The Mount Everest of Personal Growth

A Thought

“What’s truly yours can not be given to you.” — Anonymous

A Reflection

It’s difficult to say this without sounding arrogant … but 90% of the self-help and spiritual teaching out there is glossy nonsense. Almost everything you come across is a watered-down version of an idea that was at one point profound but has been ground down to its most marketable version. As a result, the idea—once an edgy and revolutionary thing—has been stripped of its power. Why? Because the real work of personal and spiritual development isn’t glossy; it’s messy, ambiguous, confusing, and, most importantly, non-linear. The mind hates that, mine included. 

As I wrote in Good Authority, you don’t get to look good and grow at the same time.

It’s that real work, the giving up of your conditioning, your compensatory identities, the ways you’ve coped yourself into a corner in your life, that I want to talk with you about today. 

I started that work back in 1998, at least; that’s what I thought at the time. I spent the next ten years in deep study and practice of a range of traditions, meditation, yoga, somatic and emotional therapies, trying to discover this thing called my authentic self. You might judge it as a narcissistic search; it surely was in a sense, but it was how I dealt with a deep sense of unease. I knew something was wrong, and I used my considerable will to go to the ends of the earth to figure out what it was. 

I needed an answer for how to show up in the world as a man—professionally and personally—in a way that felt true to me. And while the experiences I had in those first ten years of searching were valuable, incredibly so, what they really did was set the foundation for what would happen next. It was that foundation that gave me just enough strength to confront the biggest challenge of my life. 

That challenge was a challenge to the notion of self—and it had everything to do with authority. I spent those years in a rigorous process of pulling apart my assumptions about authority, about why I believed what I did, and who I thought I was. And the result was equal parts humbling and terrifying. I had to accept that despite external appearances, at a deep psychological level, I was an emotional house of cards—easily triggered, quick to judge, unable to love, and, worst of all, unable to let myself be loved (which is far more difficult).

What I realized was that my nearly lifelong search for authenticity was really the search for authority, my own. 

Yet, if you search all the books and teachers online and offline, you rarely hear anyone talk about authority in this way.

In this week’s episode, I thought I’d take a deep dive into this terrain to see if I can inspire you—and maybe scare you a little—to see the search for authority as the Mount Everest of personal and spiritual growth, the way it came to be for me.

Hope to see you at Base Camp.

A Stretch

You can use this quick set of questions to get traction on hidden authority ‘baggage.’ The next time you walk away from a conversation thinking to yourself, I wish I would’ve handled that differently; try journaling with these questions.

1. What did you want to say?

2. What did you say?

3. What was the gap between the two?

4. What was valid about why you edited yourself? (e.g., you feared retaliation, etc.)

5. What was not valid about why you edited yourself? (e.g., you weren’t really in danger)

6. Who in your (early) life edited themselves this way or taught you to edit yourself this way? 

7. Based on what you just discovered, how can you redo this conversation with this person (or prepare yourself for the next time? 

Here’s an example to help you get started:

1. I wanted to tell my boss that we should scrap that piece of work.

2. Instead, I told them I could spend more time on it to make it good enough.

3. My honest view was that we should start over.

4. Nothing really; I think my boss would have preferred my honest opinion.

5. I edited myself because I fell for the sunk cost fallacy (“Well, we’re already this far …”

6. Upon reflection, I realized I take after my dad in this way: he never throws anything away.

7. I can go to my boss and say, “You know what, on second thought, I think we can get a better product by scrapping that draft and starting over.”

An Ask

I'm asking you to do some work in today’s conversation and this week’s episode on Authority. I know how busy you are, but I genuinely want you to come on this journey with me. But to show you what’s possible with this approach, I’m asking for a bit of your trust to try these ideas beyond reading them. Take 15 minutes at some point before the weekend is out to reflect quietly on these ideas. What’s at the heart of your struggle to find self-authority? Does the idea that you might not have it get you defensive?  If so, can you get past that and keep reflecting?  What do you find when you do? 

A Bonus

If you’re looking for more bite-sized content throughout the week, come hang out with me over on Instagram!

jonathanrefound

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