“Enthusiasm is the energy of creation” -Dr Joe Dispenza
I was listening to a podcast by Amy Porterfield (Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast) in which she interviewed Donald Miller, author of Building A Storybrand and the latest—Hero on a Mission. In their talk, he asked what I thought was the ultimate question: “Are you interested in your own life?”
He went on to explain how, as children, we are fully interested, fascinated even. Think about how you were as a child. What were you interested in? This is important. As a teenager and a young adult, you were still the hero of your story. You were interested in who you were and where you were going. Think about pop culture—this is true there as well. We elevate youth, and are not collectively interested in those past a certain age. Of course there are exceptions to this, but in general, I think we can mostly agree that youth is more interesting to us as a collective.
Miller states that we remain interested in our lives, the hero of our stories if you will, up until we get married. There is a narrative. An excitement. What will I do with my life? Who will I meet? Who will I marry? How and Where will we get married? Where will we honeymoon? After this point, we sort of collectively expect to just fade away into the suburbs. We watch Netflix and reality TV, and become more interested in other peoples’ lives.
In short, we do what is expected of us and at a certain point, we stop learning and evolving just as we are expected to. We lose interest in our own trajectory in favor of someone else’s whom we may not even know. Or we substitute our children’s lives—not altogether a bad thing, being interested in our children is a positive attribute. But if we are only interested in their lives, then ours just goes along on autopilot, with us ascribing our own dreams onto them.
There is so much out there when we avoid this trap. This question really got to me—because I see it so much in so many people. So how do you know if this is you and how do you avoid this trap? I think if someone is interested in their own life, then they are always examining where they are, what they want, whether those wants have evolved, and so on. They are in a state of evolution and change and constant learning. If we are interested, then we are learning and growing. If we are uninterested, then we give those things up in favor of comfort.
Comfort is the opposite of growth. If we are comfortable, then we are watching too much Netflix. Life is change, and if we are really in this life then we are in a state of change. If things in your life are not changing or fluid then they are stagnant. And you might want to go back, look at your life as a child, a teenager, a young adult, and ask yourself what you were most interested in at those times. Did you feel at a certain point like you had “arrived” at your destination? For example did you get married, make partner, and have a baby and say “well here I am, I made it!” Or are you still growing, failing, learning?