Finding the "Sweet Spot"
It’s nauseating how many terms there are for this concept. But, as with most things of value, there is a reason it has become a cliche.
We’re all longing to tear through the skyline and reach the resistance-less pastures of the ever-promised, but rarely-delivered “sweet spot.”
Most of us feel we are a wet paper napkin away from the life we truly want; but unfortunately, it always stays that distance away. To put it mildly, it’s frustrating.
This “sweet spot” concept is so popular that it rivals “New Year, New You” on January 1st. This ethos has developed numerous compelling taglines over the years. Here are just a few of the notables:
We’re human beings not human doings.
Being present is where life happens.
We’re all seeking convergence in our lives.
Become your “authentic self.”
Go from striving too thriving.
All of these sentences, and many thousand more, are aimed at doing one thing: provoking that part of you that knows you haven’t arrived.
These faceless marketing geniuses understand, deep down, that you haven’t “come home” to yourself yet.
The terms they use to draw you in differ—freedom, authentic self, self value, feeling loved, actualization—but the concept remains consistent.
Basically, they are promising to help you become the you you feel deep down inside. Like, bowel-depth deep.
For our purposes, we’ll just call this place “the sweet spot.” It extends to nearly every area of life. Within its broad and tantalizing arms include such ideas as self value, confidence, business success, financial health, deep intimacy, professional actualization, rich community, satisfying spiritual life, and more.
But at its center, its very nucleus, is your authentic self. When you are in that place, all of those things become foregone conclusions. They are inevitable eventualities in your skyrocketing life. You being You. Finally.
So, if this is such a blissful place, why can’t we find it? If this is our heart’s desire, why is it so DAMN hard to achieve? And who are these mountain-dwelling gurus who have reached this implausible echelon of human achievement?
The answer? Who the heck knows. But, we do have a few tips to help you to at least get a few gulps of this heavenly plane.
Here are our milestones for the map back to yourself:
1. You can’t strive into being your authentic self, you must surrender to it. As contrary as this sounds, we can’t become ourselves…we can only be ourselves. Most of us striving to “become healthier” are keeping ourselves out of that place through our efforts. Our work, albeit well-intentioned, is reinforcing the idea we haven’t arrived. It isn’t about a destination, it’s about being present on your journey.
2. We don’t understand for the solution, we understand from the solution. Similarly to the first point, we can’t obtain a breakthrough of this magnitude, we can only observe it. When we are trying to obtain it—through effort, insight, or understanding—we are only locking ourselves firmly on the outside. When we learn to observe our lives, with interest and curiosity, we’ll find that we become increasingly aware of how good it is.
3. It confronts everything we value most. When surrendering to this place, we are essentially releasing where we have found purpose, self value, and intimacy. We likely learned our “role” or “performance” from our family.
Perhaps we learned to be “good little girls or boys” for attention and affirmation. Or maybe we became rebels as a desperate attempt at that same valuable attention. And in addition, we got the added benefit of drawing the tension away from our parents’ fighting and onto us (the rebellious child). In other words, we learned that our role in the family, value to others, and pathway to intimacy are all threatened if we surrender our ability to “earn” arrival to the sweet spot.
4. You’re already there. I probably shouldn’t elaborate on this point, because I can only muddy the waters, but I will nonetheless. The great trick of humanity is to believe that we aren’t already loved, lovable, valuable, and miraculous. We reveal our own disbelief of this idea by asking “how” or “what” statements. For example, “how can I be my authentic self?” You already are! Or “what do I need to do to live the life I want?” The present moment is the only life you’ll ever get! “I feel alone.” Separation is an illusion. Deal with it.
5. It’s all about connection. At its root, all of our dysfunctions, and the majority of our efforts are all based on our desire to connect or protect ourselves from unsafe connection.
Intimacy is a fundamental need for life. We adapt in order to maintain connection with those we love. Our adaptations allow us to “fit” into the already dysfunctional dynamic we are born into. It is healthy to adapt to maintain connection. But it is even healthier to revert to your default design, so that others can know you more authentically and intimately. You won’t want to continue performing or “fixing yourself” if you get the revelation you are already loved, AND you will have MORE intimacy when you give others the opportunity to love your real self.
Likely, there are at least 2 or 3 more pillars for getting to The Sweet Spot. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet arrived at the top of the mountain (weak ankles), so it remains a mystery to us as well.
Bottom line, most of us have deluded ourselves into believing our efforts can get us to the sweet spot, when in fact, it is the opposite. It is embracing and accepting the internal value we already possess.
Our messiness isn’t an indication of our not arriving, it is evidence of the difficulties we have experienced in our lives. We won’t “arrive” by trying to remove our messiness, but valuing our holiness.
In other words, the sweet spot already exists within you. It is available at this very moment, in the exact place you find yourself, and without changing a thing. The more comfortable you become in accepting that fact, the sooner you will enjoy the sweet, sweetness of the sweetest of spots.