I thought the end game was to be so secure in myself that nothing could faze me. I was wrong.
The end game is to see what I’m capable of.
The end game is to test myself and ask more of myself.
The end game is to stretch and grow.
The end game is to keep evolving
The end game is to get to the end of my life and have satisfying answers to the following:
“Did you live the life you wanted?”
“Did you put yourself out there?”
“Did you become as strong as you wanted?”
“Did you let yourself be who you wanted?”
“Did you do what you wanted?”
“Did you play full out?”
“Did you live a life of meaning?”
“Did those important to you know you care?”
“Who is better off because you were here?”
Those are end game questions.
The actual life lived will depend on the person answering.
But you can see why my initial end game was mistaken.
To be so secure in myself that nothing will faze me — that’s a skill.
To be fazed and know how to recalibrate and move forward — that’s also a skill.
Acquiring skills is not an end game, at least not for me or my clients.
Cultivating skills and using them to create a meaningful life — that’s an end game.
Paint a future so compelling that you want to go through
the transformation required to achieve it.
Do you know what your end game is?
How would you answer the questions in this post?
If you’re struggling to imagine, try journaling your thoughts. Here are a few prompts to kick-start the process:
“What would it look like to live the life you wanted?”
“What would it look like to put yourself out there?”
“What would it look like to become as strong as you wanted?”
“What would it look like to let yourself be who you wanted?”
“What would it look like to do what you wanted?”
“What would it look like to play full out?”
“What would a life of meaning look like to you?”
“What would it look like if people important to you knew you cared?”
“How did you leave people better off because you were here?”
—
There’s a great quote in the book, Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath:
“The longtime newspaper writer, Ed Cray, a professor of communications at the University of Southern California, has spent almost thirty years teaching journalism. He says, ‘The longer you work on a story, the more you can find yourself losing direction. No detail is too small. You just don’t know what your story is anymore.'”
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
The more I do this growth work, the more I realize how easy it is to lose sight of the end game.
But now I know doing so is a thing. My hope is by sharing this post, now so do you.
What will you do with this knowledge?
And how will you keep this knowledge in your awareness?
