3522: [Part 1] Wake Up to the Life that Lives Inside of You by Jay Harrington of Life and Whim

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily, Wake Up to the Life that Lives Inside of You, Part 1 by Jay Harrington of LifeandWhim.com and I'm Justin Malik. Welcome to one of the only podcasts in the world where blogs are narrated to you for free with permission from the authors, an award-winning podcast thanks to you. Today I have a bit of a longer post so I'll read the first half today and then finish the rest for you tomorrow. So with that, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life.

[00:00:29] Wake Up to the Life that Lives Inside of You, Part 1 by Jay Harrington of LifeandWhim.com In screenplay and novel writing, the inciting incident is the event that gets the story rolling. It's the action or decision that introduces the problem that the story's main character must overcome. In Jerry Maguire, it's the moment that Jerry writes his mission statement manifesto about the need to put people first in the sports agency business.

[00:00:58] It leads to his firing and he walks away from his power job and starts over. In movies and books, the inciting incident is unmistakable. It's the moment that changes the main character's life irrevocably. That's the thing about fiction. Almost every story follows the same arc. There's background, struggle, and ultimately triumph with twists and turns along the way.

[00:01:21] But the story almost always gets resolved, wrapped up in a pretty bow, and more often than not, the protagonist lives happily ever after. It's said that art imitates life, but real life is, of course, far different. And messier, at least the ending. For almost all of us, potentially inciting incidents happen frequently, but rarely do they lead to real change. Often we miss their meaning altogether.

[00:01:48] Other times we recognize their significance, but are unable or unwilling to leverage their transformational power. We have a health scare, but do little to improve our lifestyle. We get laid off from a job we hate, but instead of pursuing a vocation we are passionate about, we jump right back into the corporate grind. One of the reasons that I think people miss these signals is that, consciously or not, they live two lives.

[00:02:15] One life exists on the outside, which is where our public persona exists. It's the world in which others know us and judge us, good or bad, based on our achievements and failures. Another life resides on the inside, which is the world that only we know. It's a private place, intimate and raw. Rarely do we let anyone else in. It's where our hopes and dreams live, too often stifled and repressed.

[00:02:42] Because we fight so hard to maintain our outside shell, we miss the moments, the inciting incidents, in our lives that call us to change. The lucky few come to the realization that what lives inside must exist outside on their own terms. They seek a higher calling. For the rest of us, this awakening comes, if at all, in the darkest of hours. Pain is a powerful catalyst. I had a meaningful moment of realization almost four years ago.

[00:03:12] It was the painful variety. In the movie The Hangover, the inciting incident is the moment when the guys awake in their trashed hotel room with no recollection of what happened the night before. Doug was missing, and they had no idea where he was. In my story, this was not the closing act of a rowdy night out with the guys. It was 9 p.m. at the Detroit Athletic Club, and I was hosting a holiday party for the employees and their spouses of our marketing agency and my law firm.

[00:03:40] It was a festive night meant to usher in the holiday season, and I'm overindulged. In fact, I didn't even make it to the dessert course. Heather got me home safely. If I had a tail, it would have been between my legs. I woke up the next day, pounding headache, cotton mouth, and the prior night's events slowly came back to me. Textbook inciting incident.

[00:04:02] What made this one different is that this time I recognized it for what it was, a moment for serious and piercing self-analysis. I spent the next few days reflecting, digging deep, and didn't like what I found. From the outside, I understood that my adult life appeared to be an enviable one marked by success and achievement. Nothing in my public persona suggested that anything was wrong. By all accounts, I had a good thing going.

[00:04:30] But on the inside, the story was different. The weight of trying to build a life that matched my definition of success was bearing down on me. My foundation began to crack. I was embroiled in a difficult litigation matter at work that consumed me. As a result, I was often not present physically and emotionally, at home for my family or friends. And because my legal practice was so busy,

[00:04:55] Heather, who was pregnant with our twin girls, was left to run our marketing business largely on her own. At the same time, my father was quickly declining from the ravages of dementia. He passed away, and I grappled with the fact that I was not there for him like I should have been at the moment he needed me most. I achieved success, at least in my notion of it at the time, but hated the means by which I acquired it.

[00:05:22] On the inside, I was lit up by the idea of creating and writing, but I ignored these signals as frivolous distractions on the path I was traveling. I had relinquished control. The gap between the life that I was living and the life I wanted grew. I'm not sure why that embarrassing night at the holiday party led me to finally confront these issues, but it did. From this dark moment came a wake-up call.

[00:05:48] A shallow breath, a faint pulse, of a life unlived. Change began slowly, at a crossroads. For the first time in my adult life, I faced the fact that, while I was on the road to success, the farther I traveled down this road, the unhappier I grew. In the past, when grappling with uncertainty and insecurity, I attempted to correct course by adding more to my life. If life felt empty, I'd tell myself,

[00:06:16] the best way to fill the void is to add another layer to it. Not feeling content at work? I'm gonna start another business. What I came to realize is that by adding more, I was not filling the void, I was just adding another layer of complexity to my life, further exacerbating the problem. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post titled, Wake Up to the Life That Lives Inside of You,

[00:06:45] by Jay Harrington of lifeandwhim.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. The grind never stops as a business owner. When you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do, and that's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. We've been lucky finding our team here at Optimal Living Daily, and I think LinkedIn Jobs would have taken luck out of the equation, finding us the best quickly. With LinkedIn Jobs, posting your job for free is just the beginning. You can pay to promote it for three times more qualified candidates,

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[00:07:43] at linkedin.com slash selection. That's linkedin.com slash selection to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Thank you to Jay. I think what he talked about with the outside versus inside versions of ourselves is really true and something we don't talk about often on this show. I can definitely relate to maintaining that outside shell that he talks about. Even with this podcast, sometimes there's this pressure

[00:08:11] to seem like I have everything figured out, when really on the inside, I'm still learning and growing just like everyone else. I think that's true for a lot of us. We put this public face while keeping our deeper hopes, fears, and dreams tucked away inside. It's almost like we're performing in a way, showing the world what we think it wants to see. When I was tracking my mood daily for over a year, one thing I noticed was how often I'd look fine on the outside,

[00:08:40] even on days when I was really struggling inside. It's like we're all wearing these masks, and sometimes we wear them for so long we forget they're even there. It's like we think if we just keep achieving more, doing more, being more successful, somehow that'll make the inside match the outside, but usually it just makes the gap bigger. So maybe today we can think about our own inside and outside lives. Where might there be disconnects? And what parts of ourselves are we keeping hidden

[00:09:10] that maybe deserve some light? On that note, we'll finish this article tomorrow. So for now, thank you for being here and listening. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you tomorrow for part two, where your optimal life awaits.