In my years of people development, I’ve been that
developing clients for broadcasting success.
developing adult training success.
developing students for career readiness success.
developing individual’s emotional intelligence for personal success.
And this “guy” realized people don’t want development. We want fulfillment!!!
“I like to call it…”
- Emptiness transformed into emotional wealth.
For a long while, my emptiness felt like …
“I was wealthy in potential but broke in fulfillment.” A good moral compass, good college life, good creativity, good resourcefulness, good burnout work-ethic, good potential finder in others…
But…
All this goodness just didn’t feel like good success. Emotionally I still cycled around feelings of:
comparison – “I need to be better than them,”
perfectionism – “I need to accomplish more,”
disappointment -“I’m not good enough.”
It wasn’t until the traumatic experience of almost dying from marathon training, I realized fulfillment is…
I believe our connection with success (moving forward), can only be as fulfilling as our connection with our emotional self (moving inward). We…interpret…life…emotionally! Fulfillment is living from a better emotional self.
Stage 1
A caterpillar begins life eating the egg its hatch from. Self-expression is our “egg-pression” to eat from it. I realized the more I ate from the intentions that naturally expressed me, the more enthusiasm flowed into my life.
Here’s the kicker, enthusiasm rarely came from the outcomes of what I was doing, but more in “how I felt” about what I was doing.
You see, “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek word “entheos” which means the God within. Tapping into my enthusiasm, was tapping into my God-power.
Stage 2
The caterpillar sheds and outgrows its skin 5 times! My outgrowing to grow was shedding off the ego mentality of who I am is based on what I achieve.
If I achieve successful possessions, a successful reputation, a successful profession in life then I can stake my claim – “I am” successful.
The problem was, although I experienced many successful moments I still “felt” unsuccessful. We don’t want to just be successful; we want to “feel” successful.
Stage 3
I was astonished to discover the caterpillar’s final meal before transforming into a butterfly is actually himself. Gulp!
It stops eating, and digest itself into a liquid, soupy substance within a Chrysalis.
I digested myself when I stopped eating the cares of better possessions, reputation, status, and fearing emotional exposure.
To “stop eating” means these things no longer consumed my life .. “crunch, crunch.”
Stage 4
Throughout my life…family, school, and society focused mostly on developing the “Intellectual- Self” (self-concept, self-esteem, and self-perceptions) for a better life. But….
A “better life” never really came from developing my Intellectual-Self.
It came when I became more attentive to my Emotional-Self – inner storytelling that was either in emotional poverty or emotional wealth.
The greatest storytelling is the version you tell yourself, about yourself.
