Increased Experience

You can be successful at your current life and still want a different version of it.

Nothing has to be terribly wrong before you consider something new.

I love change. Allowing myself different versions of my identity and life has given me what I call increased experience.

I have lived in different places, done different work, and enjoyed different ways of showing up in the world.

You do not need that variety to have an amazing life. But if you want it, I want you to consider it as an option.

Enjoy ambition before you arrive

After my fifty-first birthday in Lake Tahoe, I reflected on a conversation with my sons and the other young men who were there with us.

They were finishing college and excited about their careers. They were hungry to achieve something new.

There was a part of me that felt envious of that experience.

In my life coaching career, I had a sense of satisfaction and, in some ways, completion. I had done what I set out to do.

That feeling was wonderful. It was also different from the energy of ambition, curiosity, and not yet knowing whether you could achieve something.

I wanted them to enjoy where they were, not treat it as a waiting period before life became good.

Achievement is not the only delicious feeling

I talked with my son Christian about his desire to become a professional golfer.

I wanted him to notice the hunger, desire, and effort of not yet being there.

I was not saying that to make him feel better about not achieving his goal. I meant it.

The feeling of achievement can be amazing. So can the feeling of pursuing something you want.

Satisfaction is calmer. Ambition and desire have a different energy. I do not think one has to be better than the other.

Even feeling inadequate, frustrated, or uncertain can be part of a new adventure you will want to remember.

A new interest can give you a new experience of yourself

Christian asked whether that was why I had become so interested in pickleball.

Was I looking for something I was not yet good at—something that made me hungry and curious again?

I had not thought of it that way, but it made sense.

Pickleball gave me something to struggle with, learn, and feel vulnerable about. It also introduced new people, a different lifestyle, and more self-awareness than I expected.

I had not even known the sport existed. Then it became part of my identity.

There may be something like that available to you that you have not considered.

You can appreciate all the versions you have lived

I have experienced having no money, having debt, living paycheck to paycheck, and having a lot of money.

I am grateful for what I learned in those different experiences.

Working at Hewlett Packard taught me about being an employee in a large company.

Working at a ranch gave me an entirely different identity: caring for horses, cleaning saddles, shoveling manure, and taking people on trail rides.

Later, equestrian events and martial arts introduced other experiences and groups of people.

Those were different ways to know myself in the world.

As I considered the next phase of life, I wanted to explore new places, travel, people, and interests rather than assume the earlier versions were the only ones available.

Expect the familiar to feel safer

Our brains tend to prefer what is familiar.

Once something works and feels safe, we can want to stay there. Change brings resistance.

That resistance does not have to decide whether we explore.

You can consciously re-decide who you want to be.

Would you like a different kind of home? A different career? An experience of traveling or living somewhere new?

Some possibilities require creating value and earning money. Others do not require a major financial change.

You could begin hiking, running, playing a new sport, or practicing yoga.

The point is to let yourself consider more than what you already know.

Success does not require you to stay

I have coached doctors who wanted to become life coaches.

They had invested years in education and built respected careers in which they helped and saved lives.

Giving up that identity could be challenging precisely because they were successful.

But some wanted to contribute in a different way. When they were willing to make the change, they experienced a new side of themselves.

Your past education and achievements can be part of your history without requiring you to keep choosing the same future.

You may want another successful life, not only more of the current one.

Do not continue only because you already started

We can become afraid of the time and money we have already invested.

We keep a direction because of those sunk costs instead of because we still want it.

I do not want you to live chasing your past.

Ask whether you want to do this again this year. Do you want to be here again?

If the answer is yes, continue.

If it is no, ask what else you want to consider or experience.

You are allowed to make the choice again rather than assume it was settled permanently by an earlier version of you.

Let yourself be new at something

Increasing experience does not have to mean upheaval.

You can try one new sport or activity.

Never having done it before can be the reason to try, rather than the reason to avoid it.

You will probably not feel successful at first. I was terrible when I began pickleball.

I see new life coaches face that same discomfort when they begin using what they learned.

It can be tempting to go back to the thing you already do well because it feels better.

But there is a different experience available when you let your brain and body figure something out again.

Consider more ingredients for your next life

How many options have you given yourself for where to live, what to do, and how to live?

Many of us consider only a small familiar group of possibilities and follow what others are doing.

You can explore more than one identity within a lifetime.

If you were starting today, which ingredients from your past would you include? Which new ones would you add?

On my birthday, I asked who I wanted to be, where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to experience next.

Traveling while working had already shown me new sides of the world and new sides of myself. I wanted to keep allowing that evolution.

I wanted both the satisfaction of what I had created and the ambition of what I might create next.

Pick one new experience you have not considered before and try it.

You can enjoy your life as it is and still explore who else you could become.