Escaping Yourself

Vacations never seem to measure up to their promise, do they?

It’s almost as if all the stress, worry, and concern in your life follows you wherever you go. Perhaps it’s because you’re the source of your anxiety. And the one thing we can’t take a vacation from is ourselves.

For years I dreamed of one day being able to stop touring and get off the hotel-airport-stage-McDonalds-hotel-airport-stage-McDonalds hamster wheel I’d been on since my late teens.

And then boom! Here’s 2020. Be careful what you wish for.

All the Time and Nowhere to Hide

On paper it’s the dream scenario, at least in terms of work. I still speak and perform for organizations all over the world, but I do so without ever leaving the comfort of my home office.

I can deliver a communication workshop to a group of executives in Minnesota, then give a motivational speech for a group of incoming college freshmen in California, then coach a TEDx speaker in Switzerland, have a meeting with my manager in New York, and still cook dinner for my pregnant wife by 6:00.

What a life!

And yet, even without the mental and physical exhaustion of constantly being on the road, even without all the wasted, dead hours in airports, coffee shops, and hotel rooms, I’m just as crazy, restless, anxious, and busy as ever.

Because that’s who I am. Or at least, that’s the product of a series of lifestyle choices I made, attitudes I adopted, and practices I developed over 16 years of being self-employed.

It’s why I hate traditional vacations. You know, the kind where you lay around and “relax” all day. Please! Give me 5 minutes to myself and my head is spinning with ideas to test and tasks to complete.

The only vacation that works for me is Disney. It’s a frantic, all-day, fast-paced experience with a never-ending string of stimuli to keep my brain occupied and away from itself.

It’s my favorite place on earth, but it’s not like I come back refreshed or recharged.

New Chapter

But now that I’m a dad (yes, my wife just gave birth to a healthy baby boy), something needs to change. My priorities shifted in an instant and I simply can’t spend every waking second wrapped up in work obligations, real or imagined.

I briefly studied Taoism as a student of philosophy. I don’t remember as much as I should, but one principle always stuck out. Do not try and find the way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

Find inner peace. Find self-fulfillment. Fix yourself, and all else will follow.

My friend Peter Guzzardi, a legendary book editor to the stars, said this when he came on my podcast last year:

“The preacher always gives the sermon she needs to hear. The writer always writes the book he needs to read.”

So in a way, I suppose this blog post was for me. To say these things and admit them out loud, in a public forum. Hopefully you found something useful here as well.