THE UNDEFINABLE LEVERAGE

What defines you?
Success? Career? Family? Relationships? Money?

We build our lives around what matters to us most. It works—until one day it doesn't.

We can base our life on our career. We succeed, move forward, achieve and overachieve our goals. Our life is built around it. Then we lose a job. What happens? It feels as though life itself has been destroyed because our career had become its foundation.

Or we build our life around marriage, making it the center of it. We invest ourselves completely. We care, love and nurture it. Then our spouse leaves for another person. The foundation of our life disappears.

Wealth. Our life is designed around being financially successful. There are many scenarios in which money is gone. We are shocked. Devastated. The foundation we built our life upon has vanished.

Business. We invest years of our time and energy to design and build it. It becomes our child, a part of ourselves, a part of who we are. Then the business stops working. It is a hard blow to face.

Someone we deeply love dies. Life suddenly divides into before and after.

Acceptance. We long to belong. We want to be liked, accepted and be part of a community. But we are not accepted because we do not fit in. Suddenly the foundation we built our life upon begins to crumble.

Love. Being loved in the way we want and giving our love back in the same way is becoming something we build our life around. Years pass by, the love we want does not seem to find its way into our life. Our center is shuttered, life start seeming meaningless.

Pain. Sometimes we build our life around pain. The pain of loss. The pain of rejection. The pain of not belonging. The pain of being unloved or the pain of a loveless life. The pain of an unfulfilled dream. Then we finally find a way to heal from pain, only to discover something unexpected. Without the pain, there is very little left. The pain had quietly become the foundation upon which we built our life. Without pain there is not much left in our life, just emptiness.

Perfection. Sometimes we strive to be perfect. To be the best version of ourselves. To do everything perfectly well, to always be ahead. This guides us throughout life, helps us succeed. Until we make a mistake, the big one. Feels like our center has been shattered. Something we base ourself on – our perfection, is gone. We are not perfect, meaning we have no value, we failed.

Plans. We want to do something specific next week, next month, when the current big project is over, when we have more time, when the circumstances allow … And we never do. Plans crashed. What is to live from? Is everything a fake?

What is it that cannot be taken away? Regardless. Something we can build our life upon. The leverage from which our life naturally unfolds. That is the highest-return focus area we can invest in. If we are willing to look beyond what is temporary and unstable.