The Danger In Taking a Fragmented Approach to Life

(The Sacred Business Manifesto Part II)

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While Carolina and I were living very different lives at this point, and had yet to cross each other’s paths, there was something big we had in common–we were taking a fragmented approach to life.

Carolina didn’t have a clear direction for her life, and wasn’t even in touch with the things that she liked and that brought her joy. She always played it safe based on other people’s opinions about what her life should be like, and what seemed like the “safe” decision, like enrolling in business administration in university. 

She even told me once, “it's sort of a running joke in Brazil that you don’t know what to do, you choose Business Administration”.

She definitely didn’t know what to do. 

This was coupled with overactive thought patterns that kept her in a state of constant stress and “fight or flight”.  And despite her corporate success having made a big move from Brazil to Canada after finishing school, she was lacking the connection to a higher purpose. She found herself living on autopilot, chasing a lifestyle that had provided her with the material trappings of great travel adventures, beautiful dining experiences, and a very comfortable life living in a beautiful neighborhood in Montreal close to the Saint Laurent River.

But despite the material success, something was missing on a deep soul level, and while she was able to bury it deep inside for some time, her body was sending her a strong SOS signal in the form of her headaches that were guiding her towards a powerful understanding that she just couldn’t quite see yet at the time. 

Carolina didn’t know it yet at the time, but her headaches were the result of never really allowing herself to choose her life’s direction from her heart, and instead always choosing the “practical” path with her head. 

Simply put, Carolina was choosing her head over her heart. And this was a fragmented approach to life. 

At the same time, I was continuing to live a crazy duality for well over a decade. 

On one hand, I had managed to cultivate what others had come to describe as a “Midas Touch”. 

Why was I described as having the Midas Touch?

 It all really began as a young child sitting on my father’s lap in front of a personal PC. He worked for IBM and we always had the best technology available to us way before anyone else I knew. This is truly one of my earliest memories. I fell in love with that computer, and this deep fascination with technology and how to leverage it to create magical outcomes really set the pattern for the rest of my life, and my later work as a successful consultant.  No matter what industry I found myself stepping into, I was able to create powerful business results and experience the financial success that came with it. It was described as having this uncanny ability to touch something once, and have it turn to gold. Hence, the Midas touch. 

And as I fell in love with the power of being able to create results like this, I found myself really pushing the limits of my own capacity, and working myself to the bone. 

And as I lost sight of any greater picture or sense of purpose beyond this midas touch, I found myself deeply sick on a soul level, and it was manifesting as all sorts of auto-immune health challenges that would challenge me to even get out of bed on the worst of days.

Even though I was experiencing financial success, inside I was suffering emotionally.

I suffered from low confidence and self-worth, always playing the comparison game with other entrepreneurs I would meet at events and masterminds. 

It was as if I had a bottomless hole in my soul that I just couldn’t fill, as hard as I tried to direct all my energy into a singular business focus that I was sure would finally bring an end to my suffering.

It took years of unhealthy work and personal habits for me to finally realize how much damage I had created in my life.

I was taking the fragmented approach to life. Just like Carolina. Despite having the Midas touch, my daily life had become plagued by illness, burnout, and exhaustion. 

And for Carolina, despite having a great career, family, and all the external markings of success, her disconnect from the calling of her heart, and a deeper purpose left her literally with a constant pain in the head.

Clearly, the way we were both choosing to live life during this time was flawed. We were both going down parallel paths in which we were compartmentalizing and bottling up aspects of ourselves that wished to be expressed and nurtured, and sacrificing the potential of a deeper, richer life experience in the name of making money at all costs. 

And this propensity for living life this way left us both disconnected from our hearts, our purpose, and from the potential to live a life far more beautiful than either of us could have imagined for ourselves at that time.

Fortunately, there is a happy ending to this story.