"Can ease and ambition really coexist?"
Same goal, two paths. Which one are you taking?
Hi, I’m Saachi!
If you’re ambitious but exhausted, running on a treadmill you’re afraid to step off, you’re in the right place!
Turns out, there’s a more intelligent, mysterious way to participate in reality and live your biggest dreams.
Every week, I share how to achieve your biggest goals with ease, joy, and exuberance.
We all think that to achieve our goals, constant strenuous struggle is necessary.
In fact, when we aren’t struggling as much, we often think we don’t deserve to win.
Does that resonate?
But what if I told you that you always have two paths to choose from:
one of sheer force, led by your mind and its fixed plans…
and the other, where you participate intelligently in the unfolding of reality, with ease and joy.
Here’s how.
The Race to the Boat
A couple of days ago I was watching Outlast on Netflix.
It’s a fascinating reality show where 16 strangers join teams to compete against each other in the deep, wet wilderness of the Alaskan rainforest, and the winning team has to outlast all the others.
There was a challenge in one episode where two people, from different teams, each had to build a makeshift DIY boat and row it out to the middle of a lake to claim a proper, well-built boat.
Whoever got there first could use it to fish, travel, and explore other parts of the rainforest.
It’s a physically brutal challenge. These players hadn’t eaten well in over two weeks, with limited food and water.
They’d built rafts by hand and now had to navigate the currents of an Alaskan river just to reach the boats.
What was interesting is that the two players took completely different approaches.
The One Who Fought the River
Player A had a head start.
He was athletic, and he used sheer force to get to the boat, paddling as fast as he possibly could.
He got close.
But the current swayed him off course.
Then his makeshift paddle came apart.
He panicked.
He kicked his feet as hard as he could, trying to force his way to the boat, and the harder he pushed, the further the current pushed him away.
Eventually he gave up, and told his teammates he wasn’t going to get the boat.
The One Who Rode the River
Player B had a later start.
But at the beginning of the challenge, he did something unusual.
He prayed. He asked for guidance.
And guidance, he got!
He stayed calm.
He studied the currents.
He didn’t panic or rush, even though he was well behind.
He noticed the flow of the river, and had the idea to paddle toward the midpoint of the current, letting the river carry him rather than fighting it.
The moment he did that, he cruised straight to the boat, calmly overtaking the other player.
What can we see in this
There’s a lot to learn from moments like this on reality TV.
I love breaking down the life mechanics hiding inside them.
Player A was using blunt, brute force.
He had a fixed plan, and he was trying to control the outcome through sheer will.
(For what it’s worth, after giving up, he tried again and eventually did make it to the boat.
But his journey was arduous, stressful, and exhausting. It depleted him completely.)
Player B, on the other hand, was fully tapped into his intuition.
Prayer is a way of surrendering, trusting a power greater than us to guide us.
And whether you’re religious or not, it’s one of the great ways to get out of your own way.
When you pray, you drop the pressure of having to know all the answers.
You stop overthinking and forcing the ONE plan in your head. You ease up, relax, and allow yourself to be guided.
You widen your perception, and take the intelligent path instead of the path of sheer force.
The point of this story is to show you the two ways we go after our goals.
One is hustle, sheer force, control: the path we’re taught to take, the one that’s celebrated in our culture.
It’s also the one that tends to burn us out, taking the longer, more convoluted route that depletes us of the joy the journey was supposed to hold.
The other path is getting out of our own way.
When we drop the pressure of controlling the outcome, and leave it to a higher intelligence, we can ease up, relax, and receive the guidance we need to reach our goals: intelligently, efficiently, and yes, sometimes even irrationally.
This is how intuition speaks to us.
This is how our perspective widens, and doors open that we couldn’t see before.
Player A had the same opportunities as Player B.
He simply didn’t notice them.
He was too fixated on the plan already running in his mind.
Which Player Are You?
When we’re too attached to the fixed plans in our minds, we often take the longer, more arduous, more stressful path,
when a calmer, easier, more joyful one is right there, waiting to be noticed.
When we follow the path of sheer force, it’s the mind leading the way, not the intuition.
And the mind clutters our path with thoughts like:
“This is the only way.”
“I have to push as hard as I possibly can, no matter what.”
“If this path fails me, I’ve failed.”
This isn’t a diss on hard work.
It’s a diss on unnecessary suffering.
Two players. Same opportunity. Two completely different journeys.
So next time you catch yourself using sheer force, forcing something to happen your way, through a fixed plan in your mind, take a moment to pause.
Take a deep breath.
And ask for guidance.
Ask your intuition to lead.
Tell yourself that you’ll get out of the way.
Open yourself up to creative possibilities.
Instead of thinking your way through it, tap into the innate, intuitive curiosity that was always meant to guide you.