Clarity at a Crossroads

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Tom Morgan, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

One of the most influential books I’ve ever read is The Power of Myth, a dialogue between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers . The back-and-forth format, taken from a PBS TV show, is easy to read and stacked with profound insights. Mythology, according to Campbell, is ‘symbolic expression as given to the unconscious desires, fears, and tensions that underlie the conscious patterns of human behavior. Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography; history, and cosmology.’

As Campbell discusses at length, the labyrinth is a common mythological metaphor for the human psyche; it was even used recently throughout HBO’s Westworld. I believe the labyrinth reflects those times in our lives when we find ourselves lost or stuck, with the way forward dark and uncertain. This predicament is especially common at the crossroads of midlife. Just as Maslow argued, the more we have satisfied our immediate material needs, the more we can afford to examine our own self-fulfillment. We can also pay closer attention to the fears and desires that are now limiting our growth as individuals. Midlife can be the time when, as Brené Brown puts it so perfectly ‘Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts.’

This time can feel like limbo. Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen describes ‘burnout’ as; ‘That inability to be stationary, paradoxically coupled with an inability to move out of one’s predicament — that’s what specifies burnout as a particular hybrid of anxiety and depression….. That, to me, is really purgatorial.’

Campbell thinks the path out of the maze is to ‘follow your bliss’; ‘I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.’ If your psychological armour is making up the walls of the maze, use your gifts to get out of the labyrinth.

In the Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, the hero is guided where all else have failed by Ariadne’s thread. After the Minotaur is slain, a tiny ball of yarn helps him find his way back out of the maze. Campbell argued that this was a metaphor for ‘finding you bliss’. What does this mean in real life? I think it means that, if you’re uncertain which direction you should be heading in, carefully examine what grabs your attention, and follow it. In his lecture on Jacob’s ladder, Jordan Peterson raises a crazy-yet-wonderful idea from Carl Jung.

‘For Jung, your interest was being manipulated, behind the scenes, by unseen forces that were associated with your characterological development across time. That was the manifestation of the Self. So the Self is the potential you, let’s say. The way it operates in the present is by gripping your interest and directing it somewhere. That’s part of the instinct of self-realization. It’s a mind boggling idea. I think it’s correct; I can’t see how it can’t be correct. It doesn’t mean I understand it completely, but it certainly seems to be phenomenologically correct. I mean, the potential that you are has to manifest itself somehow, in the here and now. It has to. What better way than by directing your attention?’

This takes us back to the idea of ‘flow’; that whatever puts us ‘in the zone’ leads to the optimal human experience. There is a kind of internal consistency that pursuing the kind of engrossing pursuits that lead to growth can help us manifest our latent potential. We don’t yet know where that side-gig, passion-project or online course might lead. But chances-are it gives you more future options than Candy Crush. What are you doing every day that has a positive compounding effect on your future growth? Are you making small sacrifices today that will pay off in future? Put simply: are your daily pursuits leading to growth?

Obviously this smuggles in a problematic subjective assessment of the value of any activity. Are flow-generating video games good or bad? Is time with friends good or bad if it also involves 3 glasses of wine? For Peterson and Jung this value judgement was ensured by making sure we’re aiming for the best possible version of ourselves.

‘He [Jung] believed that psychotherapy could be replaced by a supreme moral effort. The moral effort would be something like aiming at the Good, and then trying to integrate yourself around that. The Good, at which you aim, would be something approximating what you would be like if you manifested your full potential, and that you’d have a glimmering of what that full potential was. That would be the potential future you. He thought of people as four dimensional entities, essentially — that we’re stretched across time, and that you, as a totality across time, including your potential, manifested yourself, also, in the here and now. Part of what your potential manifested itself was something like the voice of conscience, or intuition. It’s an amazing idea. It’s an amazing idea! Because it’s like what you could be in the future beckons to you in the present, and it helps you determine the difference between good and evil. It’s a mind-boggling idea.’

It is indeed a quite bonkers idea; that flow, or our attention, guides us through the labyrinth by directing our future growth towards the best version of ourselves. But, as the name of my coaching initiative makes explicit, I adamantly believe we all have our own Personal Best. Your goals need to be uniquely personal to you. As the poet David Whyte wrote ‘If we can see the path ahead laid out for us, there is a good chance it is not our path; it is probably someone else’s we have substituted for our own.’ [My thoughts on how to dial up your conscience, dial down distractions and set lofty goals was discussed in a recent article The Power of Pinocchio.]

But the obvious problem is when the abstract theory of mythology meets the harsh reality of modern society. We need to earn money, we have responsibilities and families to support. As philosopher Emil Cioran wrote; “Try to be free: you will die of hunger”.

A leap of faith is hard enough already, without your offspring strapped to your back. But Campbell was still scathing about those that neglected their bliss for material pursuits. “Follow your bliss.” There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.’

If you feel stuck in a limiting perspective or a lifestyle the critical question to ask yourself is ‘in what ways am I free?’ It’s not that society doesn’t have limits, it’s that more of the limits than you think might be self-imposed. Challenging those restrictions involves leaving older parts of you behind and facing your fears. It isn’t easy.

I have recently been studying Existential Humanistic Therapy, a discipline that aims to help people with questions of this magnitude. ‘To live and not simply exist takes courage. An assumption of E-H therapists is that clients, and people in general, often turn away from what overwhelms or frightens them, constructing protections that keep them safe but also constrict their living. E-H therapy is an experiential therapy, which assumes that if life-limiting protections are diminished, more joy, satisfaction, meaning, and purpose can emerge. Awareness of our existence requires an inward courage to face life—not avoid it.’

But that’s the hope in the message; that’s what Campbell means when he talks about doors opening. The idea is simply to set your sights on the best version of yourself from within your existing life, and make the right choices one at a time as the present unfolds. There’s no point torturing yourself for a squandered past or for the failure to leap in future; just make courageous choices in the present as the flow of life presents it to you. Focus on what most draws your attention and allocate more time for that while minimizing empty distractions or regressive habits.

Book a free 45min coaching session on my site.

Follow me on twitter @personalbestnyc