Photo by mikespirit
Last night, I saw a few grains of coffee grounds in our french press and began to rinse them off in the sink.
Strangely, the more I rinsed, the dirtier the press became.
Finally, muttering in annoyance, I did what I should have done at the outset and peered into the bottom of the press.
Sure enough, the whole damn load of coffee grounds was still in there, pressed against the bottom in a big wet cake.
No wonder the glass wouldn’t come clean: the more rinse water I flushed in, the more grains broke loose from the unseen mother-cake.
…
Your life can seem an endless stream of unrelated problems:
A steady barrage of health hiccups, money mixups, and family-life fiascos… annoyances just painful enough to incite your solving action but not painful enough to force a deeper look.
Such is life, you tell yourself. One problem after the other.
But deep in your craw, you know:
To push your life beyond mere survival and claim your old, longed-for kingship…
To live the life of radical freedom, power, adventure, fulfillment…
To OWN your life, stem to stern, you must go beyond mere grain chasing and hunt the cake.
For your HEALTH:
Stop chasing the grains of low energy, weight gain, insomnia, and depression, and hunt the cake:
Ask the darker questions:
When (and WHY) did food and drink become your chief pleasures?
Why have you let your mornings become so unbearable that you’d rather binge-watch Netflix ’til 2 AM than go to bed?
What has turned your life into something you feel you must suffer through in grim, self-medicated silence?
You will never be the healthy man you want to be until you face this darker clod… until you get at the root of the apathy and fear that’s driving this disregard for your body… this bored, restless, purposelessness that’s switched off your animal drive for vitality.
For your WEALTH:
Stop chasing the grains of overdraft fees and blown budgets and loan consolidation and hunt the cake:
Why are you, with all your intelligence and ambition still in a position of such scarcity?
What risks to reputation and heart (the ones that inevitably precede higher income and impact) are you not taking?
What products, services, or ventures are you not launching?
What long-nurtured gift are you not giving? What lucrative skill are you letting sit idle? What transformative vision have you let die on the vine?
You will never be wealthy until you beat the apathy from your life and become, by dint of commitment and plunge, the man of action that outsized income and impact depend on.
For your MARRIAGE:
Stop chasing the grains of mutual disdain, mutual apathy, and ever more clipped conversations, and hunt the cake:
What is the adventure you’re not creating for your family?
What is the shared dream you’ve let die?
Why have you let your king’s crown fall there, behind the bathtub, bent and abandoned, tarnished and black with mold?
You will never know a life of enduring married passion and family adventure until you claim your role as first mover… until you treat your wife as your MASTERPIECE, not your muse… until you decide that the mantle of leadership, joy, and adventure is YOURS to shoulder.
All your lower-grade problem solving, all this rinsing… it will only kick up more grains.
And though such rinsing may provide a cheap satisfaction…
Though it may scratch the itch for a moment…
If this surface chasing is all you will muster, you will never know what you could have made of your life, had you the courage for a deeper look.
The un-examined cake will bury you in a never-ending steady stream of slow debris, your life wasted in lower-order, derivative problems.
So stop chasing grains.
Get on your knees, roll up shirt sleeves, reach your arm down into the subterranean, where the darker demons lurk, and change your life:
Hunt the fucking cake.
***
Bryan Ward is the founder of Third Way Man and author of the LIT Black Paper
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