The Question

"The second half of life is not a consolation prize. It's the real game." Steve Martin - Vision-Keeper and Dream Coach

She was 58. She had been a highly successful executive for thirty years. She came to me originally for retirement planning and came back three months later for something else.

“I keep asking myself a question,” she said, “and I can’t make it stop.”

“What’s the question?”

“Is this all there is?”

I had heard that question before — hundreds of times, in hundreds of voices. It was the question that meant something important had shifted. The performing self had run out of steam and the authentic self was finally loud enough to be heard.

“I want to ask you something,” I said. “What did you do when you were ten years old that made you forget to eat?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Just — what activity, when you were a kid, absorbed you completely?”

She was quiet for a long time.

“I wrote,” she said. “Stories. All the time. I filled notebooks. My mother threw most of them away.” A small, complicated smile. “I became an executive because I was good at it. I wrote because I couldn’t help it.”

“Those are two very different engines.”

She looked at me steadily. “You’re saying I’ve been running on the wrong one.”

“I’m saying you have another one available.”

She cried a little. Not from grief — from recognition.

The hollow isn’t the ending. It’s the beginning of the real life.

That’s where the Four Dreams live.

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ONE SIMPLE ACTION YOU CAN TAKE RIGHT NOW

Ask the question:
Sit for five minutes and answer this honestly:
What did I do as a child that made me forget to eat?
Write down the first thing that comes.
Don’t edit it.