🔍🧠✨Why The Examined Life
Revive & Thrive: Examining Life’s Patterns
Dear Why Team member,
I hope this week’s message finds you well and enjoying this time of year.
Through my desire to improve in every area of my life, I’ve discovered a core understanding from antiquity. It’s revealed in Socrates’ most famous observation that the unexamined life is not worth living. Which viewed in the positive is that the examined life IS worth living.
After presenting this idea just recently during a speech in Connecticut, an audience member gave me a powerful insight from Carl Jung:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” - C.G. Jung
We are creatures of habit, establishing early in life habits of thought that direct our life in ways we cannot imagine.
Albert Einstein said we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that causes them. You have likely heard the insight that if we think what we have always thought, we will get what we have always got.
To REVIVE & THRIVE IN 2025, how about we examine more, than ever before, our life, the choices we make, and WHY.
Through examining my own life, through various means including coaches and mentors, I have experienced transformations and a life abundant that I never would have thought possible. And to whom much is given, I believe much is required; this weekly effort is to share with you as much as possible of what I have learned and am still learning.
The ‘why’ question has given me far more understanding than any ‘what’ or ‘how’ question hence, the creation of the Why Team. Thank you for being a member. Not only do we ask ‘why’ questions more often, we also work to leverage the ‘why’ of our lives as a guidepost to answer our ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions. Examining our life more than ever before can help bring the unconscious to our awareness so that we are more consciously living our lives rather than our habits living our lives.
“Habits Rule the Unreflecting Herd.”
- William Wordsworth
I think this is what Socrates meant when he said the unexamined life is not worth living - it’s a life predominantly of habit. This is not to negate the incredible power of habit and self-discipline, but to recognize that not all our habits are good for us, especially the habit of thinking limiting thoughts.
As you celebrate the conclusion to another year in your life, reflect on what you learned, where you improved AND begin to write down your wants and desires to maybe become more Alive in 2025. Consider journaling your journey through the holidays, writing down the answers that come to you from the question how might you
REVIVE & THRIVE IN ‘25.
The mind is drawn to what is drawn so please consider writing it down. How may you examine more of your life to make it even more worth living - for yourself and those you serve.
Make no mistake that the most valuable gift we give another is our life time, the time we are alive. Our attention is our most precious currency, it’s our life currency. It will be your best gift to another over the holidays.
Consider paying more attention to where you pay attention. Weed out your garden of any bitterness - it’s a poison we drink to hurt another - and is a very bad trade of our precious life currency. Consider a new coach or mentor to help you bring more of your unconscious mind to your consciousness - to see the patterns of habit that have kept you from your
BEST LIFE EVER.
As we get closer to celebrating birth and rebirth, forgiveness, and renewal, may the Spirit of the Season open you in ways you’ve never been opened before. And let us all commit and recommit to live our BEST LIFE EVER, one BEST DAY EVER at a time.
Wishing you and yours the VERY BEST this Holiday Season!
Steve Luckenbach