I don’t know when it started – high school most likely.
I was going to really be someone: have a really important job and make millions.
I’d show them.
The why doesn’t really matter. What mattered was that I’d set myself on a course to live a life based on some made up gotcha, a dollar figure or title, rather than what I really wanted.
Forty years passed and I hadn’t showed them anything. I had never felt lower.
A few years earlier, when in a very bad place and feeling alone, I found a men’s team. These were men who cared enough about me to tell me the truth. They were willing to be there for me even when I revealed my darkest secrets, things I’d never revealed to anyone.
Among other things I explained that working out of my home office was terribly isolating. My partner was online. Our customers were online. There was all this cool innov-ation going on, all these great ideas and gadgets and stuff that could be done with electronics. I wanted to talk about it, be part of it, get my arms and mind around it. But I was by myself.
My son was still young and my wife, though we loved one another deeply, didn’t share those interests, those needs. I wanted to be with people, I told the men: to work with a group of like-minded folks, to be part of a project, to be on, or at least near, the cutting edge. But it was tough to do: you can’t make millions in an office job. I had the big house on a lake in Cottage country. I had a boat moored out back. I had my own business and, with the men back in my life, It felt like I had climbed out of a hole.
But now what? With all these good men around me who had my back, why did I still feel so bad? I couldn’t square that circle: instead I was trapped inside it and I couldn’t find the way out.
Then, at a team meeting one night, when I was once again talking about how important it was for me to make a million, an unusual conversation happened with a teammate named Dan.
“I have to get there,” I said, “and I feel like I’m never going to.”
“But… is that stuff really important to you?” he asked skeptically. “I mean, you talk about wanting collaboration and interesting colleagues and discussions about ideas. You say you want to attend science conferences and experiment with new tech and have less financial stress. But I never hear you talk about needing all that money for something. You don’t tell us you want money for an airplane, or to build something, or start a new company. It seems like a thing you just say. It sounds meaningful but like it’s old news… is it really important to you anymore?”
Taken aback, I thought about that. Nowhere else in my life did it seem like what really mattered required big scores or a lot of money. Why the seeming contradiction?
I had no answer.
We talked more about it and he helped me find clarity about what really mattered: my wife feeling safe and loved. My son feeling supported and loved. Time with friends and family. Being around people every day. And most importantly, doing what I really loved: being involved with emerging technologies, all that “cool new stuff,” and being part of that cutting-edge world. It really excited me: it always had. Money hadn’t.
Then came the Big Reveal. Most of what I was actually doing—trying to score big, make millions, and show them—wasn’t simply out of alignment with all this: in fact, it was directly getting in the way. I felt really sick, sad too, and angry—even ashamed. I didn’t know how to deal with this realization. Had I wasted all these years pursuing something I didn’t really care about?
It took a few weeks of grappling with this, rolling it around in my head and bringing my thoughts to the men’s circle, but eventually I (mostly) let go of all that angst about the past. I refocused on the future and the question now was how to create that future, that life aligned with what I really cared about, and shed the regrets completely.
Even more importantly, the past had in fact given me so much: the wife I loved, the son I loved, and the work experience and chops that would allow me to forge my new path.
That path didn’t magically appear, either. It took several years to manifest, but I managed to remain focused. I took a job I would previously have sneered at because it couldn’t deliver my ‘millions.’ Yet, though wasn’t right for the Big Bucks, it was exactly right for me.
But there were issues still: I felt stuck where I was living and literally everything around me—the house, the boat, the neighborhood—was anchored to that old way of living. I had to get away form all of it.
That was the lever, the accelerant. The vision of life in a new place, what that could mean for me and my family, shifted my whole being. My wife saw it too, and despite the beautiful waterfront property in cottage country, she was wide open to a move.
After that things moved quickly. We readied our home for sale. I took a permanent position doing exactly what I loved the most. It certainly wouldn’t yield millions but it offered everything I needed to have what really mattered.
Image by XR Expo
The move itself was chaotic, emotional. I began to doubt myself again, to second guess the whole thing. But within a few months the truth was obvious to us both—we were right where we needed to be. Close to family and to our niece’s and nephew’s young kids. Once again we had a beautiful home, one my wife really loved. I was now near the city with all its energy and life and excitement, things I’d badly missed out in the country.
And every workday, as I had pined for out loud to my team for years, I was surrounded by people who loved the same things I did. I brought all my experience, knowledge, and excitement to them and our customers and even got paid to attend all those cool and exciting new tech conferences I had longed for. It was fabulous.
But most amazing of all, I could just be. I could do me, the way I really am, doing what fulfilled me. My wife indeed felt safe and loved and had her husband back: the spark in my eye that she adored—and that she felt had long been missing—was back. I was no longer closed off and shut down. My love could be released. At last, without the weight and the chokehold of the expectations I’d set years before, without the bitter grind of I’ll show ’em as motivation I was, at long last, free.
I will turn sixty this year. I could certainly, as I used to, feel regret for what came before. But the hell with that: all I feel is excitement, like I easily have another sixty years in me. I love my life and I wake up at six each morning eager to go. This is what I was born to do.
Do I have more work to do? Are there other issues I could focus on? Damn right. Yet now I can work from a place of strength, and ensure that all I do is aligned with who I am and what I really want. I can honour what truly matters to me while helping other men discover that about themselves.
If you’re already on a Men’s Team, keep at it. If not, get one. Either way, be open to a challenge, to seeing things differently, and to questioning all the rote assumptions underlying your life. Test them. Make sure they ring true. And if they don’t, there might just be a new journey begging to be undertaken in your future. Equally important: pay attention to the little things your teammates say. One of them might just be a Dan: the man who asks the right question at the right time and who, if you listen closely to your answers, may set you off on that journey.
I knew this work mattered. I now know it matters far more than I’d ever imagined.
About the Author:
Dave Bowland is…
