or depression, although it can certainly feel that way, and it’s not being a grumpy, ungrateful and perhaps seemingly unsociable person. That void you feel is not a problem to extinguish, it’s information telling you something that you have suppressed, medicated, rescheduled or avoided for years.
The signal of that dull ache is telling you that the next win might be just as hollow.
It raises the question:
Have I ever taken the time to let myself find out what I actually want?
That’s the opportunity right there, not to stop wanting or building, but to aim all that amazing capacity towards something that is actually yours.
If you’ve achieved what you were aiming for and are left wondering what actually matters now, that is something we can examine together through Private Direction.
