Welcome to Erebus Growing, a weekly email where I share little snippets of life to help you change and grow into your highest life.

I’m back at the 9-5 tomorrow for a week of fairly regular days. Then I have two weeks where my afternoons are filled with training sessions from 12 pm to 4:30 pm for a certification.

My evenings and weekends will be full. The next three weeks at the part-time are virtually the same, a four-hour shift on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, followed by a full day on Saturday.

Busy, busy, with not much time to myself, but it’s a necessary thing at this moment.

Soon, I will be able to take a step back and breathe a bit more.

👨🏻‍💻 Meditation

Building your life is the ultimate task, and last week I talked about how to start by considering both what you want and what you don’t want.

One question that hit me a couple of months ago that pairs well with this idea of what you want/don’t want is this:

Do you want the successful version of this?

I have been using this question in relation to my 9-5.

Do I want the successful version of a federal compliance officer and system administrator?

This likely would lead to becoming a Director of Compliance for a higher education institution or branching into a narrower field where I would become a Compliance Officer for a specific law. In another slightly different field, this could lead to me moving into an emergency management position which is a small part of what I do now.

Alternatively, on the system administrator side, this would logically lead to a project management position, a high-level information technology position, or even an implementation consultant position.

I can say that while I could see doing any of this part-time on an as-needed basis, I currently do not want the successful version of this.

It could become very easy and lead to a fairly well-off financial future. But when I think about what I’m doing right now or could be doing in the future, this is so limited and repetitive.

It doesn’t inspire me at all.

One key to building your life is to find things that the world needs and things that inspire you.

When I think about my life, I don’t see just going to an office for the full 9-5.

What I really see is something in the realm of system development.

I see sitting down with customers and asking questions like “How can we make your work easier?” or “How can we simplify the administrative work so you spend more time doing the real work?”

I’ve had a realization that I’m just too interested in the world to only focus on one thing.

Different industries are all interesting to me, so why would I just limit myself to one? (Fun side note, the idea of a niche is terrible, in my opinion. It forced me to narrow myself so much that I struggled to do anything meaningful. Stay wide until you genuinely feel a pull.)

There is no guarantee that I’ll choose this path, but you have to start someplace to focus on finances. Once you’ve got finances squared away, then you can focus on just chasing your curiosity.

Chasing your curiosity is how we move into the next phase of the world.

There are so many people already talking about moving into the next phase of the world and doing an incredible job (Dan Koe and Justin Scott are two of them).

But my little addition to this is simple.

Follow your curiosity.

I love books and movies and music all for, ultimately, a love of storytelling.

That means that once my finances are taken care of, I know my focus will turn completely to storytelling.

I’ll be working on storytelling before then, but the finances will secure it without question.

And I do want the successful version of a storyteller's life.

I want to pull and share the observations from life around me and use them to help myself and others grow to our highest selves.

There are five pillars in your life: learning, creating, earning, honoring, and reflecting.

I want to talk about the five pillars more in-depth, but growing into your highest self involves focusing on each individually and collectively.

When I think about my highest self, when I think about the storyteller’s life and what the successful version of that looks like…it hits all five of those pillars for me.

So, my question to you is, do you want the successful version of the life you’re leading right now?

📚 Inspiration and Resources
Every week we all consume content and I share my favorites here.

Honoring.
I’ve been working this past week to move my body more and start to focus on adding a second layer of intentional physical movement to my day. Enter Asana Rebel. I signed up for Asana Rebel a number of months ago and didn’t use it for a while. But this past week, it’s been a short five-minute yoga workout every day (including one last night at 11:53 pm when I realized I still hadn’t done it yet!). And there were a couple of moves in the workouts that I didn’t realize I could do! It’s been refreshing and I’m excited to build my practice even more. Give it a try here.

Learning.
I had this past week off from the 9-5 and discovered POV videos for fast food and sit-down service restaurants. I watched a handful of them and they were fascinating. But the one that sucked me in for almost an hour that I could not stop watching was a video following a bakery in a small village in Japan. I might be a few years late after the boon in homemade breadmaking from the pandemic, but this video inspired me to give it a try in December. Give it a watch here.

📓 Journaling Prompt
Journaling is one of the most important things to do when exploring our own lives. A new prompt for you to use this week is below.

Do you want the successful version of the life you’re leading right now?

Until next time, I wish you enough and send you off with love and a sense of urgency in your life.