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Only a few years ago, I thought I was living the life everyone dreamed of. I had a lovely and intelligent wife who loved me deeply. I had three healthy and happy children who excelled at all they chose to do. I was making more money than I could have ever imagined, as the owner of a string of hip boutique hotels located at sophisticated hot spots around the globe. Movie stars, the fabulously wealthy and the glitterati in general were among my clients. I traveled to exotic places, accumulated many toys and became fairly well known, at least in the market-space within which I worked.
Then, one day, my entire world fell apart. I arrived home late after a business dinner with the vendor of a property I was interested in buying. Rachel usually left a few lights on for me but, on this night, the house was completely dark. It made no sense—it was only ten o’clock. Where was Rachel? Where were the kids?
I walked inside and turned on the lights in the entrance hall and the kitchen. Only silence greeted me. But on the kitchen table was a note in Rachel’s familiar handwriting. It read:
Dar, I’ve taken the kids to my mother’s place. I do not love you anymore. I’m sorry. My lawyer will call you in the morning.
Nothing can prepare you for a letter like that—nothing. Although I had pretended that my marriage was working, I knew we had drifted apart. All the time away from home, traveling and doing business, had been time stolen away from my marriage and family, and the love we once knew was gone. I had also pretended to be a good father and, from the outside, I probably seemed that. But the wise souls of my children knew the truth. Even when I was sitting right next to them, I wasn’t really there. My mind never left the business and emotionally, I was unavailable. I guess the truth is that I was an extraordinarily selfish man back then. I believed the world revolved around me. No one else’s needs and no one else’s feelings mattered nearly as much as mine. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be recognized. I wanted to win. And in the process, I lost what was most important.
The letter and the divorce litigation that ensued ripped my heart out. I was forced out of my own home and began to live in one of my hotels. I could see my kids only once a week and every few weekends. I began to drink heavily and gained an embarrassingly excessive amount of weight. I had always been ruggedly handsome and very fit, but that all unraveled. I’d wake up with searing migraines that would not leave me until I doused them with alcohol. Thankfully, I did not lose my business. I’d been smart enough to put in place a first-class management team who, out of loyalty to me, ran the show while I was busy licking my wounds. Sure, I’d attend the odd meeting and close the odd deal. But, mostly, I was home alone, sitting in a dark room listening to old Billie Holiday songs and having long conversations with Jack Daniels. This was the misery that eventually led me to that seedy motel room I told you about. But you should know that this was the misery that also led to my salvation.
I have discovered that pain and adversity are powerful vehicles to promote personal growth. Nothing helps you learn, grow and evolve more quickly. Nothing offers you as big an opportunity to reclaim more of your authentic power as a person. Our human eyes view it as a negative experience. This is pure judgment and behind this false belief is pure fear. You see, suffering occurs when something happens that we did not want. It occurs when life gives us something unexpected, some new condition. And the appearance of a new condition in our lives, whether this means an illness or the loss of a loved one or a financial setback, means we must change and leave the old, the shores we once clung to. We are asked to let go of what we expected and, for a human being, letting go can be frightening. We are afraid to leave the safe harbor of the familiar and the known. We resist traveling to the unknown places our lives sometimes lead us towards. The very thought of doing so scares us. Behind all resistance to the new is fear.
But there is nothing to fear. This universe of ours is a far friendlier place than we realize. A boat that never ventures beyond its moorings will never be damaged, but that’s not what boats are made for. Similarly, a human being who never dares to walk out into the unknown spaces of his or her life will never get hurt—but that is not what human beings were designed for. We were made to experience the growth that comes from visiting foreign places as travelers through life. Our wiser eyes know this truth and see change and suffering for what it really is: a caring physician that comes to heal the sick part of our selves. Suffering serves to deepen us. Suffering comes to help us and causes us to know who we truly are. Suffering cracks us open, forcing us to let go and surrender all that we have known and clung to, like a little child on her first day of school, afraid to let go of her mother’s hand and walk alone into a classroom full of new friends where she will learn so many new and beautiful things. The unknown is where “the new” exists and the new is the only place in the world where you will find possibility. And every human being is hardwired to run towards possibility and potential in their lives. We were all designed to be great. So how can you say suffering is bad when it is the very thing that makes you better? Yes, the human side of us feels the pain as we endure it. That’s natural. But this pain will eventually subside and a richer, stronger, wiser you will emerge.
“Fear not the unknown, for it is where your greatness resides,” said a very special teacher of mine, one whom you are about to learn much about. Most people spend the best years of their lives in the place of the known. They lack the courage to venture out into foreign territory and are frightened to leave the crowd. They want to fit in and are afraid to stand out. They dress like everyone else, think like everyone else and behave like everyone else, even if doing so doesn’t feel right to them. They are reluctant to listen to the call of their hearts and try new things, refusing to leave that shore of safety. So they do what everybody else does. In so doing, their once-shining souls begin to darken and wrinkle. “Death is only one of many ways to lose your life,” said adventurer Alvah Simon.
Clinging to safe shores in your life is nothing more than making a choice to remain imprisoned by your fears. There may be the illusion that you are free when you keep living within the box that your life may have become but, believe me, it’s just that: an illusion—a lie you tell yourself. When you leave the box for new vistas and stop following the crowd, of course, fears will surface—you are human. But courage requires that you feel these fears and then move ahead anyway. Courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to walk through your fear in pursuit of a goal that is important to you. You are among the living dead when you live in a safe harbor and cling to the known. You come back to life and your heart starts to beat again when you venture into the unknown and explore the foreign places of your life. The adventure and thrill of living returns. Remember, on the other side of your fears you will discovery your fortune.
Here’s a strong metaphor I’ll offer you. If you have spent your whole life in a jail, many fears will surface on the day of your release. While in jail, though you had no freedom, you lived within the realm of the known because there was a strict routine in place for you: you knew when you were required to wake, you knew when you could exercise and you knew precisely when and what you could eat. Now, though you are no longer imprisoned, you feel afraid. You do not know what to do and where to go. There is no structure, only uncertainty. Your tendency is to return to the known rather than face the seeming insecurity and discomfort of the unknown. You would rather choose to be a prisoner than regain your freedom. It makes no sense but that’s how most of us operate through life.
I have learned all this philosophy from the teacher I briefly mentioned. This teacher has been the single greatest influence on my life to date. The wisdom and the remarkable seven-stage process he began to share with me just over twelve months ago have completely revolutionized my life. I have never been so happy. I have never felt so alive. I have never had so much self-respect. I have found the love of my life. My health is perfect. And my business is soaring. I never imagined life could be this good. The same can hold true for you. The gifts I’ve received are gifts available to you as well. Sure, you will have to make some new choices and take a few chances. Sure, you will have to invest some time and energy to reconnect with the great and magnificent parts of yourself that you may have lost. Sure, you may have to face a few fears that have been keeping you small, whether you’ve acknowledged it or not. But in so doing you will awaken your highest and greatest self. And what could possibly be more important than that?
The teacher I’ve mentioned is the wisest, most powerful and most noble person I know. He is an eccentric—a true original—and his ways are unorthodox, to put it mildly. Actually, he’s a bit of a wildman at times. You have never met anyone like him and you never will. But he is so very gifted in his ability to impart life-altering knowledge in a way that speaks to your soul and causes you to experience changes that will open up a beautiful life for you. His lessons will be very helpful as you seek to discover your destiny and live the gorgeous life that is your birthright.
I guess there are no accidents. I met my teacher the day after my epiphany in the motel room. I went to work that day for a meeting with my team, and my human resources manager, Evan Janssen, walked into my office with two tickets to a motivational seminar later that evening. Evan loved these kinds of events and was a huge fan of the whole personal growth movement. I, on the other hand, was a skeptic. To be honest with you, I don’t like motivational speakers at all. I’ve always found them to be a bit like cotton candy—sweet for a few moments but you soon discover that nothing lasts.
Evan’s little boy had his first piano recital that night, so Evan couldn’t attend the seminar. He wanted me to go. He thought the event would lift my spirits and perhaps inspire me to make the changes in my life he knew I needed to get back on track, not only professionally but personally. I told him I didn’t want to go and just couldn’t stomach the trite aphorisms and clichéd homilies commonly recited by motivators. I mentioned that I was still struggling with a lot of things and felt it best to be alone that evening. Then something interesting happened. My colleague, a highly intuitive man, looked deep into my eyes and said, “Dar, trust me on this one. I feel there is a reason you need to go to this seminar. It’s just a feeling I have in my gut. Please go.”
I have always been a man who lived mostly in his head. Reason rather than passion drove me. If something didn’t make sense at an intellectual level, I’d usually discount it. But I’d lived that way my whole life and my life still wasn’t working. I love Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same things and expecting different results.” If I wanted new results in my life I knew I had to behave in new ways. Otherwise my life would look the same, until I died.
Something deep within me suggested that there just might be another way to operate as a human being. I had recently read my very first book of philosophy, though I had never touched that kind of thing before. I don’t know what compelled me to pick it up but I did. Maybe, being in so much pain, I was ready to look anywhere for salvation. It is a truth that in our darkest times we are willing to go the deepest. When life is good, we live superficially; we are not very reflective. But when the seas get rough, we step out of ourselves and ponder why things have unfolded as they have. Adversity tends to make us more philosophical. During times of challenge, we begin to ask ourselves the bigger questions of life, such as why does suffering happen, why do our best-laid plans not work out as we expect, and is life ruled by the silent hand of chance or the powerful fist of choice.
In this book I picked up, the author wrote that the mind is limited while the heart is limitless. The mind can be cruel, causing you to spend the best years of your life living in the past or squandering the present worrying over things that will never happen. The mind craves external power, the kind based on worldly—rather than spiritual—things such as money, position and possessions. The problem with external power is that it is fleeting: when you lose the money, position and possessions, you lose the power. If you have tied your identity to those things, you will also lose a sense of who you are when they fall away. The only power worth anything is authentic power—that which comes from within.
The heart, according to this book, has no desire for these minor pursuits. The heart lives in the present moment, knowing that is where life is to be lived. The heart is concerned with healing into wholeness, love, compassion and service to other human beings. It is aware that each of us is connected at an unseen level, that we are all brothers and sisters of the same family and that happiness comes from giving and supporting the growth of others into their greatest selves. “Give up the drop, become the ocean,” said the brilliant Sufi poet Rumi. The heart knows this truth. Yes, the mind, with all its ability to reason and reflect, is a great tool that the heart should use to support its work, a tool that can be used for things like planning, learning and thinking. But these functions must be done in concert with the heart, and under its guidance. The head and heart must forge a lifetime partnership if one wants to live a beautiful life, the book informed me. They must work in harmony. Live completely in the head and you cannot feel the breath and rhythm of life. Live completely in the heart and you may find yourself acting like a love-struck fool, with poor judgment and no discipline. It’s all a fine balance, one that takes time, energy and understanding to get right.
Standing there, with Evan waiting patiently, I felt a pull to explore something new. Taking a moment to pay attention to what was happening below the surface, I decided to let go of the limitations of reason for a while and trust my deeper feelings. I agreed to go and took the tickets.
Evan reached over and gave me a hug. “We love you, you know.”
I was quiet as emotion welled up inside me on hearing this statement of profound kindness from my long-time colleague. Tears began to flow, partly over the sadness I felt from the way my life had unfolded in recent times and partly from the unconditional love I felt from another human being.
“Thanks, Evan,” I replied. “You’re a good man. I appreciate you.”
“Trust me, Dar, this seminar’s going to be really important for you. And who knows who you’ll meet there?”
Little did I know, I was about to meet the man who would lead me to my greatest life.
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