Twelve years ago, my life looked successful and positive from the outside. I had a good job as a senior supply chain director at Procter & Gamble, was paid a handsome salary, and lived in a high-end property overlooking the Singapore skyline. But something was missing. I felt unfulfilled somehow … lost and trapped. After a string of spectacularly failed relationships, with my health not the best, and ‘handcuffed’ to the golden cage of my well-paid job, I found myself in the middle of a classic midlife crisis.
life goals
What can we learn from the “Phantom of the Open”?
Maurice Flitcroft was a crane operator working at a shipyard in North-East England. He was 44 years old in October 1974 when he did something ordinary. He watched a golf tournament. Nobody knew that watching that tournament that afternoon in front of his brand-new color-tv would be a life-changing event. It was the day when Maurice decided to become a golfer… one who would write history.
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„All you need is …!“
On November 16, 2019, I sent an email to family and friends inviting them to celebrate the “half-time of my life” at the end of May, 2020. I could have also called it the “31st anniversary of my 19th birthday,” or simply let them know I would be crossing half the half-century mark. Many had signed up, and in February 2020, the organisation of the event was done.
But sadly, we all know what happened after that. The world went into a stand-still for 2 years. It was impossible to even think about having a party and celebrating with friends. By the end of 2021, I started another attempt at organising the event, and with the world opening, it became more and more likely it could happen in June 2022.
As the big day drew closer, I was quite anxious about how it would go.
Two Yogurts In A Fridge
Think of an incident when someone else’s behaviour was so appalling to you, that it triggered a stark emotional reaction. Maybe it was someone acting selfish, rude, greedy, arrogant, mean, inflexible, etc. Anything come to mind?
As part of my psychotherapy studies I came across an interesting psychological concept recently, which taught me an interesting lesson… revealed in two yogurt containers.
The lesson is all about shadows, which, according to Carl Jung, “exist as part of the unconscious mind and are composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.”
This is the darker side of our nature we don’t really want to acknowledge. The shadows contain all the things that are unacceptable to society… and to our own personal morals and values. That’s why we don’t want to acknowledge them!
There is a crack in everything – for a reason!
I recently came across the wonderful story of an old woman who was living by herself many many years ago. Every morning, she went to the river to get fresh water. She took a long pole, hung an old bucket from the left side and another bucket from the right side. Always the same buckets on the same sides of the pole.
The walk down the dirt path from her house wasn’t very long. At the river, she would take the pole with the buckets off her shoulders and carefully dip each bucket in the river, filling it with cold, fresh water. Then, just as carefully, she would place each bucket back on the pole, lift the pole up onto her shoulders, and slowly make her way back.
As she walked home, the right-hand bucket held the water perfectly, whereas the left-hand bucket, had a small crack in the bottom leaking out a persistent drip. By the time the woman reached home, the bucket would be half empty, which happened day after day, week after week, year after year.
Nothing changed… until one day, just as they arrived at the river, the left-hand bucket sighed. This surprised the woman. She had never heard a bucket sigh before.
Then the bucket spoke. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”
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