Do you sometimes find yourself conflicted between wanting a better life and just learning to be happy with what you’ve already got?

Ten years ago I went through a goal setting exercise where I categorized my life into six different categories and created a written vision statement for each of those categories. 

The six categories I used were:

1. Health
2. Finances
3. Relationships
4. Spirituality
5. Fun
6. Career / Contribution

I’m not going to bore you with the details of exactly what I wrote in each category, but I want to share the gist of what I wrote with you so that you can see my point.  When I was asked what is the ultimate vision for my “Health” category I wrote something along the lines of:

“I have a strong, healthy body with completely chiseled muscles.”

For my “Finances” category I wrote something along the lines of:

“I am a multi-millionaire and my passive income streams make more money than I could ever spend.”

For my “Relationships” category I wrote something along the lines of:

“I am married to the woman of my dreams and we have an amazing relationship.”

For my “Spirituality” category I wrote something along the lines of:

“Every day I feel more and more connected to source and my true self.”

For my “Fun” category I wrote something along the lines of:

“I have an amazing life filled with fun, excitement and adventure. Everyday I wake up excited to see what amazing experiences I am going to experience that day.”

For my “Career/Contribution” Category I wrote something along the lines of:

“I work on projects that I enjoy and have fun working on and they have an amazing impact on the world.”

These aren’t exact, they are just paraphrased more or less based on what I wrote.  In some cases the vision I wrote out was a lot more ambitious and detailed than what I wrote above.  The point I wanted to make is that when I was asked to imagine what I would want in each category, of course I wrote out the best that I could think of. 

For example, if someone asked me what I would want my finances to look like in my “Ultimate Vision” I immediately would say “I’m a multi-millionaire.” or “I’m a billionaire.”  The reason for this is that when I was putting together the answers I was imagining being in front of a magic genie that is going to grant my wishes and POOF I would have what I wrote out.  Have you created these kinds of “ideal” goals/visions for yourself?

Awakening

Recently I began working with a new coach named Angela.  Actually, finding a new coach was probably the last thing on my long list of things to do, but she was recommended to me by someone I trust and so I began dialogue with her partly based on that recommendation, but mostly because my intuition was very strongly drawn to her.  After just one conversation over the phone with Angela, I was hooked.  Angela has one of the strongest connections to source of any coach I have ever worked with and she has an amazing ability to bring me into a state of connection with my True Self that I have never experienced before in my life.  I will be writing more about her and my experiences working with her in a future article, but for now I just wanted to briefly share that I’m working with a coach so you would know how my “awakening” came about.

As part of my “homework” working with Angela I had to really get clear on what I wanted in my life.  Whenever you work with a coach, it’s really important to be very clear as to what you want from your life so that they can help you come into alignment with it.  If you don’t know what you want, it’s hard for them to help you get it.  As part of this I began once again asking myself the same questions I answered over a decade ago, except this time something different happened.

Whereas before when I was younger and inexperienced, when someone would ask me what I would ultimately want in my “Finances” category I might easily say that I wanted to be a multi-millionaire or a billionaire, I now began to question whether I really wanted that or not.  Meaning, do I really want a million dollars?  or do I want fifty million dollars? or do I want a billion dollars? or do I just want a few hundred thousand in a “retirement” account and a “career” doing what I love and making ten or twenty thousand per month?

Let me paint a picture for you to illustrate the point more clearly.  Imagine if you could work from home, working one to two hours per day doing what you love and you made $5,000 / month doing that, and let’s assume that your monthly expenses to live your current lifestyle are $5,000 / month.  If they are $3,000 / month then imagine making $3,000 / month and if they are more, imagine making more.  Basically, you work one to two hours per day and you make enough to pay your bills and to live your current lifestyle.  Would that be enough for you?

I really began asking myself these types of questions because I needed to get clear on what I wanted so that I could be clear with my coach on what I wanted to be coached towards.  A good coach will take you towards what you want, not what anyone else wants.  So what did I really want?  The finances category was just one part of my dilemma.

The second challenge was getting clear on what I wanted in my health category.  Currently I’m a fairly healthy individual, but I haven’t really put my health as a priority in my life so I have packed on some extra pounds around my waist that I don’t really like.  However, when trying to figure out what I want in this “Health & Fitness” category of my life I needed to get clear if I just wanted to lose a few pounds of fat to go back to my “Normal” weight, or if I wanted to completely overhaul my diet and get on a strength training program that will eventually take me towards that “chiseled” body that I once desired. 

Once again, the challenge presents itself.  Do I just go after “average” results that can be fairly easily attained and that I will be mostly happy with, or do I go after “excellence” and commit myself to paying the price for reaching that excellence?  Am I OK being a “Multi-Hundred-Thousand-aire”? or do I go after being a “Multi-Millionaire”?  Am I OK having a “Normal” body where I’m not too thin, and not too fat, eating a “semi-healthy” diet and exercising once in a while, or do I want to really commit to “excellence” and sculpt a body that I will be proud of and that will inspire people, knowing that there is a price to pay for that kind of level of excellence?

 

Committing to Excellence?

I realized that this wasn’t a “Finances” or “Health” issue, as the same kind of dilemma presents itself in every category of my life.  It’s great to have these big, ambitious goals and desires, but it also means that you’ve got to get off the couch and do something to go after them.  Even with things like Law of Attraction, you have to work on getting yourself in alignment with being the things that you want to be and that is not as easy as sitting on the couch and enjoying what you’ve already created.

For the first time in my life I de
cided to seriously think about and confront this decision.  Do I go after “Excellence”, or do I just learn to be happy and enjoy what I’ve already got in my life, living a “semi-average” life?  After all, two years ago all I really wanted was to be able to leave the corporate rat-race world and make money from home doing what I love.  Now I’m doing that, so isn’t that enough?

In my mind I would keep flipping back and forth between the two paths.  One path I labeled the path of “Excellence”, and the other path I labeled as “Average”.  I would sit there in the living room and look at the two books sitting in front of me.  One was an Eckhart Tolle book and as soon as I’d pick it up, I’d be drawn more towards letting go of all achievement and to just be OK with the “Average” path, which in my mind was simply the “desire-less” path.  I’m pretty much 95% of the way there towards the “Average” path and I’m happy, so why torture myself with these grand dreams of being a Multi-Millionaire with six-pack abs!

But then, I would put that book down and I would pickup a Tony Robbins book and I would start to feel like a total sellout, selling out on my true dreams because of laziness and being addicted to comfort.  If I was blessed with all the gifts of being able to become a Multi-Millionaire or even a Billionaire, don’t I owe it to myself and everyone I touch in life to become the best that I can be? 

If I can be an inspiration to the people around me that struggle with health and obesity and “skinny but sick” disease, shouldn’t I try to fulfill my potential and give them an example that being a healthy and fit person isn’t out of their reach?

What do I want to teach my kids when I have kids one day?  Do I want to teach them to go after it all in life and to give it their all, or should I teach them to “desire less” and to just carve out a nice little place of comfort for themselves in life?

I realized that I can honestly be happy with either path myself, but whichever path I choose I don’t think I can ever be happy in expecting my kids to live a life of “excellence” if I haven’t decided to pursue that path myself.  The hypocritical nature of that way of being just doesn’t resonate with me at all.  I do not want to live my un-expressed desires through my kids like I see some parents doing.  Just thinking about doing something like that makes me want to throw up.

 

Looking for Clarity

Still undecided, I began looking for clarity by diving into some of the resources I had at my fingertips – such as my massive library of personal development books and CD’s.  That wasn’t any help either.  I would read one author and he would imply that the “spiritual” path is to really just learn to let go of the Ego’s desires to want things and to just learn to be tranquil and happy with whatever life gives you.  It’s a typical theme in some “spiritual” books which basically has a logical argument that goes something along the lines of this:

“Why do you desire anything?  Why do you want to be a multi-millionaire?  Surely, it’s not so that you can fill your bathtub with hundred dollar bills and swim in it.  What you’re really going after is not money, but the things that money can buy such as a new car, a new house or some other material possession or experience. 

Money is simply a means to an end, not an end in itself.  However, you soon realize that the things that you want themselves are a means to and end.  Why do you want that Porsche?   Isn’t it so that you get to experience the feelings of happiness that you get from being in the Porsche?  So really all you’re really going after is happiness, right? 

Well, if all you really want is happiness, then all you need to do is just realize that you can be happy right now with what you already have and then you’re done!  Just get rid of your desires in life, and learn to be happy with what you’ve got right now and then you’ll be happy!”

It’s a fairly convincing argument and there is a lot of truth in it.  However, then there are books that I have which have basically instilled a way of thinking in my mind that basically goes something along the lines of this:

“Your Ego is very clever.  All it wants is comfort.  It is afraid of so many things and so all it ever wants to do is maintain status-quo.  When you want to start a new exercise program, all it wants you to do is sit on the couch and watch the latest season of 24 on TV.  When you want to get out there and build a business, it says to you “Isn’t that risky?  Why can’t you be happy with what you’ve got?”

The only way to tame the Ego is to connect to your True Self and show it who’s boss.  One of the best ways to tell the Ego who’s boss is to force it into some form of discipline such as daily exercise, or eating healthy or something along those lines.  The Ego will try to convince you that you should be happy with what you’ve already got, often comparing you to other less-fortunate people.  It will try to make you feel guilty for having a desire to achieve something it knows requires work and getting off your ass. 

At first you may be fooled by the Ego’s “Just be happy with what you’ve already got.” argument and you try to be happy with what you’ve got, but you damn well know there is a fire burning in your belly to experience more of life and even though you live a life of comfort, which the Ego tries to convince you is what Happiness is all about, you eventually find out that the Happiness you were really after was a life of feeling fulfilled, not the feeling of comfort.  Live the best life you can possibly live and you will feel fulfilled, ready to die any day with no regrets.  Live a life of comfort and you will feel comfortable and semi-happy for a while, but one day you will be lying on your death bed, consumed by feelings of massive regret because you lived a small life – a life of comfort, instead of fulfillment.”

As you can see, both these arguments hold some merit.  I found the energy of these arguments in all kinds of books I have.  Some authors committed to the “desire-less” path and some authors committed to a life of “excellence”.  Both argue that their path is the right path.  What I realized is that I will never find my answers to this in a book.  I realized that the reason I am seeing examples of both paths being right is because I am undecided myself, and there really is no right answer that anyone can tell me.  I have to choose my path myself.  Once I do, I will probably attract all the “proof” that the path I have chosen is the right path for me, so really it’s not a case of picking the right path, but rather a case of making a choice. 

 

Why Am I Scared of Excellence?

Throwing all books aside, since they were no help, I realized the answers I seek had to come from within.  So I looked back at some of the goals I set about 10 years ago and I realized that a lot of them came from a place of purity.  I didn’t have as much experience in
life as I have now, so when I wrote out what I wanted in my life it didn’t come with a lot of baggage.

When I wrote out that I wanted not to just have an “average” body, but to actually sculpt and “chisel” my body, I didn’t really have as many associations to the level of difficulty such a thing requires.  When I wrote out I wanted to be a “Multi-Millionaire” I hadn’t yet ran as many businesses as I have now, so I didn’t really know what it took to reach those kinds of levels of financial success.  I guess you could say I was a little bit naive at the time of writing these goals.

The great thing about that is that I had a documented case of what I really wanted in life before life had a chance to “knock some sense” into me like some people say.  I hadn’t yet had my “dose of reality”.  At first I thought that this would make me come to grips with letting go of those “childish” dreams and to accept a more realistic life that’s already pretty darn comfortable, but it actually had the opposite effect on me!

I realized that those are my real dreams, coming from a place of innocent desire, not coming from a place of fear.  Those dreams represent what I really want from life, before life tried to teach me how difficult those dreams are.  Once I realized this, I was about 90% decided I wanted to choose the path of “excellence” in my life.  One thing still lingered.

I asked myself what is it about the path of “excellence” that really scares me?  Why not go after it anyways?  I mean if I become a Multi-Millionaire and I don’t like having that much money, I can always give it away, so why not go after it?  Why not have a chiseled body?  Why not go after all the excellence you can achieve in every part of your life?

What I discovered was that the real fear I had was not so much going after what I wanted, but HOW I would go about going after what I wanted.  For example, I thought about being healthy and fit and the first thing that popped into my life was that I would never be able to eat unhealthy foods again.  If I commit to a path of “excellence” I would never be able to have a piece of cake or pizza again, right?

This was the root of the problem for me.  Somewhere along the way, I had made an association that living a life of “Excellence” equaled living a life of “Perfection”, and that the path towards “Perfection” was a linear path that required absolute compliance.  Meaning, I thought that what I was trying to decide on was whether I am going to EVER have another piece of chocolate cake for the rest of my life!  Or whether I would ever take time off to have a vacation from “achievement”. 

What a bonehead thing to think!

It took me a while to formulate a solution to this dilemma, but finally it just came to me. 

 

The Solution: Progressive Cycling

Let me use one category of my life to illustrate the solution.  I’ll use health and fitness as an example, and I’m sure you will be able to see how this can relate to every area of your life.

In a linear way of thinking, we draw a straight line from Point A to Point Z.  Let’s say that Point A is my current starting point, such as for example my Body Fat % being 30% as an example.  Now let’s say that the body I desire (Point Z) is going to have a Body Fat % of 10% as an example.  Well, then the linear way of thinking is to create a plan to go from Point A (30%) to Point Z (10%) in the shortest period of time. 

To accomplish this, we put together a “Perfect” diet and we follow it until we get from Point A to Point Z.  Then we maintain this diet forever, so that we stay at Point Z forever.  I realized that thinking like this was insane.  I can’t even begin to imagine the willpower and self-discipline it would require for me to NEVER eat anything bad ever again.  Never drink another pop, never eat another piece of cake, or a donut, or a piece of candy, or anything that is not labeled as “healthy” in my mind.

Instead, I realized that what I could do is follow a different system that I labeled in my mind as “Progressive Cycling”.  It’s actually stems from some of the things I’ve learned from the most brilliant minds in the software development industry.  Instead of thinking in terms of a linear advancement from Point A to Point Z, we instead break our goals up into short to medium term “Cycles” that we commit to and then establish a new “Base Point” with.

So for example, let’s go back to my Body Fat % example.  What I would do is instead of setting a lifetime goal to always be at 10% Body Fat (Point Z), I would instead go from Point A (30%) to Point B which may be 25% Body Fat as an example.  So what I do is I make a 90 Day commitment to focusing on my health and eating a healthier diet and exercising more, in order to try to reach my goal of 25% Body Fat.  Once I hit that goal, I stop and I set that as my new “Base Line”.  Perhaps I may even slide back down to 25.5% or even 26% Body Fat, but no more than that.  I simply commit to a slightly improved lifestyle, instead of perfection.

Then, I can stay at that level for a while if I want, in order to enjoy what it feels like to be at that level for a while, and then I start on another cycle for 90 days or 180 days to get me down to 20% Body Fat for example, and then I stop there and enjoy that place for a while.

I don’t have to be perfect.  I can reach 20% Body Fat and then take a few days off or a few weeks off to “cheat / live” a little and try some of the foods that I might be craving like Chocolate Cake.  However, what I do is I set a new “Baseline” for myself and I don’t allow myself to slide back above 22% for example.  Then, when I’m ready I go for another cycle again.

Keep in mind that there are many other categories and goals I have in my life, so I may not always have the time or energy to devote all my energy into one area of my life.  Maybe once I reach 20% I just maintain my new baseline as I focus more of my energy on working on my relationship or my finances for example.  Of course many “Cycles” can be worked in simultaneously, but sometimes it’s not easy to work on everything all at once.

The main rules in the “Progressive Cycling” method of striving for Excellence are:

1. Use short to medium length (30-180 day) goals/milestones which you can commit to and follow through on.
2. At the end of each cycle, celebrate and reward yourself.
3. At the end of each cycle, establish a new “baseline” of excellence for yourself.
4. When you are ready, begin a new cycle.

The reason it is crucial to establish a new baseline for yourself at the end of each cycle is because if you don’t you will slide back to your previous level in no
time at all.  Case in point, last year in January I committed to a 90-day healthy eating / exercise program that brought my weight down from about 202lbs to 187lbs and I established a habit of regular exercise.  At the end of the 90 days, however, I decided to shift my focus to building this Blog and really learning how to make money online because I knew that I wanted to leave the corporate rat-race once and for all.  So I began a 90-day cycle on building up this Blog and I saw amazing results with that.

The challenge is that what I failed to do is I failed to (2) celebrate and reward myself for reaching my milestone, and (3) I failed to establish a new “baseline” for myself.  This did two things to me.  One, it hurt me inside because I worked really hard to work out every day and never miss a single run for 90 days straight.  It was probably the most self-disciplined effort I have ever accomplished in my life for that many days in a row.  There were MANY things that came up which could have easily derailed me off-track but I refused to give up.  I was either going to reach my goal, or die on the treadmill trying.  At the end of that phenomenal effort, what did I do to celebrate?  Nothing, I set a new goal in a different area of my life (Career) and began working on that.

I didn’t see it at the time, but looking back now it really devastated me.  I should have at least gone out for dinner or bought myself a nice toy or something.  Also, I didn’t set a new “baseline” standard for myself consciously deciding on maintaining that level of fitness until I begin working on my next cycle.  So guess what happened?  I gained all that weight back and now I sit here writing this article weighing about 212lbs.  That’s 10lbs more than I started with last year.  What a dumbass thing to do!

Now here’s the real kicker.  The biggest problem if you do that kind of thing, committing to something and then sliding back to your old ways, it becomes 100 times harder to do it a second time.  In fact, when I was thinking about going on another 90 day fitness/health plan at the beginning of this year, I started thinking to myself “What’s the point??  I’ll just lose the weight, and then gain it back with an extra 10lbs on top… I might as well just try to keep my current weight!”

So, it is of absolute paramount importance to not only commit to reaching a certain milestone, but also to commit to a new standard when you get there.  I’m not saying that I had to set 187lbs as my new standard, I could allow myself to have some “play room”, but maybe I could have set my new “baseline” at 190lbs or 192lbs or something, allowing myself a little bit of breathing room at the end of the cycle to go and see if I still like Chocolate Cake or something, but NOT allowing myself to slide all the way back to 212lbs.

The same thing can be said about finances.  I know so many people who aren’t making anywhere near the amount of money that they would like to make, in fact their expenses far outweigh their income.  I’ve been in this position in my life many times.  So what do most people do in this case?  Well, they hit threshold and they go out there and begin to bust their ass to make some more money, and they succeed.  They kick butt at work and get a raise, or they start a little part-time business, or they find some way to make some extra money.

After a few months, they are now making $500 more per month which more than covers their expenses now.  Finally, for the first time in their life they begin to see the light.  The actually have some money left over at the end of the month.  Then what happens?  The water heater breaks, or their car needs new tires, or they gamble the money away, or something else happens and they are back to being broke or for some people super-broke!  Super broke is when you’re getting payday loans to cover the minimum payment on your credit cards, and you’re taking out cash advances from your Mastercard to pay your Visa.

Your Financial Freedom account had $0 in it before you made your concentrated effort to get ahead and your Financial Freedom account has $0 after your effort.  You didn’t put any of the extra money aside to establish a new baseline (Not even $10!!!!) so now you give up and just decide to go back to your “normal” way of being, except now you begin to complain about life more and how everything is unfair because secretly inside you’ve already given up on all your dreams of ever being financially independent and it’s a lot easier to blame the world than yourself.

If you’re doing this to yourself, don’t kid yourself in thinking that you’re alone.  Almost everyone out there follows this cycle of failure.  Nobody wakes up one day and decides to become a failure in life, to be broke, to go bankrupt, or to gain 200lbs of fat around their waist.  It happens automatically as you go through multiple cycles of this “failure cycle” I described above.  I’ve been there myself many times and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  The decision you need to make though is whether you want to end that cycle or not.  It’s completely up to you.

 

Final Words

After a lot of thinking and journaling I have decided that in my life I am going to commit to a new standard for myself.  It’s a standard of “Excellence”, but I’m not going to try to approach it by trying to achieve it through the path of “Perfection” but rather through my own path of “Progressive Cycling”.  In this way, I can continuously establish a new “baseline” standard for myself in every category of my life, and experience what it feels like to be at every level along my journey.

Instead of trying to put my head down and putting my nose to the grindstone until I reach “Zillionaire” status and only then allowing myself to pause, reflect, relax, enjoy and experience how great that feels, I’m going to do things in short to medium burst “Cycles” that progressively move me towards my standard of excellence, taking the time to continuously pause, reflect, relax, enjoy and experience EVERY level along the journey.

Instead of trying to upgrade from my current $25,000 car to a $250,000 car, I’ll instead get to experience what it feels like to upgrade to a $35,000 car and then maybe a $50,000 car, and them maybe a $75,000 car etc. 

So what about you?  Do you want more from your life?  If you’re not fully committed to becoming a Multi-Millionaire, would you at least want to experience what it feels like to be debt free at some point in your life?  Or to be a hundred-thousand-aire?  or a Half-Millionaire?  Are you curious how much better you would feel about yourself if you just lost 10% of your excess body weight?

Or are you stuck, like I was, paralyzed and uncommitted to any path because the path of “Perfection” is way too strict and the path of “Just be happy with what you’ve got!” just isn’t cutting it for you anymore?