Why Am I Doing Any of This?
- Michael Drake
- Jul 1
- 3 min read
If you stripped away the titles, the income, the schedule, and the opinions of everyone around you — would you still be living the same life?
I was driving home one evening — exhausted, phone buzzing on the seat beside me, mentally already back at my desk — when it hit me like a wall: Why am I doing any of this?
Not as a complaint. Not as a crisis. As a genuine, unsettling question I had no clean answer for.
Why more money? What was enough? What was I actually chasing — and who told me to chase it? I started pulling on that thread and I couldn't stop. Was it validation? Was it fear of being ordinary? Was it simply that I'd built so much momentum that stopping felt more terrifying than continuing? Or had I just inherited someone else's definition of a good life and never stopped to ask whether it was mine?
The rat race doesn't recruit you with a contract. It just quietly absorbs you. The promotions, the side hustles, the metrics, the milestones — they all feel meaningful in the moment. Society rewards them. Your ego rewards them. And before long, the doing becomes the identity. You stop asking why because the what keeps you too busy to wonder.
That's the trap. And I was deep inside it.
Here's the truth we're taught to avoid
Busyness is sophisticated avoidance. We fill our calendars the same way we avoid difficult conversations — deliberately, habitually, and with just enough justification to feel righteous about it. Most people are climbing ladders they never consciously chose, toward rooftops they've never actually seen. They're measuring their lives against benchmarks set by culture, parents, social media, or fear — and calling it ambition.
The uncomfortable truth is this: if you've never paused long enough to ask whose life you're living, you may have spent years building something that doesn't belong to you.
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We live in a culture that often encourages us to ignore it, to keep busy and to focus on anything but the inevitable. And yet, no matter how much we try to distract ourselves, the fear lingers beneath the surface. The only way to move past it is to face it head-on.
— Michael Drake, The Paradox of a Mortal Mind
Core Lesson
Most people are climbing ladders they never consciously chose.
We have a remarkable human gift — the capacity for introspection, for asking the big questions. Unlike any other creature, we can pause, reflect, and actively reshape our lives. But only if we use it.
The moment you stop and ask why — genuinely, without rushing to a comfortable answer — the spell breaks. Not everything falls apart. But the things that don't belong to you start to show themselves. And that's the beginning of building something real.
This Week's Action
Whose definition of success are you living?
Write it down — no filters. Where did your current goals come from? Your parents? A salary benchmark? Something you decided at 22 and never revisited?
This isn't about tearing it all down. It's about owning your choices consciously — so you're building a life on purpose, not on momentum.
Then I started writing letters…
Ready to go deeper? The Paradox of a Mortal Mind shows you how to turn that urgency into a life you're proud of.
If you're navigating grief, family distance, or the quiet weight of conversations that haven't happened yet, I'd be honored to work through it with you. I have a small number of 1:1 coaching spot available for people ready to do the real work.
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