You don’t have to chase

What is the thing that you really, really want? The thing that you think would make your world a whole lot better. The thing that shows up on your vision board or maybe in your prayers.

Is it a material thing like a new car, or home or a bigger bank account? An experience, like a big promotion, a trip, an early retirement? Or is it something about another person? Something that you wish they would be or do for us?

Now that you have that thing in your mind, I’m going to tell you a secret. It isn’t even actually about the THING. What we are always chasing is a FEELING.

We want how the new home (or whatever it is) will make us feel. Maybe that feeling is successful, secure, happy, settled, rooted, equal to someone else.

It could be many things to different people but a house, no matter how shiny, and new, becomes just a thing in our lives pretty shortly.

And THEN, we always want another thing. Don’t we?

That’s because what we need is the feeling that comes with it. It’s like a dopamine that there is never enough of. It becomes a never ending race because our feelings don’t come from things, they come from our thoughts.

Which, incidentally, are a whole lot easier to generate or manipulate than all of these other things.

The thoughts that we have on replay are what make us happy or sad, proud or ashamed, fulfilled or depleted.  It sounds too simplistic because we’ve been taught to believe what we need is outside of ourselves. We’re uncomfortable taking ownership, even when the fact that we CAN should be the best news we’ve ever heard.

Getting really clear about what’s inside our head changes everything. It doesn’t mean you don’t buy a new house, or aspire to something more for yourself. It just means that you can have the emotion that your are looking for long before it ever happens.

If that sounds like something you’d like to make happen for yourself, we should have a chat.