A conversation with a friend reminded me that no matter where we go, there we are.
This friend is worth $50m ($100m before he divorced his ex-wife). He could spend $112k a day for the rest of his life and still not get through the *interest* he earns on his investments. That’s just the *interest*, and not even touch the principal.
He is in a relationship with an amazing woman, has a very successful business and has set up another 2 companies that are already starting to fly.
He is surrounded by a great team of people who support him. Has friends and a good relationship with his 2 children and ex-wife.
He could go anywhere in the world (covid restrictions pending), do anything he wanted. He could stop working and go live anywhere he wanted. He could do things most of us can only dream of.
And yet, he’s still unhappy and feels empty and unfulfilled.
As he said to me, “Life is too easy.”
It’s ironic. Most of us want life to be easier. We want money, cars, dream homes, endless holidays, a great relationship, a beautiful family…
And yet it seems at the end of the day, even if you have all of those things, that aching loneliness and the feeling of being unfulfilled can still remain.
No matter where we go, there we are.
No matter what we have, we’re still us.
We constantly look to external things, other people and different places to fill the aching empty void we feel inside ourselves.
But we are looking in all the wrong places. Those external things don’t give us lasting meaning, fulfillment and purpose. They don’t give us lasting connection. We have to find that connection within ourselves.
When I told my friend that one day he might have to stop and face himself. His response was, “I don’t want to have to do that shit. I don’t want to go through that.”
We can achieve everything we set out to in life. We can climb mountains, create super successful companies, speak on stages, have any number of accolades. And yet, the thing we often fear most, the thing we most don’t want to face, is ourselves.
But, it’s us – ourselves, that is the ONLY thing we are guaranteed to have for the rest of our lives.
We have a choice. We could spend our whole life running from ourselves, keep ourselves busy and distracted with the next thing until we’re maybe exhausted and depleted and still unhappy; or we could start to turn towards ourselves, face our fears and perhaps realise we’re not as scary as we thought.