CHAPTER SEVEN
THE GAP
I was sitting on my couch one day, thinking about what it means to be
happy. As I contemplated my utter lack of joy, I thought about how most
people who were important to me would have given me a pep talk right on
the spot. I imagined it verbatim: You’re so incredibly lucky. You have a
wonderful family, which includes beautiful kids. You are a successful
chiropractor. You lecture to thousands of people, you travel the world going
to unusual places, you were featured in What the BLEEP Do We Know!?,
and many people loved your message. You even wrote a book, and it is
doing well. They would have hit all of the right emotional and logical notes.
But to me, something wasn’t right.
I was at a point in my life where I was traveling from city to city every
weekend doing lectures; sometimes I was in two cities within three days. It
occurred to me that I was so busy that I had no time to actually practice
what I was teaching.
This was an unnerving moment, because I began to see that all of my
happiness was created from outside of me, and that the joy I experienced
when I was traveling and lecturing had nothing to do with real joy. It
appeared to me that I needed everyone, everything, and everyplace outside
of me in order to feel good. This image that I was projecting to the world
was dependent on external factors. And when I was not out lecturing or
doing interviews or treating patients, and I was home, I felt empty.
Don’t get me wrong; in some ways those things outside of me were great.
If you had asked anyone who saw me lecturing, deeply engrossed in
working on a presentation during a flight, or answering dozens of e-mails
while in an airport or hotel lounge, such an observer would have said that I
appeared to be pretty happy.
The sad truth is that if you had asked me at one of those moments, I
would have probably responded in much the same way: Yes, things are
great. I’m doing well. I’m a lucky guy.