The Soulful Leader Podcast
The Soulful Leader Podcast
When Success Isn't Enough - Will Smith's Clifftop Crisis
What happens when we finally get our needs met?
We scramble after money, love, accolades, power, etc., yet study after study shows that once basic needs are met, additional pursuit does not enhance happiness.
Will Smith talks about the concept of “cliff top” (opposite of "rock bottom”) where a person has achieved everything they wanted in the material world—money, fame, sex, and success— and still finds themselves missing lasting happiness.
He says reaching the cliff top can lead to an "abyss" where life loses its ability to sustain and please, and the only way out is to find what one is truly looking for; oneself.
Today Stephanie and Maren explore cliff top and rock bottom and discuss several powerful questions including,
- Can you find yourself without falling off the cliff and hitting rock bottom first?
- Are those the only two paths to waking up and getting to lasting happiness?
- How do you get started?
Their great discussion peels the curtain back around societal conditioning and unconscious beliefs. More importantly, it opens a path that is both friendly and freeing.
This is an episode you’ll want to share with friends.
- 0:00 Enoughness
- 2:51 Rock bottom and cliff top, Will Smith
- 5:25 The path of inner mastery
- 9:33 Illuminating the way
- 10:43 Using the power of 97%
- 15:22 The shortcut to manifestation
- 16:46 Freedom
REFERENCES
0:48 Mastery Through Accomplishment by Hazrat Inayat Khan
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In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it? Deep inside you know, there's more to life you're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you. That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac And this is The Soulful Leader Podcast. Yay! Welcome back to The Soulful Leader Podcast. I have a question, what happens when you finally get your needs met? Like that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, because we're so busy trying to get our needs met, we scramble after enough money and enough love and enough this. And what would it be like to be enough, to just be enough? And one of the reasons that I was thinking about that is that they've done all kinds of studies that show that once a person, a family, gets to subsistence level, meaning that they've got, they've got their bills paid, they've got this, they've got, you know, that they can... they're not worried about paying their basic living bills. That more money doesn't actually improve their life. And yet we strive after all this outer more money, more this more that... we're so conditioned to just get more that I wonder, do we even know why we're trying to get more? And the reason this is again, coming up for me is we're in this Inner Mastery Series that we've been doing. And one of the things about that is that the inner... there's a wonderful book by a Sufi mystic, and it talks about going for, like, go for everything that you want. It's, like mastery through attainment, I think, is the name of it, and it's like, go for everything that you want, because at the end of it, you'll realize that that's not all that outer stuff that we go after, the accolades and the money and the houses and the boats and the relationships under this... none of it is really fulfilling. What ends up being fulfilling, what really we're here to do is to know who we are, to go inside and do the inner work. Yeah, and what is that inner work? You know, I was just recently watching something on Will Smith, and he talks about, you know, we're quite familiar when someone hits rock bottom, whether it's from an addiction or, you know, a long string of things that happen, and then finally, they just say that's enough. We know what rock bottom is like when we said that's enough, but he was also referring to cliff top, like literally reaching the top of your field, or having more than enough, and you know, you have the overabundance of anything, and it still isn't making you happy. So it's the other side of rock bottom is cliff top. And I loved what he was saying is like until you can look inside and ask yourself, Who amI without all of that outer, who am I, and do I still like or even love myself without all of that outer, other accolades, outer, abundance, outer, whatever that might be relationship or things, or it's like, who am I without all that stuff? And can you be with that? Can you sit with that? And it's like, you know, that's looking at that inner, that inner sanctuary inside of where you can go and rest, where you can cultivate and a question and being with that, instead of pushing it away, trying to look for it outside yourself. I think you know, that's what we're talking about in the inner mastery is like, Do you have a way in that isn't through pain and suffering? Do you have a way in that's through more joy and inspiration? That you get to look inside without "have to" looking inside. So you can be on that cliff top and not tumble off of it to rock bottom in order to find yourself, in order to, you know, like, find that inner mastery, that inner sanctuary. I love that word that you used, you know, absolutely. Well, even beyond the cliff top or the rock bottom, that there is a timelessness space where, where you can be nourished and you can be cared for. And it isn't about the outer cliff top or rock bottom. It's like, wow. Like, what if? What, like you said earlier, what if, what if you were just an... like, what if you already were enough. There wasn't anything you had to strive for that... you are it, and it's great! We, you know, this is our fifth podcast on Inner Mastery, and one of the things we wanted to talk today about is shadow, and I bring it up because it's a path to exactly to what we're talking about. It's one path. There's multiple paths. And anytime we say we want something in the outer world, I want to lose weight, I want a boyfriend, I want more money, I want a house, I want a boat. I want to whatever, everything that's not that, everything that challenges us comes up on our way to attaining those things, that thing, which is why the Sufi mystic says, like, go for it, go for all of that stuff. And here's a path, is that becoming more aware of the things like we become aware of, okay, I want the car, and then we're kind of pissed off and annoyed and angry at all the stuff that gets in our way of getting the car. Another alternative would be to go, Aha. I want the car, which means that in the process of getting 'the going for/ going after' the car, I get to deal with all the shadow pieces that come up that are in my way between... that are in the way between me and that thing that I want, which means now I become a different person. And in the end, I might not even ever want the car, because the whole purpose of wanting the car was not to get the car, it was to become the different person. Yeah, and I think you're bringing up a different person idea too, because part of the shadow is that we created an adapted self, an Alter Self, in order to be loved or accepted or performance, to be able to get our needs met and that it's, we're not saying that you become a different self meaning an adapted self. We mean to become more of your true self. That it's not about the mask. It's about taking off the mask and really being seen, really being heard, not by outside, by other people, but by yourself, to really look inside and see those parts and not try to humiliate, you know, to annihilate them or push them away, but to actually embrace them and know that there are parts of you that, at one time or another, were afraid and so created a mask or an adapted self, and now it's about being able to take that off with love and kindness and let that part heal. And it can sound scary, it can sound like it can be really scary and uncomfortable, but it can also be soooooo extraordinary, like you'll get so much more life force back, so much more energy, time......and again to go back to. We can either do it when we hit rock bottom, because that's what rock bottom is. It's where we get so lost that we can't do anything but look inside, or we can do it along the way and not have to. So it can be scary. It's much scarier to hit rock bottom or to be alone on cliff top. Thinking, is this it? Like, I've achieved everything there is to achieve, and I still feel like crap, I still feel alone, I still feel empty, I still feel, and I just can't consume enough, right? And so having a practice, having some sort of a process that's going to allow you to do that incrementally, so that you don't have to be whacked upside by the brick, right? Yeah, it's scary. And it's an alternative. It's way more scary to be annihilated, frankly. Let's annihilate, and I don't want to say to not see or annihilate the shadow, but it's like to be able to illuminate. Let's talk about illuminate. You know, when you put light into the shadow, it goes away. So we want to illuminate that space for you to be able to rise above. Will that take effort? Yes. Will it be uncomfortable? Yes. Yeah, is it worth it? Absolutely, yes. Well, and I think that it feels scary because it... we're not taught to do this. Yeah, it's unfamiliar at school we're taught our ABCs and our, you know, all of this stuff, all the outer stuff. And there isn't training for the inner there isn't. If there were, it wouldn't be so scary. You know, we're actually kind of taught to shove it aside and don't pay attention to it. And I know there's a... before we got on, Stephanie was sharing with me one of her favorite quotes......yeah, one of my favorite quotes is 97% of what we what we manifest in our life, like what we create in our world, doesn't come from what we do. It comes from who we are, meaning that 97% is our inner narrative, our thoughts, our beliefs, the way that we behave internally within ourselves. Like we think, oh, in the 97% which is the life force within which is a heck of a lot of energy, that you don't have to work so hard in the outer world to make something happen. What is being required is working inwardly to basically look at what are all the things that are standing in the way between where I am now and where I want to be. And can I? Can I work with that, kindness and compassion and with others too, so that we can work with this together? Because as we illuminate it within ourselves, we illuminate it within other people. That's the 97% meaning changing the itty bitty, shitty committee that's going on inside your head. And that like, so let's just as an example, let's use, like, losing weight, like we tend to focus on, oh yeah, I want to lose weight. Well, I always say I don't want to lose it, because I don't ever want to find it again once it's gone, I want it the our humor, in the way of our lightheartedness, in the way of playing more like there's so many other things that means lightening up, which is going to change my body, by the way, but I have to go inside and look at, well, what do I believe about playing? What do I believe about resting and being still? What do I believe about, you know, having a sense of humor, like, if I have some sort of narrative that says, oh, no, like to just play is to vacate my life and I really am not being productive. How do I know? Look, I'll tell you, if I was playing, I'd be dancing and surfing and hiking. And do you think I might lighten up? Yes, I think I'm going to lighten up, not only in my heart and soul, but also in my body. That's going to have much more of an impact than me trying to control what I'm eating or control what I'm physically doing. If I do it from the inside, it happens more beautifully. It happens naturally. It doesn't it's, yes, it's an effort, but it's a And it's, I don't want to say permanent in that you'll never have to address a weight issue again in your life, it's, it's different kind of an effort. getting off of that cycle of, you know, dieting and then not dieting, and then getting your weight back and dieting. Because when what is happening is, you're, you're addressing the 3% you know, when Stephanie talks about that 97% the other part is the 3% that we do in the outer world, right? So we just address that, and we don't look at the inner, the shadow and all of the inner stuff. Then it's the moment we stop doing the outer world thing. It's going to come back. That's right? Because the whole intention, like I said, with the book of like attainment through or mastery through attainment, right? It's like the reason that we have the desire in the first place is so that all of the stuff, the inner stuff, comes up so that we get to look at it, so that we 'get' to look at it. And unfortunately, we've been trained to believe that we'have' to or I don't want to, I don't want to, you can't make me, right? So we get go into rebellion or resignation. Or all of this other stuff around when, when those issues start to come up in our lives, we think, I just want to push that out away and just get what I want. Well, those things are your path to getting what you really want, which is the internal so that you don't end up on cliff top with all the stuff and none of the inner... and I always say, so what's the worst thing that would happen? Maybe the the outer 3% doesn't show up. Maybe you don't lose the pounds off your body, you know? Maybe they don't go away. But you're playing, and you've changed all that inner dialog and all of it doesn't matter. You're already happy. You're happy. So I would say it's like, you know, who will you be when you have what you say you want? Yeah. And when someone says, hey, you know, I can't wait to retire, well, who will you be when you retire? Or I wish I had a million dollars, or I wish I could win the lotto, who would you be if you... and I can tell you, so many people say, oh, I'd be the same person. Like, bullshit. No. Guarantee you wouldn't be. But the thing is, that's what you want to practice in the inner world right now, because that's what will lead you to a life that's more beautiful and more more wonderful, with or without the million dollars, or the, you know, the perfect body, or whatever you'll still... it doesn't matter. Wouldn't it be great? Because it's the attachments, the attachment to the things in the outer world that makes us suffer. And where we can get the weeds, because it's like a weed in the garden is that we got to pull it. We got to look inside. And you know, what's so great too, is that when you can pull one weed, sometimes when you pull one weed, it just keeps going. It's like it's a long weed. It pulls a whole bunch of them out with it, and it makes space for what wants to grow or what wants to happen. Well, and I like ...what I mean the way I started the whole podcast was asking that question of, what, what would it... what would your life be like? Who would you be if you had all your needs met? Right? I think that that's a really key question for us to look at, because a lot of times when we really look at it from that place, there's a future calling that eliminates some of those weeds for us. So... so often we don't even have to go in and pull the weeds when we can hold on to the focus of who I want, who would I be, because that's that's really what we're all about, if it's like becoming that person, and we think that the money will make us that person, or the right relationship will make us that person, or the right body weight will make us that person, or the the right, you know, chest size will make us that whatever, because that's what we're taught, again, that society wants us to believe, because that's the way that society makes its money. And you know, we're not commodities. We're human beings. So in other words, if you can detach from all of that by doing the inner work, you become free. Yeah, you are no longer controlled by the media, by like social media, by the good opinions of others. You are no longer controlled. You are absolutely a free being. I love that. So this is the type of work that we do together and that we share with our clients, and that we're going to be sharing on our Inner Mastery course coming up, we'll go more deeply into what all of this means and how to do it. So if you're interested in joining us. Visit our website,
https://tslp.life/, or shoot us a note on Facebook or on LinkedIn, where you can find us at The Soulful Leaders and tune in if you haven't listened to the prior four about Inner Mastery. There's some great tools that we've given already, and we will continue to talk about inner mastery, because really, that's what soulful leadership is. It's leading from the inside out. It's changing the world from the inside out. Is changing business from the inside out, and that's what we're all about. So we hope you'll join us, see you next week on The Soulful Leader Podcast. And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, at www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com. Until next time...