Life is Not About Me
My life is not mine — one of the hardest lessons to learn.
Life is not about me.
Life is not about me.
Life is not about me.
I have to learn this again and again and again.
Hopefully, each time, it sinks in a little deeper.
I come from a hyper-individualized culture, you see.
One in which you are constantly told implicitly and explicitly that it’s all about YOU.
All about the individual’s ‘success.’
The individual’s dreams.
The individual’s process.
The individual’s healing.
The individual’s actualization.
The individual’s ‘personal development.’
The individual’s resume of accomplishments.
The individual’s pain.
The individual’s wants.
The individual’s needs.
The individual’s possessions.
The individual’s bank account.
The individual’s path.
The individual’s health & well-being.
The individual’s happiness.
The individual’s liberty.
The individual’s life.
Me, me, me, me, me.
We live in the culture of ‘me.’
‘I’ want this, ‘I’ did that, ‘I’ need this, ‘I’m in process.’
This is not to say that it’s never valid or important to focus on oneself.
And yet…
There is something pathological in our hyper-fixation on ‘me.’
There is something about it that will *always* ring hollow.
Something that—no matter how many hours one spends diving deeper into ‘my process’—can *never* be *deeply* and *truly* fulfilling.
Why?
Because LIFE is *NOT* about YOU!
LIFE is *NOT* about ME!
LIFE is about US.
Life is about THIS.
Life is about EVERYTHING.
The RADICAL INTERBEING of EVERYTHING.
The more you FORGET YOURSELF in the SERVICE of EVERYTHING ELSE…
The more you become a HOLLOW BONE through which LIFE can simply serve LIFE…
The more truly fulfilled ‘you’ will be.
Your HEART will be FULL when your life is no longer about YOU.
HAH!
This is *so fucking hard* to embody.
I *really* struggle with this.
As I wrote last year: I’m wildly fucking selfish.
Even when I’m *giving*, it’s often secretly because of what I expect I’ll be *receiving* as a result of my giving.
This is why fatherhood has been the best medicine for me.
Spending ~thousands of hours selflessly taking care of my daughter…
With no expectation of receiving any pay or praise or external reward…
Especially when I feel like I need a break or I need alone time or I’d rather be doing something else…
Simply because she needs me and I love her…
Is the best medicine for me.
Slowly, slowly, it’s healing my never-ending fixation on ‘me.’
Slowly, slowly, it’s re-orienting me toward thinking first of our family—and of the Whole.
And of course, in this, I *am* ironically receiving the greatest gifts imaginable:
The Love of my daughter.
Our beautiful, loving, thriving family.
And an erosion of my sense of self-importance, gradually re-orienting me away from self and toward LIFE.
The more that ‘my’ life becomes an OFFERING to LIFE…
A PRAYER to LIFE…
The more True and Real and Heart-Full and At Peace I feel.
And again, I *totally* struggle with this.
I am still wildly fucking selfish in many ways, in many moments.
And…
I also don’t want to demonize selfishness.
For some people, more selfishness would do them good. They’ve become so enmeshed in people-pleasing and living for others, that they’ve lost themselves. They’ve forgotten their unique flavor. They’ve forgotten how to fill their own cup. They’ve forgotten that you can’t save a drowning person by drowning yourself. They’ve forgotten that it *is* okay to care for yourself, meet your needs, and let yourself receive. They’ve forgotten that receiving and giving *do* go hand in hand, and that if they are out of balance, chronic resentment is usually the result.
At the same time, it weirdly feels like excessive selfishness and people-pleasing are two sides of the same coin. The people-pleaser’s unconscious program says, “If I do everything to please others, they will like and approve of and validate ME.” The people-pleasing program is not true Service from the Heart. It’s more like a wounded-ego program that is desperately trying to get the approval of others through obsequious, inauthentic appeasement of others. It’s still about ‘me.’
So…
What’s the goal here?
Where is the balance?
This is probably something that each being must answer and discover for themselves.
Presently for me it feels like the balance resides in surrendering to a transcendent Love for the Whole.
Surrendering to God’s Love.
While also seeing and understanding that Love for the Whole also necessarily includes and entails Love for me.
I don’t ultimately want my life to be about me.
That feels narrow and sad to me, especially given all the dark, crazy shit happening on Earth at this time.
I feel like God put me here for a larger purpose than simply gratifying my selfish desires.
I feel called to continue surrendering to God and asking God to “put me to good use” in service to the Whole.
I also feel called to continue loving and honoring JB, this child of God who I presently am. I feel called to take care of him and honor his needs and his passions. I love him dearly.
I feel these two callings can co-exist and even synergize: Arguably, JB cannot ‘play full out’ in service to the Whole if he is not healthy, happy, and thriving on an individual level. So the two go hand in hand.
I also want to continuously practice not being too hard on myself with all this stuff. I want to find that tightrope balance between ongoingly raising my standards for my own integrity, while also fully and non-judgmentally loving and appreciating myself just as I am, every step of the way.
This is easier said than done, but it’s something to aim for.
Life is not about me.
Life is not about me.
Life is not about me.
Life is about ALL OF LIFE, which is vastly beyond ‘me’ and yet also includes ‘me.’
Yet another lesson that I know I will be integrating for the rest of my life.
Let’s create from the heart and soul, in service to the Whole. 🌈
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Let’s make Life more beautiful together.
Love,
JB
P.S. This post was directly inspired by an amazing podcast episode called ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized.’ Highly, highly recommended.
Jordan Bates
Leadership & Creativity Coach
Authenticity | Integrity | Love | Power | Freedom
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Jordan Bates is a leadership coach specializing in creativity, authenticity, pragmatic wisdom, grounded spirituality, psychedelic integration, & holistic life mastery. He is also a teacher, writer, mystic, artist, rapper, space-holder, and celebrator of God. He offers one-to-one coaching, men’s circles, self-guided courses, & retreats—and now also offers True Creation Accelerator.
Find Jordan elsewhere: His Website | His Courses | Telegram | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Spotify Music — (Jordan Bates / Goku the Wizard King / LOSTBOYEVSKY) | Spotify Podcast | Bandcamp | TikTok
Hey Jordan, thanks so much for sharing this, it really landed with me. I’ve been following the work of you and your wife since connecting with you guys in PAUA and have loved it. We have a lot in common with our background - growing up with dogma and learning how to shed that, diving in the world of crypto, wrestling with the pros and cons of feeling special and chosen, finding a path to authenticity and true freedom, and ultimately integrating and transcending that freedom in service to something greater than ourselves. Given my extreme nature, I feel that I’m currently walking the line between overzealously overextending my capacity for others after a very solitary period in my life and slowly dialing back finding the balance. Thanks again for the work you do. Hope our paths cross in the future 🙏