The Path of Success
There was a young boy who traveled across Japan to study at a famous martial arts school. When he arrived at the dojo he had an audience before the sensei.
The sensei asked, “What can I do for you?”
The little boy responded, “I’d like to study with you to become the best karate master in the world. How long will it take?”
“10 years,” says the sensei.
“10 years!” exclaims the boy. “What if I study twice as hard as your other students?”
“20 years,” says the sensei.
“20 years!” The boy responds, “What if I study with all my effort, night and day?”
“In that case, 30 years,” says the sensei.
“How is it,” says the boy, “that every time I offer to work harder, you say it will take longer?”
“The answer is clear,” responded the sensei. “With one eye focused on the destination, there is only one eye with which to find The Way.”
This story is powerful because it points to the myth that we as a society are just beginning to disentangle ourselves from the Myth of Doing.
The Myth of Doing is the belief that the more we do, the likelier we are to succeed, and success brings happiness and fulfillment. We are so well trained at doing that that we get our dopamine hits from checking things off our to-do list. Yet, no matter how much we accomplish we still go to bed at night feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and stressed.
I used to work as an attorney for a law firm in Washington D.C. As a law student, I did as much as possible in order to succeed. When a law firm offered me a coveted position among their ranks, I wore the job like a badge of honor.
Years went by as I waited for happiness and fulfillment. It never came. The shine on my badge wore off. I began hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock each morning, not because I was tired but because I didn’t want to live the life I had worked so hard to create. My stomach curled each morning at the thought of going into the office, yet I was afraid to leave at the end of the day. My physical and mental health broke down, and my therapist and doctor agreed: I suffered from depression. All my doing had gotten me where I thought I wanted to go, but I was barely surviving, let alone thriving.
After the biggest trial of my career defending my client against a $6B judgment, I came home exhausted and sick. I flipped on the light in my bathroom and leaned over the sink. Staring into my reflection, I saw that my eyes were empty. There was no one home.
Then the partner on the case called. Over the phone, he told me, “The jury came back with a verdict. We won! I’m going to take a vacation and I’ll see you back at the office afterward.”
“Thank you,” I responded. Then before I could stop myself, I added, “I quit.”
With a backpack slung over my shoulder, I left Washington D.C. to travel the world, exploring 6 continents and 14 countries in search of how to create a fulfilling life.
My experience is only one of the millions of stories about people quitting their jobs. As a nation, we are craving more than a paycheck. We are looking for meaning, but we don’t know what it looks like or how to find it.
The sensei in the karate story points us towards the path to find what we are truly looking for, what he calls, “The Way.” This path is right under our noses, but it took me around the world to find it, studying with preeminent consciousness experts along the way. This path is being, and it is the complement to all our doing.
Since discovering the power of being, I’ve navigated it many times. As a founder of a wellness brand that was acquired in 2021, as a transformational coach with my clients who have all achieved a measure of success yet yearn for something more, and as a wife and a mother of three children, two living and one received into the loving arms of the universe.
The path of being is effective and efficient at getting us where we truly want to go because it works in every context of life. It doesn’t matter what degrees you’ve earned, where you shop, how you vote, or what your dietary restrictions are. Being is about the fundamental mechanics of how being human works, and no matter your story, you are human.
Let’s navigate this path together and learn how to get where we truly want to go.
P = Presence
Presence is about bringing ourselves into this moment.
It’s a concept that we are quick to say, “I get that,” and then move on to the next thing to do. Being fully in the moment might be easily understood, but hustle culture doesn’t teach us how to practice this art form.
When we slow down and practice presence, amazing things happen. The Harvard Business Review reported on a study conducted with over 300 businesses on this phenomenon of slowing down. At the end of the study, they found that the businesses that slowed down at key moments to assess decisions saw an average of 40% increase in sales and over 50% increase in profit.
A = Awareness
The power of presence comes from our awareness. When we are present, we slow down the chaos in our minds. Our thoughts settle, and we create a calm space in which we become aware of new ideas and insights. This inner intelligence is always there waiting for us to notice it, but we are usually in such a rush that we pass it by.
Busy people don’t have epiphanies. The seeds for Einstein’s ground-breaking theories did not come from when he was working as a scientist or working to solve a problem. They were planted when he lived at sea, spending days watching the sun sparkle on the waves.
T = Trust
The key to using our insights is trust. Trusting the wisdom that shows up for us is what allows us to speed up on execution, getting where we want to go faster.
However, we tend to bottleneck our ability to speed up because we are afraid to trust ourselves. Just as quickly as insights reveal themselves to us, we shut them down. We stuff down our “aha” moments, suppress our creativity, and deny our truth.
Why do we do this?
We are wired to feel safe, and we feel safe when we belong. Researchers Dr. Matthew Lieberman and Dr. Naomi Eisenberger out of UCLA studied how our bodies understand belonging and found that our social experiences are managed by the same neural networks as physical pain. This means that when someone hurts our feelings, our body understands it the same way as if we injured our leg. When we have an idea, one of the first things we wonder is how it will be received. We want to feel safe to express ourselves without the risk of being punished for it.
What I see happen to insights is that they get ignored because we feel afraid to share a piece of ourselves for fear of being rejected by our peers, colleagues, friends, and family. We are constantly asking ourselves how much of our truth is safe to express. This constant assessing funnels our energy away from executing on the wisdom that showed up for us, instead using it to look for validation of our wisdom. Our navigation down our path toward fulfillment slows to a crawl.
Trusting our wisdom can require facing the disappointment and confusion of others, a leap of faith that feels like jumping over a wide canyon. When I quit my law firm, I had to give back my badge of honor. My colleagues saw me as someone who couldn’t hack it. To them, I was a loser. But after months of traveling, I’d wake up and look at myself in the mirror, and I was there. I was coming back to myself, and I knew I was a winner. I was getting where I wanted to go.
H = Home
Where we want to go is a place beyond success. It’s a place that everyone seeks no matter who we are, what we do, who we love, or where we live.
Where we want to go is home. Home is that place where we are fully connected to who we are, our being. We are home when we express ourselves fully and honestly, deeply and richly. When we are home, who we are is in alignment with what we want and what we do about it. It’s when we stop denying our truth and start living our dreams.
When Gandhi was asked to give the Indian people a message he said, “My life is my message.”
What is your life’s message?
Mine is to let my life be a model of living fully expressed. It’s to leave a legacy for my children–not a number in a bank account or a status of power to inherit–but a blueprint of how to navigate their authentic, fulfilling path.
My hope is that you use the tools of PATH to navigate creating your most extraordinary life. Find time during the day to be present. Notice when you are able to slow down and settle your thoughts. This could be a walk in nature, crocheting a blanket, or taking a few deep breaths. Become aware of all the insights that show up in this space. Acknowledge that they are there, and leverage their power by trusting yourself. Use your wisdom to guide you home, where the most extraordinary life is waiting for you.