I wake to sunlight streaming through the bedroom windows in Peoa, Utah. My body is humming with something I can’t quite comprehend. It’s deeper than exhaustion, sweeter than relief, and more sublime than success. It makes me want to cry.
So I ask my wife the question I’ve asked her several times before: Why do runners sometimes burst into tears at the end of a race?
The longer we discuss it, though, the deeper the feeling descends back into my body. I’m reminded in real time of what I wrote in The Road Less Triggered:
You don’t understand your way to feeling, you feel your way to understanding.
It’s not until I’m in the silence and solitude of the guest bathroom that the humming returns. The feeling is vast and urgent. Once again, I’m faced with the choice we’re all faced with when an emotion rises within us: You can analyze a feeling, or you can allow a feeling, but you can’t do both.
I allow it.
Once we quit telling our emotions what to do, they tell us what they’re about.
That’s the thought that comes with the first wave of tears.
The Summit was a one-of-a-kind event, and it was a home run for those in attendance. One guest remarked, “I can’t believe how much value you delivered in a single day without it once feeling overwhelming.” My emotion isn’t about the success of it, however.
It’s about the fact that I was entirely at peace while leading it.
Fifteen years ago, that would have been inconceivable. All the moving parts and potential for mistakes (and, thus, shame) would have been more stress than I could have handled. On the day of the Summit, however, I’d remained openhearted to all of it, seeking to control none of it, trusting it to be perfectly imperfect, just trying to lead the event as intuitively as possible.
The emotion is the feeling of being completely at home in my own skin, after so many years in exile. It’s so big because it contains both the exile and the homecoming, all at once.
#1. Good news: If you are in exile from yourself, there is a healing process that can lead you home.
The second wave of tears threatens to carry my eyeballs away with it. I feel gratitude so large it simply can’t stay in a body.
Loneliness has three main ingredients: feeling unseen, misunderstood, and unsupported. Feeling unsupported is my loneliness language, so support is my love language. And the Summit was supported by so many wonderful souls:
my longtime friend and collaborator Jeremy Reisig who helped design it;
the masterful hospitality of my director of event operations Rhonda Jenkins;
the genius and generosity of our dear friends and owners of the 4U Ranch, Donna and Gary Urban;
the brilliance of Weltzin Media, who documented it for replay on September 3rd;
the culinary giftedness of Chef Dalton at Park City Elite Private Chefs who fed us all day;
the deep wisdom and deft guidance of the Summit’s world-class leadership team—Joshua Wenner, Stefanos Sifandos, and Christine Hassler;
the tireless support of my wife, who has been my solid rock for the last quarter of a century;
and the presence and commitment of every single guest who attended live—they’re way more than fans, and even more than friends…they feel like family.
For so long, I tried to achieve inner peace by changing my people. You see, so much of what we call personal and relational growth is really just a cleverly-disguised attempt to change the “weather” (a.k.a., the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the people around us).
#2. If you want different weather, don’t try to change the weather—change your location.
You need to surround yourself with people who support you and your authenticity. Of course, the “weather” will never be perfect—in any community there will always be stormy days—but every once in a while there’ll be a day so beautiful you’ll have to ask if you’re in heaven.
No, they’ll say, it’s Utah.
The giant wave of emotion gives way to a gentler one, as I realize that one of the truest things I always say—“You’re not here to be finished, you’re here to be formed”—is only half true. I feel a satisfaction so deep I know no other accomplishment will ever transcend it.
A #1 New York Times Bestseller?
Riches and fame?
A legacy-like impact on the world?
I wouldn’t complain about any of those things, but I can feel all the way to the center of my soul that they won’t be more satisfying than the experience I’ve just had with my people.
#3. In the end, our places of belonging are the big door prize.
I look up and look in the mirror. My eyes are bloodshot and glassy and swollen. I haven’t seen eyes like that in the mirror since I was a little boy. Back then, that little kid was in a lot of pain.
On this morning, however, he’s left only with the peace that remains after the pain passes through you.
It’s a peace that surpasses all understanding.
Which of the three “clues” feel most important to you today? Let us know in the comments, and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!
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