Last Updated on April 27, 2020 by Shane Corbitt
Feeling charged means feeling engaged, energetic, and enthusiastic, and I’m pretty sure everybody wants that. Our charge levels have two properties: quality and intensity. The quality of the emotional charge we have in life can be positive or negative, and it can also be low-intensity or high-intensity.
So, ideally, we all would have a desirably intense and positive charge in life. But do you have it?
Is the quality and intensity of the charge you currently feel every day what you had always hoped to experience in life?
Does the charge you’re giving at work have the quality and intensity that inspires you and others?
Does the charge you’re giving to your spouse, to your kids, have the quality and intensity that effectively communicates your adoration and affection for them?
People tend to live one of three types of life. You have one of these lives today, and you can choose to keep it, amplify it, or change it altogether.
Let’s take a tour through all three types so that we can better differentiate the Charged Life from others and then go about the business of strategically creating it.
The Caged Life
Many people live their lives caged either in the past or in the expectations of others. They have never really ventured into the unknown or sought to break the boundaries that they or others have set for them. Because they have let other people or the past dictate who they are, their identities are trapped in a tight box of beliefs about what is possible for them.
Thus, their experience in life and their everyday thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are restricted. They generally feel tethered to where they are, bound by experiences they never got over, ruled by the results of yesterday, scared to disappoint their masters—masters that may well exist only in their minds.
They often feel that the world has cornered them into a certain way of being and won’t let them escape, lashing them to false or unfair labels, expectations, and assumptions. From birth, we are enticed with carrots-and-sticks to do what others want us to do. Our “handlers,” or caregivers, wanted us to display a certain look or identity to the world.
Sometimes, they coaxed us into behaving as they wanted, by offering us treats of acceptance and love. Other times, they may have been more heavy-handed. The end result, inevitably, was that we adapted our behaviors and our desires to fall in line with external rewards.
After a time, it became easy to accept this reality as routine. As long as we were receiving attention, care, and rewards, being in the cage had a lot going for it.
This is the imprisoned, obedient life.
At some point, we all have felt its stultifying repression. We felt locked in, controlled, restless to get out. Not all of us have broken free, and here’s the really sobering part: some never will.
There are only two ways out of the cage. The first happens when, by chance or fate, life flips it upside down, smashing our cozy reality and breaking open the cage for good. The second way out, the willful way, takes a massive personal effort. It happens when we finally choose to look beyond the bars of our approval- and fear-driven experience and see that there is more to life than being squeezed into someone else’s cage.
It happens when we do the one thing that has ever helped anyone design a different destiny: consciously choose a new self-image and life, and fight to forge it into existence by consistently aligning our thoughts and behaviors to make it so.
The Comfortable Life
For many of us, life is not as dire as the caged life. Through work, dedication, and fortunate circumstances, many of us live what I think of as the comfortable life.
We’ve followed similar paths to independence, opportunity, and freedom. We have houses, spouses, cars, and kids. We feel engaged and thankful for our lives. We know we’ve made some trade-offs—a little less adventure here, a few more hours at the office there—but we knew what we were getting ourselves into.
We saw our friends and peers take a similar journey, and they seemed happy. And then one day, someone asks about your life, and you’re surprised to hear yourself reply, “Oh, things are . . . you know . . . fine.”
Trouble begins to brew in the back of your mind: Is this what I really wanted? Is this all there is? Have I made too many trade-offs? Am I living my life or someone else’s? Aren’t I more creative and sexy and spontaneous and ambitious and fun than this?
Often, your brain responds to this kind of thinking with the sharp tool of guilt: You don’t know how good you’ve got it. You should feel so much more grateful. Can’t you just be satisfied with what you have? Though more of a rut than a cage, we start to feel trapped.
Make no mistake: the trappings are much, much more comfortable, and the door to possibility is much bigger and more accessible—a free-swinging gateway to more, more, more.
But even in the comfort comes a restless stirring. Life feels not meaningless but mysterious. You wonder, How did I end up here? Where did my ambition and drive and excitement go?
While the caged self comes to see the world as scary, the comfortable self sees it as stale. The caged self feels it has no potential; the comfortable self has actively sought to realize its potential but fears it has peaked. The caged self feels limited by external conditions; the comfortable self feels limited by its own success. The caged self feels it has no voice and, thus, doesn’t use it; the comfortable self has used its voice, shared it, banked on it . . . but now wonders if that voice is the right one, the authentic one.
There is, however, one undeniable similarity between the caged and the comfortable: whether caught in a cage or in the trappings of success, both desire more color, variety, creativity, freedom, and connection. Both long for the Charged Life.
The Charged Life
The one living a caged life asks, Will I survive? So the focus is always on whether the person will be safe or be hurt. The one living a comfortable life asks, Will I be accepted and succeed? So he or she focuses on belonging and satiation. The person living a Charged Life wonders, Am I living my truth and actualizing my potential? Am I living an inspired life and inspiring others?
The boredom, or aimlessness, that the comfortable self feels isn’t in the emotional repertoire of someone with a Charged Life, because of the joy and purpose the charged feels in engaging in new and challenging activities. While the comfortable self feels that life is mysterious, the charged self finds life magical and meaningful. The comfortable self sees the world as familiar and therefore stale; the charged self sees the same world filled with exciting and unlimited possibilities for growth and progress.
We who live fully charged don’t feel disengaged or restless because of the trappings of our lives. We are not passengers on the collective march of progress—we’re creating our own world and our own definitions of what it means to live and progress. We are fully living and experiencing the lives we want, not coveting or chasing others’ lives.
We haven’t been on cruise control in years; we experience the zest of fully conscious control and presence, fine tuning the pressure on the gas pedal for ourselves in every moment, whether we choose to roar ahead or slow down to enjoy the scenery.
We are not trapped in the ruts of routine or old, familiar skill sets; rather, we are engaged in the present. Unlike the comfortable, we want and hunger for the challenges that stretch our abilities. We don’t question our merits or doubt our strengths; rather, we focus on a lofty ambition to contribute to the world, and we call forth all our energies to do so.
When we live the Charged Life, we don’t worry about making waves; we worry about doing what’s right and what’s meaningful. If controversy or hurt feelings happen along the way, we meet them with our full presence and care—but we march on.
At first glance, it would seem that those living the Charged Life have surpassed all obstacles and are living a charmed existence. But that’s not exactly right. It’s just that those with high charge levels enjoy the journey they’re on no matter what obstacles present themselves; they are deeply enthusiastic about facing life’s challenges and designing their own destinies.
They know they are works in progress, but they take pleasure in shaping themselves and reinventing their realities. In this way, unlike the caged or the comfortable, they are not asking reality or life to make them safe or satiated at all. Instead, they look forward to the opportunities for change and growth.
They focus on serving and contributing to the world. Their credo is: ask not what you are getting from the world but, rather, what you are giving to the world. To the caged or the comfortable, the Charged Life seems like an unattainable star in the sky, a fiery energy and light in its own orbit.
Indeed, the Charged Life seems to fly above the fray, fueled by an entirely different energy and bound for an entirely different destination. Yet those living the Charged Life are quite grounded, and many will tell you they themselves were once either caged or comfortable, or even both. For it is often the human condition to comply obediently at first, then to assert but still cooperate or compromise, then, finally, to discover choice, calling, maturity, and heightened drives for freedom, expression, and contribution.
The Charged Life, then, usually calls to us after we have done what we were supposed to do, become who we thought we were supposed to be, lived as we thought we were supposed to live. Then the safety and comfort and compromise get to us, and a stirring of restlessness and revolution sends us off in search of greater adventures and meaning.
When we find it, the Charged Life feels unlike anything we have ever known. It has an even energy of enthusiasm about it that seems to endure no matter the circumstances or challenges we face.
When you discover yourself living a Charged Life, you notice an even, confident, buoyant, and sustained energy about yourself. You have high energy, complete engagement in your endeavors, and a palpable enthusiasm about your life and future.
Some people suggest that not everyone can have this kind of life. But why not?
Those living a Charged Life, are not born with some kind of lightning bolt on their heads. They are not different from anyone else, you or me.
If there is a difference, it’s that they act and perceive the world and themselves differently.
Few of them blame their childhoods for their adult choices or challenges. They don’t harbor a lot of resentment or attachment to the past. They don’t seem to be distracted in the present. And they don’t fear the future or the inevitable obstacles that life throws at them.
In this way, they indeed seem different from others. But it’s not the lack of attachment to fear or the negative aspects of life that make Chargers so fascinating and empowered. Rather, it’s their ability to exude a grounded, positive, and even energy, engagement, and enthusiasm in life regardless of the situation they find themselves in.
Chargers don’t think their internal charges are a gifted or “set” mind-set, or a permanent personality. (And they’re right: neuroscientists have written that the adult brain and personality are not “set” but rather continue to grow and mature based on new ideas, experiences, and conditioning. This is hopeful news for anyone who believes his brain or personality prevents him from having a Charged Life.)
If you want to learn how you can live a Charged Life, find out how in Brendon Burchard’s book The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel.
Comment below on what life you are living and which life would make you happy!
