Why can't I find the answer / strategy / solution, so I can (finally!) reach my goals?

I’m a recovering frantic searcher. I was always frantically consuming personal and professional development in the name of finding the answer to the question: Why can’t I get where I want to go? Why can’t I create the freedom, lifestyle, and results I want? Why can’t I create the level of success I dream of? Searching, searching, frantically, obsessively searching!

I found dozens and dozens of answers. Every one was the answer. Until I implemented with rigid discipline, and the results didn’t come. Until it wasn’t actually the answer.

Back to searching...

I looked high, and low, and left, and right. I looked in books, blogs, podcasts, courses, social media, and all the experts. I was always on high alert, ears perked and eyes peeled, scouring for the answer, the information, the strategy, the piece I was missing.

What was I missing?! 

I looked ahead. I filled my days with endless to-do lists, and massive amounts of shit I didn’t want to do. No downtime, no breaks, no idleness. Soldier-level-commitment for marching forward, always.

I looked up. I prayed, God, guide me to the answers, guild me to the information I don't have, the information I need. 

I looked everywhere except within.

Obviously the answer wasn’t already in me. If it was, I’d already be there. All that’s in me are these fears, doubts, stuck energy, limiting beliefs, and old unconscious programming, keeping me playing out the same patterns, over and over again, forever, amen. Nope, no answers here. So please guide me to the answer out there.

Do you recognize yourself in these words?

Do you relate? Or maybe it just barely resonates, on a distant level, but it feels like there might be something there for you. Maybe?

You can’t find the solution you’re searching for because you’re looking for it out there, in the world. You're searching for your answer in other people's books, programs, podcasts, and advice.

The information you need to transform your results (+ life) isn’t in a book, podcast, or course. It’s not in someone else’s strategy or advice, or a new morning routine. It’s in YOU. The answer you're looking for out there is within you.

But where in me?

It’s in your fears, doubts, stuck energy, limiting beliefs, and unconscious programming that lives and operates within you…operates YOU. It’s a paradox. The very thing you don’t want to look at, the places you don’t want to go, are the things you need to look at, and places you need to go. Your blocks aren’t in the way, they are the way.

Listen. Trust. Lean in. Listen. Let the curiosity you’re feeling take center stage, and drive the car for a moment. What do these words make you wonder? What is the still, small voice saying right now?

Stay curious, get your journal, read the poem, and then write. What’s there for you right now? What do you know, in this moment?

“Always We Hope”
Lao Tzu

Always we hope that someone else has the answer,
some other place will be better,
some other time it will all turn out.
This is it.
No one else has the answer.

No other place will be better.
And it has already turned out.

At the center of your being you have the answers.
And you know what you want.

There is no need to run outside for better seeing,
nor to peer from the window.

Rather abide at the center of your being.
For the more you leave it,
the less you know.
Search your heart and see that
the way to do is to be.