Many companies are experiencing people leaving, and are not able to fill vacant positions. It even has a name now, the Great Resignation.
As many leave the work-force, I wonder how many people are left at their desk, dreaming of being somewhere else, wanting to be doing something else? Or how many that are simply ignoring the quiet voice telling them that something more is possible? I imagine it is quite a few. And I know it is a great loss to the potential of our shared future.
Depending on our value system and where we position ourselves, we can come up with many reasons for why this is and what the remedy is.
I believe that if you dig deep enough into either POV, underneath them all you’ll find a deep longing to thrive and experience a meaningful life. The way we have organized our society and our work-life might keep people dancing, but who is clapping?
The problem is that few people truly thrive today. The challenge is that deep inside us, we all know it is possible. We have just forgotten how.
What does it mean to thrive?
I believe we are all individual souls with an individual experience of what it means to thrive. However, I also believe that we all need the same fundamental qualities for that true experience to come alive in us. We innately want to feel safe, contribute to the creation of life in ways that are meaningful for us, we want to experience ease, we want to learn and grow, feel love, trust, peace, prosperity, we want to feel recognized, capable and able to navigate the currents of Life.
The good news is that we all carry an innate ability to thrive, and when we do, we are able to create environments that help others thrive. All we need are to awaken the qualities already lying dormant within each being.
The bad news is that for as long as we believe that something outside of ourselves is the answer to that deep longing, we will keep engaging in an endless search to find it. Or perhaps worse, tell ourselves that nothing more is available to us – going against our deeper knowing that it is.
Thriving is not something we need to learn, but something we need to remember to be.
The addiction to external achievement
One of the big challenges we face is that we live in a world where our inner longings are pursued through external achievements. We think that the pursuit of success goals, money, promotions, popularity, relationships will quench that inner thirst.
The reality is that for most people to pursue something it needs to serve an external purpose, or else it is not worth engaging in. If people do not feel a level of certainty that the activity, they engage in, contributes directly to an external goal, they are not likely to pursue it.
Just consider, when was the last time you engaged in something, not because it served either power, beauty or recognition, but simply because it nourished you? We need to know something lead to a result, so we don’t lose money, lose time, or loose power.
We are so conditioned to search for answers outside of ourselves that its rare to stop and question if we are searching in the right places. And, even when people realize that the answers are to be found within, they search for gurus and spiritual systems that promise solutions, they end up buying one magic pill after another that promise them the exact same things – money, promotions, popularity and relationships. The tool is mistaken for the learning.
When people become exhausted from that game, they often lower their ambitions instead. They turn their back on achievement, they downsize, minimize and vilify material gains. It might feel good for a while, but it will still not satisfy that inner longing.
There is nothing wrong with either – however, both expresses imbalances in our ability to thrive. One is like a disease and the other is an allergic reaction. Neither brings health.
Where the outer search ends thriving begins
What brings health is the remembering of our true inner balance brought about by deep inner connection to ourselves. When we truly begin to look within and assume full responsibility for our inner world, then we start the journey to sustainably thrive in life.
An important aspect of thriving is to have balance between inner and outer world. We should not deprive ourselves of the external rewards of the world, but we should not overindulge in them either.
It is all about where we hold our position of power. Do we place our power in that which is outside of ourselves – in the external? Or do we place the power in the internal – in the relationship to ourself where we know that all is sourced from within.
When we believe our true power is attributed to anything outside of ourselves; that being money, our position, our relationships, our title, the business model we use or the product we offer, we become innately powerless and disconnected from ourselves. When we become disconnected from ourselves, the depth of our being begins to call us back through an inner longing.
Few stops to resolve that longing within themselves. Rather than sitting still with ourselves long enough, we go searching for someone that can give us the answers we are looking for or provide the secret that will put an end to our suffering.
We might need someone who can help us remember who we truly are and how we navigate our own inner waters again – but the only true way out is in, and ultimately we are all alone in that journey.
Thriving creates a better tomorrow
Inside each of us lives the life intelligence to thrive. If we are courageous enough to take the deep journey within, we begin to remember that the power to thrive is within each of us, and not depended on anything outside of ourselves – even though our Limited mind believes it to be so.
Your powers are within – you are the creation, which is in service to the whole, you are the love that ease inner fear, you are the peace that calms suffering, the prosperity that keep you safe. It is not what you do or what you have, but who you are. As you are, so your life is.
When you become who you truly are, all you do is born out of the intelligence of thriving, helping all other life to thrive.
Our world is in need of people, who can lead a better tomorrow based on thriving today. People who are able to serve and create a new future that enable all to thrive. It is not an ideal, but within inner reach. Our full inner capacity is needed to create a world that thrives. And we are the world.