What If You Could Do No Wrong?

What if you couldn't take 100% responsibility for the outcome of your life?

One of the biggest shifts I've had in the last year is my perception of failure and loss.

I lost so much these last few years.

Friendships burned to ash. Projects I poured my heart into vanished. People I loved dying.

More devestation and heartache in this period of time than my entire previous ten years combined.

I fought against these losses with everything I had. Resisted every change. Believed each loss was evidence of my failure.

I found myself wondering what the fuck I had done to deserve such bad luck. Was I really that bad of a person?

But through these losses, and a lot of hard conversations and deep introspection, I learned one of the deepest and most humbling lessons of my life.

The Myth of Total Control

There's a common refrain in personal development circles, a mantra you hear from every Tony Robbins-esque coach and their disciples:

"We need to take 100% responsibility for our lives."

It sounds noble. Inspiring, even.

Dig deeper, and you'll realize it's a false idea that perpetuates the worst parts of our toxic culture.

Sure, don't play the victim. Don't blame the world for your misfortune.

But it's delusional to think you can bend reality to your will. Only fools believe life bends to effort alone.

This is how we've been programmed - to believe our life's path is entirely our fault. That we must take action, fix what's broken, force a better future into existence.

The blueprint for success in our culture is clear:

Avoid pain.

Fix flaws.

Chase success.

If you want to guarantee a miserable life and early grave, then this is exactly the path to follow.

When The Strategies Stop Working

When I was coaching men full-time, many of them in their mid-30s to 40s were all carrying the same wound - feeling frustrated and lost by the state of their lives.

On paper, they had it all: Successful careers. Beautiful families. Money in the bank.

The "good" life by any standard measure.

Yet everything felt hollow and grey. They were uninspired and no longer felt excitement and joy.

Their work brought no passion. Their children felt distant. Their marriages were running on fumes.

So they'd do exactly what they were taught to do when things weren't working:

Double down. Push harder.

New ventures. Side hustles. Endless personal development workshops. Plant medicine ceremonies.

These band-aids would work for a while. Then the grey would creep back in. The numbness would return.

They'd rage at the heavens, demanding answers. Why were they being punished for doing everything right?

Stuck to the idea that if they jumped through the hoops life would be good, they couldn't see that their breakdowns weren't punishment - they were invitations.

Every failing marriage, every crisis of purpose, every sleepless night wrestling with existence - all of it was their soul, desperately trying to wake them up.

And no amount of trying to steady the boat or putting more effort into what wasn't working was going to fix things.

Honoring Our Ancient Longing

As my own life began to disintegrate in this way, I noticed something strange - as things fell apart, the activities I felt called to echoed my most cherished childhood fantasies.

Growing up, I was obsessed with the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. It's the story of a young man who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the woods.

I would read it over and over again, setting the book down in the most thrilling moments and imagining myself in his shoes. Dreaming of being alone in the wild using just my skills and ingenuity to survive.

In my early 30s, that pull returned. I sat down at my computer and searched "hardest survival course in the world" and registered right then. Six months later, I spent 28 days traversing the deserts and mountains of Utah with exclusively primitive gear.

Since then, I have spent many more weeks in the backcountry and attending primitive skills gatherings, methodically building the skills to survive alone in the wild.

These trips have been some of the most fulfilling and happiest moments of my life.

The dreams of being a warrior followed the same pattern.

As a child, I'd arrange armies of little green soldiers all over my room, fighting imaginary battles for territories in my bedroom. Every single part of me wanted to be a soldier, so at 21 I enlisted for the military, but was turned away due to some trouble I had gotten into as a teen.

A decade and a half after that first attempt, the dream is still coursing through me.

I've found myself casually browsing military careers online.

Dreaming of testing myself and standing proudly amongst other elite warriors and trained assassins. It makes no logical sense to pursue this career at 35 - I've got a business, obligations, and civilian life.

But the impulses of our soul rarely make sense. In fact, it's their illogicality that is usually a sign they are authentic callings.

The Soul's Ruthless Demand

Too often we dismiss childhood fantasies as just that - childish. Ridiculous aspirations that we need to grow out of in order to be useful and productive members of society.

But to the soul, this is completely backwards - these fantasies were the purest transmissions of our unique expression.

Before we were beaten down by reality, before our parents' and teachers' dashed dreams were projected onto us, before we were forced to fit in line with a society of people who snuffed their own calling before they even knew what it was.

If we are courageous enough to give it a voice, our soul's ruthless demand to live into these fantasies will eventually become so overwhelmingly loud, we have no choice but to honor it.

And that might require some significant changes in our life.

People will call this a mid-life crisis. But it isn't a crisis at all.

It's an unraveling - a slow ripping apart of all the strategies we deployed to keep our lives comfortable, safe, and concordant.

It's our soul rattling against society's demand that we flatten and minimize our deepest expression in order to fit in and get by.

The Gift of Dissolution

I've wasted a lot of my life beating myself up for things that didn't work out.

Chronically getting fired from jobs, cheated on in relationships, and pushed out of situations I thought I deeply wanted.

But it wasn't until last year, when I truly surrendered to my path, that I realized my own desires are not what's important.

In fact, most of those desires aren't even mine. They've been programmed into me throughout my entire adult life.

I began to realize that I could do no wrong. Things didn't fall apart because I was bad or broken or ignorant.

They fell apart because those things were too small for the depth of my soul's expression.

I could do all the personal development in the world. I could take the communication workshop. I could drink the shaman's brew and meditate two hours a day and it still would've gone exactly the way it went.

People hate hearing this because they begin to feel utterly helpless. But to move from our ego-centric life to a deeper soulful relationship with the world requires this feeling of helplessness.

A feeling of loss and devastation of everything we once knew and thought we could control.

The burning of our desires, our safety, and life as we once knew it.

Few will cross this chasm.

Why would they?

Why would we willingly let go of everything that has gotten us here?

Everything we worked so hard to prove to ourselves and the world?

All that effort we put in to prove to the world that we're enough.

That we're capable. That we fit in. That we belong.

But this is exactly the reason to let it all go.

These periods are not a breakdown, they're a portal into the murky depths of your own becoming.

If you're lucky, the voice of your soul will become so loud you can no longer ignore it.

No longer turn away from these longings that fill us so deeply that we're willing to destroy our entire lives to honor them.

No one prepares us for personal dismemberment. When you're ripe for dissolution, it will happen whether you like it or not.

Usually at the most inconvenient time.

When you've finally made it.

When you've hit success.

When you fit in and everything is working out.

When you've figured out how to play the game, the soul hangs up the skates. The game stops being fun.

You've proven you can do the dance, now it's time to cut it all away and allow yourself to become who you truly are.

Beyond your job title.

Beyond the roles you play as father, wife, son, daughter.

Beyond gender, race, or whatever you identify as.

Your soul doesn't give a shit about these things. And it won't let you off the hook until you don't give a shit about them either.

The Return Home

This is the beginning of the long road home.

Back to what brought us alive, with awe and wonder, when we were children.

It's those early childhood compulsions that are worth paying attention to - the natural attraction to picking up the guitar, the desire to help mom bake, playing in the woods with sticks.

The things that lit every cell in our body up. That we would secretly stay up late obsessing over. The dreams that slowly died and we forgot about when it was time to grow up.

These aren't just nostalgic musings, they're breadcrumbs leading us back to our soul's original intention.

Back before we learned to be practical, to be realistic, to be responsible. Back before we were taught to trade our wild dreams for safe choices.

And perhaps that's the greatest gift in all of this loss and dismantling.

Underneath the grief, the fear, the fighting for something to hold on to.

Under everything that we accumulated in our attempt to be someone else's version of behaved, successful, and productive.

Are the pure dreams that are meant to live through us.

The ones that were there all along, waiting patiently for us to remember them.

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PS: If you're enjoying Feral Wisdom, please consider referring this edition to a friend.

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