Sometimes we are happy with the life we are living. Sometimes we feel dissatisfied, but we don’t quite know why.
The reason for this dissatisfaction is our inner drive to become: it’s our equivalent of a caterpillar’s longing to transform into a butterfly, a nut’s longing to grow into a tree. We feel happiest when we are living in line with this unconscious longing. We feel dissatisfied when there is a gap between the person we are being and the person we want to become.
We all know what a caterpillar and a nut want to become but what about a human being? Sigmund Freud was the first person to research this scientifically. He discovered that, for all of us:
“Life is love and work.”
Success for any human being comes when we are able to love and be loved and to do work that matters to us.
To this, the psychologist Will Schutz added a third dimension. He realised that people also want to be significant, to have status. We all want to do something or be someone that has significance or status compared to someone or something outside ourselves. We all want to matter.
For some people this means having more money than other people. For others it means having a bigger house or car or more followers on social media. And for some people it means making a difference to their family, their community, an organisation, nature, future generations, or perhaps just one other person or thing.
Whatever these three inner drives look like for you, these are what pull each of us forward and inspire us:
- We all want to love and be loved
- We all want to do work that is important to us, which uses our unique talents, and
- We all want to be significant in some way, that matters to us
This is why advertisers promise:
- “Buy this product and people will love you”
- “Buy this product and you will be making the smart choice, the clever choice”, and
- “Buy this product and you will have status, you will be important.”
What all this means, when the whole world is changing, is that the better we know and understand what our versions of these three unconscious drives or longings are, the better we will be able to let go of what doesn’t matter and focus instead on achieving what does matter most to us. The better we will then be able to lead ourselves (and others) through this time of change.
And when we are able to use the change around us to follow our inner drive to become, to become whoever we most long to be, then this is another step to becoming antifragile.
Are you happy with the life you are living? Do you feel the need to make a change? Is the gap to do with love, work, or the significance you have in the world? What do you want instead? And how will you inspire yourself and the people around you to long to make that happen?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo By Maria Keays via StockPholio.com