“It scared me, I even told my coach on one of our calls “I kinda want to keep a bit of trauma so that I don’t lose my drive and my success” - Me
Over the past several years I’ve been doing a lot of work on healing myself.
From my childhood, from my failures, from my mistakes, from losing a fiance at 27 from cancer.
Because I recognized that I was struggling. Struggling to be happy, struggling to feel emotions, struggling to be and feel like me again.
The cancer journey is what really pushed it over the edge for me and definitely shaped a lot of my decision making and direction in life.
All of these cumulative experiences only added fuel to how “driven” I was.
From a young age, I had big dreams, play in the NBA, be a pro bodybuilder, start a business, etc…
I always had a lot of drive but lacked wisdom and direction.
As I’ve gotten older and life handed me a few left jabs and right hooks.
That initial drive (Which originally came out of looking for my parents approval) was transformed and started to be fueled by trauma from my failures and from my chapter as a caregiver and financially provider (A shitty one at the time) to my ex to fund her healing journey.
That trauma/drive got me to start my current business over 6 years ago and it was successful from month one and I loved it. I was and am good at it, but that fuel behind it was still the same.
So when I started working with my life coach if you want to call it that way, I started to uncover and deal with some of these “fuel sources”.
And I’ll be honest with you, it was hard, it sucked, there are many sessions where I didn’t want to work on these things. But now over the course of the past five years I’ve addressed 95% of them.
The reason I’m sharing this is to share the context, because about three years ago I started noticing myself being less driven, which scared the crap out of me because a lot of my identity was attached to being the successful business guy that doesn’t take days off and is always on his computer/cellphone.
I wondered why that was and this may sound funny to you but at first I thought, is my testosterone low because I know that it can be linked to loss of drive so I got some blood work and I was at healthy levels.
And the more I wrote and spent time with myself I noticed that the flame, the drive that was driven by trauma was starting to receive less fuel because of all the inner work I was doing.
It scared me, I even told my coach on one of our calls “I kinda want to keep a bit of trauma so that I don’t lose my drive and my success” because frankly 90% + of my identity was tied to my work…who am I kidding 100% of my identity was tied to my work.
I was purposefully trying to keep my wound open with both hands just to continue down a path I thought was the “right” one.
And losing your identity is scary. My coach chuckled and said, there are other forms of fuel and you can be driven by different things.
There are the 6 human needs that drive all behavior (From Tony Robbins work)
Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others
Mine were for sure driven by certainty in case anyone I loved got sick again, I needed to have the financial resources to provide for them because I couldn’t last time.
There are a few other mix in there that were driving me but the main lesson is that you can be fueled by different things other than trauma.
Love, contribution can be your primary driver and don’t get me wrong they were in my mix, just not at the top.
Because to me life pain has changed the order.
Since that time I’ve continued to work on myself and have found myself being less “driven” in the societal sense of the word.
I had to trust the process that I could still create a beautiful life for myself, my wife and have the impact that I wanted to have without the primary fuel being trauma, insecurity,etc…
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect, I don’t have it all figured out, I still have my moments of struggles where I catch myself reverting back to old patterns. But I’m much further along in the journey than I once was.
Which has allowed me to create a beautiful life for our family with balance.
By all means I’m not the alpha male online persona telling you to wake up at 4 am, take an ice bath, work 80 hours a week, train 6 days a week like you’re in the military and that leads their life with a fuel source I don’t even want to touch,
I take 7 day digital detoxes the first seven days of every month. I work 3-4 hours a day, I have weekly date nights with my wife, I don’t spend much time on my phone even though I work from online and run an online company. I prioritize time with friends, I take the time to cook healthy meals from scratch, I travel the world with my wife (Just came back from a three month Asia trip), I get to serve our clients with our incredible team of coaches and I feel happy regardless of it all.
Which if you would have told me that 5 years ago I would have called bullshit.
Also what has become interesting to me and has gotten me to spend even less time on social media is that all the “business” people that I would see online, learn from and that I wanted to be like. I now see them in a different light.
Don’t get me wrong they are all far more successful than me or at least it appears so from a financial stand points but many of them are on their 2nd or 3rd wife, many of them work 60h + a week, don’t see their kids and some of them because they’ve been doing it for so long, their health is failing them.
So I honestly stopped consuming their content and I’m just focusing on reading books that I feel are aligned with the type of life and mindset I want to have and as a closing note I wanted to share the last 4 books I read that really helped me shape my life differently:
1- The Courage to be disliked co-authored by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitaka Koga 2- The Courage to be happy co-authored by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitaka Koga 3- Ikigai co-authored by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles 4- Wabi Sabi by Nobuo Suzuki
I know I can’t be the only one going through something like this or having these realizations because I feel that it’s all I see nowadays whenever I do go online.
The world is changing, the people are healing and I’m excited to see what that creates.
Sincerely,
Maxime Sigouin
