Left Behind
Level 3: Master of the Mundane
A child is playing in the sandbox.
He has eyes for nothing but the sand around him. Slowly filling buckets, one little shovel at a time. Adding sand to the little toy dump truck. Rolling it over a couple feet. Tipping it out.
Scoop. Tip. Scoop. Tip.
The sun moves across the sky.
He puts down the shovel. Looks at his hands for a moment. And then looks around.
Squinting in the light.
He looks left.
He looks right.
He looks behind him.
Where is daddy?
He squints and stands up. He turns around in a full circle.
Where is daddy?
He starts walking in a direction.
"DADDYYYYY"
Nothing. He keeps walking.
"DAAADDDYYYYYY"
He turns around and walks the other way. Faster now. Where is he? What's happening? He calls out louder. More frantic. His eyebrows creased. A frown on his face.
"DAAAAAADDDDYYYYYY"
"Hey little guy! right here"
He stops.
Turns and sees daddy's face.
A huge grin cracks across his. He laughs out loud and runs to him.
.
A young man is hanging out after school.
He's making friends.
It's a fun group.
They are welcoming. It feels good to hang out with them.
They play games sometimes.
Card games. Board Games.
Sometimes they just hang out and talk.
His new friends sometimes say things he isn't sure about. Suggest things he isn't sure about.
He listens.
He nods.
He goes along with it.
What will they think if he says no? Where will they go if he doesn't agree?
He listens.
He nods.
He starts to make his own suggestions. The things he's suggesting aren't what he'd usually do, but he believes his new friends will like it.
They laugh and all agree it's a great idea.
He moves forward.
Not quite happy with the choice, but happy to belong.
.
A grown man is working on his own business.
He set out on his own so that he didn't have to give his time to anyone else but himself. To see his own visions come to light.
For many years he's worked to make it happen.
He's had successes.
He's had failures.
He has vision.
He constantly tries to move toward it.
Relentless.
Without hesitation.
He refuses to give up. He refuses to stop and slow down.
He knows that if he just keeps going, if he puts it all on the table, if he puts everything he has into it he can get everything that he dreams of.
He keeps doing this.
Day after day.
Month after month.
Year after year.
He's older now.
He's been married. He's had kids. He's still never gone back to a regular job ...
But he's still pushing.
Relentlessly. Without hesitation.
He's still reaching,
Reaching for a place he hasn't achieved.
Yet.
There's a strand in the thread of our life which follows us, and sometimes fully carries us, throughout the years of our lived experience.
A strand of our base natural humanity.
It drives us to survive.
When we are children it keeps us finding those we belong with.
When we are growing it pushes us to make new belonging and stay there.
When we are fully grown, it stays with us, sometimes haunts us, to keep going, to keep searching, to keep trying to get what we think we need to get, to make happen what we think needs to happen ...
Because we fear being left behind.
The lights are dim in the cramped, sterile space of the ship. Cooper, his face shadowed and tense, sits in front of the small monitor. He croaks out his name. The computer utters ..
"MESSAGES SPAN: 23 YEARS"
Cooper pauses. "... Play it from the beginning."
He sees messages from his son, Tom. He's a hopeful teenager, excitedly updating his father on life back home. Tom grows into a young man, finds the love of his life. He has a child of his own. And finally, years gone, distant, weary, and resigned, the dead around him buried, he says goodbye to his father.
Trapped 23 years in the past, he watches as his son's face ages in fast motion.
An entire life unfolding in front of him while he remains unchanged. He clenches his jaw. He listens as his son says goodbye, and just as he grabs the monitor, it's off.
His son is gone.
After 23 years of silence, the face of his daughter Murphy appears - having said nothing this whole time. But she is no longer the little girl Cooper left behind. Her voice is calm but full of quiet pain. And anger. Anger that he left her.
"Today is my birthday. And it's a special one because ... you once told me, that when you came back you might be the same age. And today I'm the age you were when you left."
Cooper’s face contorts, his breath shallow. He silently sobs, his entire body trembling. Tears stream down his face uncontrollably as understands the truth — he has lost everything. Every milestone, every birthday, every moment he dreamt and hoped to be with her for ... he has missed them all.
Whatever you think of the movie Interstellar (if you've seen it), it's always been one of the most disturbing movies to me personally.
Fear of being left behind is not a simple fear. Not a fear of missing out. Not a fear of just loss. It's far, far deeper. A fear of being abandoned perhaps by time itself, unable to be there for the ones who need you. They live on in slow growing despair, while you sit on the sidelines.
We fear so deeply being left behind.
Our darkest thoughts, our scariest stories, our deepest fear.
That we're left alone with the monster under our bed.
That we wake up and everyone is gone, the world around us changed.
That we fall, can't keep up, and find ourselves in the dust surrounded by completely unknown.
And that fear is responsible for driving so much that does not serve us well.
You have a phone.
It gives you access to everything you could ever possibly need or want. Every word, every image, every voice ever published on the internet, right there at your fingertips.
Now you spend all your free time scrolling on that phone looking for the next hit, looking for the next bit of information of news of insight of ideas. You spend all your time looking at charts, looking at data, looking for the next thing.
Because you don't want to miss it.
You don't know what it is exactly, but you do know you don't want to be the one who doesn't see it.
Something is going to come up ... and what if you aren't there?
What if you get left behind while everyone else who paid attention is in the know?
When we succumb to this fear we spend our time, our attention, our money ultimately isolating ourselves from our own conscious presence.
Away from receivership.
Unable to hear the call, unable to take the actions and accept the open doors which really will take you where you want to be.
You have a business.
Now you have responsibility for every choice, every outcome, every result.
It's empowering.
It's liberating.
It's overwhelming.
Every choice to do something, every choice not to do something, ends up having an outcome and you are responsible for all of it no matter what.
There is no boss above you.
There is no management structure making decisions upon which you can fall back.
There is no paycheck just for showing up at 9 am every day.
And while you have all the freedom in the world to set your own schedule do your own thing make your own vision come to light ...
You also open up all the possibility of failure in your choices not panning out like you want.
We look for answers from people who have been successful. We look for others to take the burden of choice off our shoulders.
We fear what will happen if we don't take certain actions.
We fear being left behind.
"I'm never going to get there unless I do XYZ."
This thought dominates our actions. Our choices.
The problem is,
We have no way of knowing if that is true.
You can't know what it takes to get where you're going until you get there.
What we DO know, is that if you push beyond your reasonable limits, you will implode. You will burn out. You will end up knocking yourself out of the game ... maybe for days, weeks. Maybe months. Maybe even years.
How important is your goal if you're willing to risk blowing it all because you fear being left behind?
You might be wondering where this is all coming from ...
This is just a little window into an experience of sitting with Dr. Jeff Spencer. What you see here is my lens of perspective on his words. My experience of listening to them. My understanding from them. The images, thoughts, and interpretations which came to my mind as I listened to Dr. Jeff speak and considered the ideas afterwards. The deep rooted importance of understanding this one idea - we are afraid of being left behind.
BUT
I am not a Cornerman1.
So I cannot give you the full and complete understanding ... I can only be a conduit, through which the words and ideas are inevitably colored by my perspective.
If you want the real thing,
This whole conversation came about just yesterday, as Dr. Jeff Spencer, our Cornerman3, joined us live on our special Cornerman Arena (every 2nd Thursday), to and help us see the truth in front of us which we often lack the full perspective to realize.
(Every Arena member has the opportunity to show up on these Cornerman Arena calls and ask questions of Dr. Jeff Spencer)
![Stepping Into The Arena [Invite]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2f8bf824-6dfe-4bec-9c0c-ec8575266298_1011x447.png)
What do you do with this?
How do you handle that strand of fear woven throughout your life?
The answer again, words from Dr. Jeff Spencer -
"We can only ever do what is in front of us."
and
"Ask yourself, what is my greatest need right now?"
In other words ... just always take The Next Best Step. Microstep. Look to your most immediate constraint4. Solve that. Use the goal to figure out your next step toward that goal, and then let go.
There's a reason we use these models and perspectives in TGA.
Because we are all,
Deep down,
So very afraid of being left behind.
It's up to us to embrace The Champion's Mind5 and recognize that we don't need to let that fear run the show.
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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"We can only ever do what is in front of us." This is such a powerful reminder of our power to choose how we see ourselves, our situation, and each other and then decide and do what needs to be done next.