What It Means to Have It All

Three out of 4 Americans say they are unfulfilled; and it's only 14% worldwide. We have become so attached to outcomes, to success, that we're plagued by the fear of failing, driving fulfillment right out of our work. Tony Robbins calls "success without fulfillment the ultimate failure." It's failing at living. We work towards fulfillment hoping it will be there at the end of our career and the irony is we have it already. Fulfillment is in our spiritual DNA, and even more ironic is that it's been well established in research for two decades that it is this inner quality that promotes outer success, not the other way around. Don Joseph Goewey's talk is about moving the horse before the cart to have it all.

Transcript

Hello,

I am Don Joseph Gohe and what I want to talk about in this podcast is what it means to have it all.

What it means to wake up to our innate capacity to flourish inwardly and outwardly all at the same time,

Finding fulfillment not far off in the future,

But every day in the quiet,

Alive,

Joyful way of being that flows into whatever you're doing to create success in your life.

Sadly,

This capacity is something most people have lost touch with.

Less than one in four Americans say they are fulfilled and it's only 14% worldwide.

Those are not happy numbers.

So let's take a look at this.

Tony Robbins,

One of the world's great success motivators,

Coached a number of entrepreneurs who later in life became enormously successful,

But it left them feeling somehow unfulfilled.

And Robbins came to the conclusion that success without fulfillment was the ultimate failure.

It is failing at living.

It's the emptiness of sensing something essential missing in one's life,

But having only a vague idea of what that might be.

It takes the form of an identity crisis that used to happen mostly to men at midlife,

But new research finds is now happening to young adults of both genders.

Social scientists have dubbed this the quarter-life crisis.

The crisis is the result of what science calls unmet aspirations.

Let me repeat that,

Unmet aspirations,

Which is when we realize that whatever success has come,

It has come without the inner peace and happiness and deepening sense of connection that defines fulfillment.

Living life without experiencing those qualities is not living at all.

It is the ultimate failure.

So let's take a look at how this might have happened to us.

By and large,

It has to do with two forces that are at work within us.

One is true and real.

The other is based on a belief system that we learned through socialization as we grew up.

The essential given nature we were born with created us innately happy and fulfilled,

Unconditionally so,

With a sense of wonder and a curiosity that is alive with creativity and a wide open perspective that sees abundant possibilities.

Our given nature is innocent,

Trusting,

And loving.

It is drawn to beauty.

It is centered in peace.

It doesn't worry,

Get angry,

Hold resentments,

Form attachments,

Or become greedy,

And thus it is free,

And fearless,

And compassionate,

And altruistic.

Our given nature is our authentic self,

Grounded in a feeling of immeasurable self-worth,

Unconcerned with gaining the world's approval,

And unaffected by the world's disapproval.

And all our essential nature ever requires of us is to simply be ourselves.

The image that captures our essential nature more than any other is that of a child to whom Christ said,

The Kingdom of Heaven belongs.

Here is the way the I Ching describes our spiritual nature.

The I Ching is China's Book of Wisdom and the oldest book in the world.

It states that our nature is like-giving,

And active,

And free of any weakness,

And thus it is consistently strong in character.

It also states that our nature possesses a power and an energy that is unrestricted by any fixed condition,

And that what this energy expresses is the creative action of God that can awaken and develop the higher nature in others.

It all adds up to Love,

Which is the light our nature shines through us into the world.

All of what I just described can be hard to believe about a human being,

But nearly all the scientific research shows our basic nature to be positive and good.

We suffer when we're out of touch with our first nature.

Recovery at whatever level,

From chronic stress,

To addiction,

To neurosis,

To past traumas,

To even psychosis,

Is a return to our given nature,

Which is a return to what we really are,

Which is Love.

So why aren't more of us functioning in this way?

It's because we were socialized from early on to exchange our soul for the world,

To paraphrase Christ,

But don't condemn yourself or anyone for it,

None of us are to blame.

Our culture programmed our beautifully intelligent nature out of us by programming into us a false nature that has become so well established as the norm that it doesn't occur to us to even question it.

So here's a summary of it.

The first thing society taught us is that at the most basic and individual level,

We are fallen,

Flawed beings.

It taught us to see a threatening world and to view the world around us as the whole of reality,

And that fulfillment and self-worth were achieved through worldly success,

Measured in terms of money,

Fame,

Social status,

And possessions.

We were taught to armor ourselves in a driven,

Ambitious,

Competitive personality,

Pushing long and hard to acquire the things that our culture defines as making it.

One thing this leads to is the fear of failure.

The fear of failing haunts us with an underlying anxiety that at any moment this world of people and things and outcomes that we struggle to hold together at great effort will slip out of our control and let us down,

Which it frequently does.

Is that Sinatra song you're riding high in April shot down in May?

That's the way of the world.

The poster child for this police system is a techie right out of school,

Toiling 60 hours a week in high-stress environments,

Working alone,

Staring into a computer screen,

Eagerly pursuing promotions that come with the promise of stock options.

They believe this is the path to fulfillment,

Which ironically is precisely what this ethic of success has programmed out of them.

Fulfillment is always there.

If you succeed,

It's there.

If you fail,

It's still there,

Helping you take heart from an effort that failed in order to learn from it.

Thomas Watson of IBM said,

The fastest way to succeed is to double your rate of failure.

That's the wide open creative perspective of our essential nature talking.

So one of the things to understand is that nothing of the world can make us happy,

Can give us fulfillment.

We don't acquire or earn fulfillment,

Not the constant,

Enduring,

Joyfully unshakable kind.

We have it already.

So the idea of success without fulfillment is a fallacy.

The ultimate failure is never waking up to the power and beauty of what we are,

And the happiness and peace it naturally vibrates to,

No matter what happens.

So what it means to have it all is you have it already,

But you're asleep to it.

Anthony DeMello likens it to a stage magician who hypnotizes you to see what is not there and not see what is there.

Well,

The stage magician is society and its faulty programming.

It's not that we have to renounce the world,

Or renounce having goals and dreams and aspirations,

Or renounce celebrating our worldly successes.

We should enjoy the material world and our successes,

But not make our fulfillment and self-worth depend on externals.

That's our mistake.

That's the illusion we have been programmed to believe.

The irony is,

When we are detached from the material world as we pursue success,

The process in and of itself is fulfilling,

Which it isn't when you believe your self-worth and happiness depend on what the world does or doesn't do.

Your love of doing good work returns.

You become so engaged that success,

Or being rewarded,

Or applauded,

Means nothing to you.

Such distractions are out of mind,

Out of sight.

You are enjoying the work for the sheer love of it.

Our task then becomes,

As Rumi said,

Not to seek for what we already have,

Meaning fulfillment and happiness,

But to merely remove the barriers that have been built against it.

So,

How do we begin to do that?

Clearing the programming that blocks this experience necessarily begins in self-observation.

Through a growing awareness of how we are blocked,

It takes being vigilantly aware of how you are behaving and reacting in any given situation,

According to the way you have been programmed to see,

And think,

And feel,

And react to the world around you.

Being aware of what you are saying to yourself and to others,

Aware of what you are thinking and how what you are thinking is triggering what you are believing,

And how that is triggering what you are feeling at the moment.

It's looking even deeper to see what your intentions are at the moment,

And any ulterior motive beneath it.

Otherwise,

It is your lower brain using you,

Instead of you using your higher brain,

Instead of you open and in touch with your heart.

Otherwise,

Your brain will be running the autopilot society programmed into it,

With its algorithm of illusions.

When you see these illusions at work in you,

You understand what Socrates meant when he said the unaware life is not worth living.

The unaware life is locked into having a fearful dream that sometimes becomes a nightmare,

And it all maps back to your programming.

As you see this,

And understand it for what it is,

It will drop from its own weight,

Freeing your God-given nature to soar.

So let's explore a way of recovering our first nature,

To see if it's still there,

Still functioning in the midst of all this programming,

And the most direct way I know of locating it,

Is to do an exercise I call Me at the Top of My Game.

It's quite simple.

Recall an experience when you were having a really creative day,

When you were in the flow,

Functioning at your best,

Connecting the dots,

Loving what you were doing,

Performing at the top of your game.

You can put the recording on pause while you reflect on this,

And it's most helpful if you're able to write them down.

When you're done,

Start the recording back up.

There is still just a little bit left that concludes the podcast.

I've been conducting this exercise with people for 17 years,

Many in Fortune 100 companies,

And I have summarized the inner qualities that people pinpointed most when asked to describe themselves at the top of their game,

And here's the list.

Calm was something people always mentioned,

And happy,

Cheerful,

Enjoying the process.

People mentioned a clear sense of their own personal power,

Without the need to overpower others.

They felt unafraid,

Unhurried,

Free of worry.

They were able to accept the situation exactly as it was,

And able to work with it.

They felt self-confident,

Curious,

Creative,

Open-minded,

Receptive,

And collaborative.

They said they felt more energetic,

More resilient.

They trusted the process.

They also describe a fluidness in which time seemed to stand still.

These qualities that describe us at the top of our game are first nature qualities,

Aren't they?

Peak performance is generated by these qualities.

This describes success and fulfillment working hand in hand.

It is precisely what I mean by having it all.

Another exercise you can do is to make a list of success measurements that are related to the extent to which you function from your first nature during the day.

You can do this exercise on the ride home at the end of the day.

Simply ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10,

How kind was I with people today?

How grateful was I,

1 to 10?

How honest was I,

1 to 10?

How authentic was I,

Free of any facade?

How well did I listen to others?

How fair was I?

How good was I at shifting negative thinking?

It can be any spiritual quality you want to amplify.

Everything in this podcast has been about coming home to yourself.

Having it all is about coming home to yourself,

Which is facilitated by stepping away from the world every now and then and being still for a few moments,

Setting aside all thoughts of what you think you are,

All the images you hold about yourself,

All the shame you might carry,

Along with all of what you have been taught about the world and its concepts about success and failure and fulfillment.

Simply take a moment now and then to return to yourself as A Course in Miracles states,

With empty hands and open minds,

Which come with nothing,

To find everything and claim it as your own.

Reviews

Thank you! Grateful I found your words of wisdom🙏🏼🥰

So practical and helpful in reminding of observing, noticing, setting intentions and choosing to be grounded in my God given peace and joy. Thanks

Really nice. Such good suggestions. 🙏

Loved this! Such a good talk.

Very helpful talk. So many things to reflect. Thank you 🙏

Illuminating