One day, a client of mine came in very upset.

I asked him what was going on, and he said, “My friend just bought a Boeing 747-8 VIP.”

(The biggest private jet in the world.)

A bit confused, I said, “But… you have a private jet.”

And he said, “I only have a G4. I could never afford the 747-8.”

This might sound a little absurd to most of us…

Being envious of someone, when you already have so much.

But for him, it was a way for his internal drives to make him feel “lesser than” because he didn’t have a big enough jet.

You see, no matter what level of wealth “success” he attained it would never be enough.

Next he’d be depressed because he didn’t own a SpaceX shuttle.

This is a feeling we’ve all had at one point or another.

(It might not have been for a jet, but it’s when we compared ourselves and felt inadequate).

The bottom line is, these loops are part of our personalities.

And they can’t be satisfied…ever.

It’s almost like an addiction.

Like how when you eat sugar, it doesn’t satisfy your sugar craving — it makes you want more sugar.

You’re always trying to attain more, to satisfy this need in you…

But it can’t be satisfied.

The need can’t be satisfied because if it’s satisfied it wouldn't exist anymore. And that would feel vulnerable to the psyche.

This is an important point!

You see, the “I’m not good enough” line of code developed as a protective mechanism.

At some point in our childhood we take on a belief about ourselves.

I’m stupid, I’m weak, I’m ugly, I’m unlovable, I’m in danger, etc.

Our minds lock onto this belief, becoming frozen in that moment.

We then hide this perceived inadequacy away and it becomes a dirty little secret about ourselves, one that our minds think would put us at risk if revealed.

So we achieve, achieve, achieve in a constant attempt to stamp out this belief.

But it doesn't exist, there is nothing to stamp out.

It’s just a projection.

The truth is we give up our lives in the pursuit of overcoming something that doesn't actually exist.

No one was telling my client he wasn’t enough.

Yet he was haunted by this phantom, which reared its head when his friend bought a super jet.

All it meant to his brain was proof that he was X, fill in the limiting belief.

His mind projected that interpretation onto his reality.

Modern psychology states your personality doesn't exist. It comes into existence in reaction to something else.

So this protective mechanism thinks it needs to exist to protect itself and therefore needs resistance to do so.

And if your actions achieved something that actually disproved this limiting belief – where he became enough…

Well then in theory it would cease to exist.

But it can’t not exist because that is what you call “you”.

A personality is something living out a conclusion it once made about life and your place in it, and we have identified with that limitation.

It's become your “identity”

Because at that fateful moment of vulnerability in your childhood, this fixation became your protective cloak.

And your life now unfolds within those parameters.

If completed, this personality is under the spell that the “danger” will get you.

So it must forever project this belief.

Therefore after any sort of a sense of accomplishment against this belief, the whole puppetry resets and the mind filters through your life finding your failures.

And we remain locked in this vicious cycle.

For life!

So what’s the antidote?

How do you attain freedom from the neverending cycle of need?

Psychology tries to change your patterns. Change your neurology. Change your behavior.

Which is fine. Sometimes that’s very appropriate.

But what I teach is transcending the pattern.

To realize you are not the pattern. And to find your awareness outside of it.

I know this might sound odd.

But then the pattern doesn’t have control over you anymore.

A lot of people confuse abundance with greed and it’s an easy thing to do. My clients sometimes worry that giving up the ego means financial scarcity.

But that’s not the case at all.

What’s important is untangling the control mechanisms that are sabotaging your freedom.

If a client comes to me and tells me they own a yacht, I say, “fantastic!

Love the yacht! 

And have many good times on the yacht!”

But if tomorrow you lose the yacht, I want you to still be totally fine.

If you’re not, you are dependent on the yacht.

And if you’re dependent on the yacht, you’re not free.

You have to do whatever dance you need to do to keep being able to afford the yacht.

If it’s fulfilling, great.

If the yacht appears as a result of the things you’re already doing, fantastic.

But if you’re having to give up your morality, give up your freedom, give up the things you love in order to achieve the yacht…

Then you’re not free from the yacht.

So at this point, it would be important to ask why you’re choosing the yacht over these things.

Is it wanting people to think, “Wow, you’re the person with the yacht”?

Is it a power thing?

If so, these things are tangled up, and it usually means you feel the opposite.

Powerless.

There is a nerve within you sucking your energy, trying to solve the unsolvable with a yacht.

By asking questions, we untangle ourselves.

And by untangling ourselves we become free from these control mechanisms that we are calling us.

We can train ourselves to step outside of them.

And that’s when we find our center.

There is a freedom within this process of untangling and separating oneself…

Stepping outside of our thoughts, seeing them, and recognizing them as separate from ourselves.

There’s a saying that goes, once you bring something from the shadows to the light it disarms it.

It means once you bring something from the shadows of the recesses of your psyche, into the light…

Once you see it, and realize, “Oh, that’s why I’m behaving like that…”

It disarms it.

And then you can become free.

But this doesn’t mean that the problem is solved and you’re free forever.

You yourself may not be the character anymore who has those thoughts and insecurities…

You’ve stepped outside of that part of yourself…

But the challenge is that you still live with that character who has those thoughts and insecurities.

The long term work is to continually be aware of this character.

To recognize that you live with this character, but it isn’t you.

To look objectively at this character, at this part of you, from the outside.

And remember that you are the one in control.

Find the direct connection to the part of you that isn’t forever searching.

I don’t want you to take this on as a philosophy, I want you to have an unmistakable direct experience with the core of what you are.

Don’t take my word for it, experience it yourself.

Until next time,

Paul

P.S. I'd love to hear if this resonates. Hit reply I'd love to hear from you.