The Disillusionment Paradox

Imagine your 80-year-old self reflecting on how you played the game until this point. Looking back, did you achieve everything that you set out to do? Some of it? None of it?

Did the promise life or at least GQ, Vogue and Cosmopolitan magazines make you come true?

Did you get that perfect life? The beautiful house. The beautiful body. The perfect wife/husband. The adoring children. Two cars and three pets (two dogs and a cat).

Did it play out well for you?

What if the promise was never kept and not one of your hopes and dreams were fulfilled (not even the dogs and cat). Would you feel like a failure? Would you be disappointed and disillusioned?

I would feel like a failure, wouldn’t you?

But, what if all that you were promised came true. Even the dogs and cat were perfect. Would you feel secure, powerful, fulfilled and contented?

Hell, yeah!

Mmm, maybe not so much.

The paradox is that whether you get what you want or not, you’ll always be disillusioned, disappointed and depressed.

One day when you meet those that were given so much, ask them one and all how it worked out for them: Whitney Houston, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Robin Williams, Bernie Madoff et alia.

Ask your average billionaire next door how things are working out – the 10-bedroomed house, the trophy husband, the yacht and the Lamborghini. When life happens – illness, infidelity, infertility, indigestion, ingratitude and infrequent intercourse – all the glitter and gold loses its shine, doesn’t it?

We’re mostly in a state of dissatisfaction and disillusionment where all we want to do is trade in, trade up or trade out, don’t we?

If family, friends, fame, Fendi, Ferrari and favour can’t do the trick, what can?

Focusing on the process of living this life and not the outcome is one way to make it count.

Because the outcome, whether you get it or not is always dissatisfactory. It never quite plays out how you thought it would. It never scratches the itch called insecurity.

Focus on the moment. Focus in the moment. Make what you do in this moment count. It’s art.

It’s process

It’s what is called life.

It’s perfect.

Jacques de Villiers helps organisations, professional speakers, authors and entrepreneurs triumph through: sales training, motivational speaking and consulting.