Dagostino Mark - Unlocking greatness: the unexpected journey from the life you have to the life you want

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2018 by Charlie Harary

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Book design by Amy King

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

ISBN 9781623369767 hardcover
ISBN 9781623369774 e-book

We inspire health, healing, happiness, and love in the world.

Starting with you.

To my loving wife

caring parents

precious children

and

empowering God.

Thank you for being in my life.

I am who I am because of you.

WHY AM I PERPETUALLY UNSATISFIED?

W hat do you want?

The silent pause after I posed that question seemed to blot out every other noise in the city.

We had been sitting at Starbucks for over an hour. I was on my second Venti-size refill. Outside, a sea of pedestrians weaved hurriedly around the nearly stationary pillars of tourists who clogged the sidewalks gawking at tall buildings and dazzled by lights. It struck me that even Starbucks is different in New York City. It adapts to keep up with the intensity. Customers move as if on an assembly line, shouting complex orders of made-up coffee names while maintaining conversations on their earpieces and simultaneously checking their smartphones.

Dave and I sat by the window. Hed asked me to meet him here to talk about problems he was having at work. He wanted my advice, he said. But our conversation quickly turned to a discussion about the unhappy state of his family and then to himself.

Dave was my college buddy. Back in the day, if I were a betting man I would have bet the house that Dave would be running the world by the time he was 40. He wasnt just smart; he was mad smart. He also happened to be good-looking, athletic, and comfortable being the center of attention. Yet now, as he approached his 40th birthday, his life was unraveling. His job as a Wall Street banker had stalled, his marriage was on the rocks, and his three kidswell, lets just say he might still have a chance with his youngest.

He had achieved what so many people consider the dream, complete with a picture-perfect family, a beautiful home, a distinguished career, and season tickets to his favorite team. Yet now, to him, it felt like it was all falling apart. Dave came to me trying to help plug a hole in what seemed like the breaking of a dam.

What he didnt realize was that he already had the power to not only to plug the hole, but stop the crumbling altogether; to build a much stronger, more powerful dam, complete with a turbine to reenergize everything he wanted out of life.

The question he needed to answer first, though, was: What do you want?

I told you, he said. To make more money, to improve my marriage, to

No, I cut him off. I didnt want to hear some recitation of everyones life goals. Can you dig a little deeper? I pushed. Stop saying the things you are supposed to say. You have so much and yet so little. You have what looks like a really great life, and youre miserable. Why? What is it you really want but dont have?

Silence.

With all of my training as an attorney, I have a hard time letting silence linger, especially when I sense weakness. But I let it sit there as the lightning-paced world around us seemed to fade away.

I dont know, he finally said.

Thats your problem, I responded, smiling as if I had just helped him.

We wouldnt come to an answer that day. The noise of the crowd rushed back in, and the conversation ended with Dave feeling rather deflated. I promised we would follow up. I told him he had made a great start. Admitting that he didnt know what he wanted and that he didnt really know how to fix any of his problems was the start of a great journey for hima journey that I would gladly help him complete.

I knew it was better for him to be deflated and real than to keep up the charade hed kept up for so long.

The thing is, Ive had this same conversation with dozens of friends and acquaintances in recent years. In fact, Im guessing I could pull any random person out of almost any Starbucks line in the world, sit them down, and have nearly the same conversation with them, too.

Just as Im pretty sure I could have a similar conversation with you.

Welcome to life in the modern world: a world in which most people have more wealth, knowledge, and technology (not to mention access to untold amounts of fresh-brewed coffee) than their ancestors could have ever dreamed for themselves. A world in which we have so much but so little. A world in which we seem to have it all, except for the ability to process it. A world in which we are constantly reaching for something, yet never seem to catch itbecause were not even sure what it is.

A world in which we are perpetually unsatisfied.

How bad have things become? The symptoms could hardly be more evident: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the prescribing

Those are huge numbers, and yet I would argue that there are far more of us walking around with a feeling that makes those numbers seem small. Theres a pervasive sense of malaise in the developed worlda sense of worry, of dread, of fear, of helplessness, of an inability to find the capacity to change or to feel better or to get out of our own way that all adds up to something bordering on, or perhaps even surpassing, what we colloquially define as depression.

So if you thought it was just you feeling this way, I hope theres some solace in knowing its not. Its all of us. This problem is not just personal or communalits societal.

The world has developed so rapidly since the late 1980s that it seems impossible to take it all in. Our access to everything has exploded. Health and wealth have increased significantly. Meanwhile, crime and poverty, have decreased. According to every indicator, we should be overwhelmed with happiness. There is still pain and suffering in the world, of course, but compared to life 25 years ago, let alone a hundred or a thousand years ago, we are doing great.

So why are we less happy, less satisfied, more fed up, and far less enthused about our day-to-day existence than ever before?

Decades from now, well look back and recognize that this period were in is one of the most transformative in human historyand youre a part of it, whether you like it or not.

We are in the midst of experiencing the shift to a digital age, a massive technological revolution that has transformed the way we interact with each other and the world around us. The fact that we have life-changing computing and telecommunications power in tiny devices that we carry in our pockets is incredible, but just as the Industrial Revolution brought all kinds of strife and challenge, this technological revolution is bringing new challenges with it as well.