The Journey From Doing More to Being More

 As they say, I have reached the autumn of my life. More time to reflect.

It seems to me that there are always two movements in life: one focused on the material world and one focused on consciousness. Let me share some thoughts about this.

When you arrive here on Earth, you begin with nothing. Very quickly, you learn that anything is possible. You want to discover, learn, grow, and experience. You want to build something, contribute something, create something.

This is a very natural first movement.
Your attention is directed outward. You build a career, perhaps start a family, travel, gather experiences, and try to create a good life for yourself.
You learn, develop, and keep looking ahead.
It’s like a horizontal line, from a to b.

But what happens when many of those goals have been achieved?

What happens when, on the outside, life actually looks pretty good?

For many people, a strange feeling begins to emerge.
Not because something is missing, but because everything seems to be in place and yet something still feels off.

The things that once gave you direction no longer bring the same sense of fulfillment.
Chasing new goals provides increasingly shorter moments of satisfaction.

And then something interesting can happen.
Your attention slowly shifts from the outside to the inside.

The question is no longer: What else do I want to achieve?
Instead, it becomes: What truly gives my life meaning?

No longer: What do other people think of me?
But: Who am I when I am no longer busy meeting other people's expectations?

For me, this feels like the beginning of a very different journey: the vertical line, across the first movement.
One that I started many years ago.
A journey in which the answers are no longer found outside of myself, but somewhere within.

The challenge is that this is not always easy.

Your brain is constantly assigning meaning to your experiences. Without realizing it, you judge situations as good or bad, safe or unsafe. Old beliefs begin to surface.

I am not good enough.
I have to do it all by myself.
What if I make a mistake?
Others know better than I do.

As a result, you are not only looking at reality itself, but also through the lens of your own experiences, fears, and beliefs.

Perhaps personal growth is not always about learning more or knowing more.
Perhaps true self-awareness begins when we become conscious of the stories we have come to believe about ourselves
And perhaps real change begins the moment you are willing to look not only outward, but inward as well.

To listen to what your body is telling you.
To your feelings.
To your own intuition, which is so often overshadowed by everything you think you should be doing.

I first came across this idea of the two movements in life through the work of spiritual psychologist Ronald Hulnick. First, the outward movement: discovering, experiencing, creating, and accumulating. Then, often much later in life, the inward movement.
But also the old Chinese Chi Kung is based on these two movements, the horizontal and vertical movements.

Perhaps this feels familiar to you too.
That there comes a moment when, alongside the material world, there is also room for spiritual awareness.
That there comes a moment when personal growth is no longer about having more, but about understanding more deeply.
That there comes a moment when you remember who you truly are beneath all the roles, expectations, and stories you have collected throughout your life.