Where Is The Wow?

How To Stay Connected To What Makes You Feel Alive

I’ve posted my original writing to Instagram for several years. I haven’t missed a day since I decided to post daily. People ask me how I have the energy and discipline to be so consistent. I‘m going to share that secret with you.

But first, let’s rewind for a minute.

When I was a kid, I was in an emotionally challenging environment and didn’t feel there was anyone in my life I could count on for support and guidance. I had to figure things out on my own, which was often overwhelming. So, I discovered ways to live in my head to escape from my life and retreat into an imagination-fueled dreamland. 

Music was the earliest thing I found that really sent me there. I could sink into music literally all day and never interact with the world. Back when headphones had wires, I’d even carry a CD player in my backpack at school, run the earbuds under my shirt, and then cover my ears with my hair so I could low-key listen to music all day during class. 

Naturally, I started writing music a few years later, and I eventually became a music engineer and produced over two hundred albums. However, along the way, I started podcasting and writing, and those two things took off much stronger professionally than my music ever had. As time passed, my podcast and writing career grew and began to flourish in ways I never expected. Even though things were going well, I felt guilty that I wasn’t writing any music. I felt like I was letting someone down or disrespecting the thing that had been a lifeline for me. 

One day, I decided to look deeply into that feeling of guilt rather than carry it around any longer.

I sat down, started meditating, and began softening, opening up, and allowing that feeling to grow inside me so I could sense it more clearly. After sitting with it for a few minutes, I had an insight. I’d decided during a period of my life when I was incredibly unhappy that I’d use music as a tool to heal, escape, and build self-confidence through my mastery of it as a producer. 

A huge chunk of my identity had been anchored to music. So the guilt was coming from the fact that I was still carrying this idea that “who I was” had to deal with music or else I wasn’t living up to my potential. As I reflected on that, it struck me that I was still holding on to how I’d identified myself as a teenager. Essentially, I was an adult attached to a twenty-year-old story.

Then, it hit me that I wasn’t pushed to create music anymore because it simply wasn’t giving me the same satisfaction and feeling of awe that it had in the past. The wow was gone, but I was still holding guilt about not doing it because I was grasping the story that it was a part of my identity. 

So, I looked at my creative pursuits and asked myself the question: 

Where is the wow?  

What was I doing that gave me that otherworldly, intoxicating, flow state-inducing high that music once had? The answer was writing. It was then I decided to let go of the story that I had to create music and totally focused on my writing. That’s when I had the idea to commit to writing daily. I made a deal with myself that as a creative practice, I’d write a personal insight every day and post it on Instagram.

I did this with the intention of it being nothing more than a creative exercise and a way to redefine who I was as a creative and human being. But pretty quickly, my account started blowing up, and I organically gained half a million followers in under two years. 

This experience taught me to be mindful of doing things just because it’s “who I think I am.” Instead, I look at my life with fresh eyes and ask myself, “What am I doing that gives me that special, undefinable universal energy?” Then, I focus on what is working instead of what I think should be working and keep following that energy into the future. That’s how I can stay consistent with posting every day on Instagram. It isn’t a chore. It gives me energy, so I want to do it. 

Of course, the special thing in life that tunes up your senses and gets your passion flowing will be something different from mine.

But it’s wise to take a moment to look at your life and ask yourself: where is the wow?

• Do you do things just because you’re stuck to a story of “who you are?” 

• Does what you choose to do give you energy? 

• Can you feel the “wow“ in what you decide to focus on daily?

It’s a good practice to consider how you’ve grown as a person. Then, look for what is in your life that gives you that wow feeling, let go of the old story of who you have to be, and point your focus toward what is making you feel more alive. 

Remember, what gives you the feeling of being alive will change over time because you change over time. The secret to staying passionate, full of energy, and in tune with who you truly are is to loosen your grip on the story of your identity and often ask yourself: Where is the wow?

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