A client I hadn’t seen in years rang me recently. He’s now pretty senior, having spent the last 15 years playing the corporate game. We got talking about his journey and why he’d called me. It turns out that despite his success and the career path laid out in front of him, he was feeling a bit hollow. In a word, he was disillusioned, and that’s why he called me, wondering if I could help.

So, I asked him what he was actually after. His one-word reply was “Truth”. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. For me, the only place to start searching for truth is within. Let me explain.

First, why bother seeking truth? You might know people who seem to be very happy living what, to your eyes, looks like a delusion. In my client’s case, he was hoping it would give him an inner feeling or sense he was searching for, one that would fill the void he was noticing in his experience of life.

Whether we like it or not, many of our choices are driven by that same urge, even if it’s not obvious at the time.

Once you commit to this noble path, the next hurdle is to realise that truth is a slipperier concept than it looks. One glance at the world right now, seeing how polarised so many issues have become, makes this obvious. Truth appears to be different things to different people.

Look at your own life. What I believed to be true 30 years ago is different to what I believed 20 years ago, which is different again to 10 years ago, and so on. And much of what I believe right now will probably shift over the coming years as I get wiser, more humble and continue to expand my horizons. Truth (in the context of that inner search) is a moving target.

And you’d want to hope it does shift. If you’re not changing, you’re doing it wrong. I always laugh when I hear the line, “they’re not the person I married”. My honest response is, I should bloody hope not. If, as you walk your life path, you’re not working through the layers of your conditioning, your assumptions, the old ideas you carry about yourself, then what exactly is the point? The point of a life, as far as I can tell, is to experience it, evolve and to get wiser through it. And wisdom is very hard to come by at 25. You need a few battle scars first. You need to have made peace with some things and stopped fighting reality. That’s when wisdom comes within reach.

The chase that never ends

Here’s where most people go looking for truth. Outside themselves. They listen to the latest opinions, gather the facts, buy the latest book, sit through the latest consulting speech promising that this one thing (this time, honestly, we mean it) will be the silver bullet that slays all your demons.

Of course, all these things have their place, but there comes a time when other people’s ideas stop helping. It’s about the time you realise that, in the search for truth and whatever else you are looking for, there is no silver bullet.

It’s why every overnight success has been 10+ years in the making. Yes, almost every success story had a critical turning point. But every one of them will tell you it was a journey, and often a long one.

I’m not saying ignore the outside world. Of course you should listen, all good leaders do. You’ll find opinions you agree with and opinions you don’t. The whole business of life is discernment, noticing what works, and watching the fallout of your decisions in order to make better choices the next time around. That feedback matters. But if you’re totally externally focused, you’ll get swept up in the next fad that rolls through. My experience tells me that too much external focus keeps truth permanently out of reach. Why? Because it was never “out there”.

What you’re avoiding is the map

If you want to find your truth, start with an honest audit. What are your biases? What are your coping strategies? And here’s the question almost nobody asks. What are you trying to avoid?

Most people drive themselves through what they’re trying to achieve. Fair enough, that matters, but as a singular focus it’s a trap. What’s equally important is what you’re shirking. What do you hope never to feel? Talk to anyone with a genuine transformation story and invariably life changed when they finally faced something they’d been dodging for years. Usually because life left them no choice. It’s only then that they confront the pattern that’s been in the way of their success.

Here’s how the pattern runs. Early in your career, you’ve got energy to burn, so you lean into your personality. You notice that when you let a certain part of yourself run the show, you get rewarded. So you build on it. You build a whole career on it, sometimes a whole life. And it works.

Until it doesn’t.

There comes a point where that structure, everything it’s chasing and everything it’s avoiding, stops delivering. And life, in its wisdom, starts serving up precisely the experiences and emotions you’ve been pushing away. For many people this lands somewhere between 35 and 42 (the classic midlife awakening window). It happens earlier for some, and later for others. But everyone gets there.

The choice

When you arrive, you get a choice.

Choice one: do the work.

Go inward, make the unconscious patterns conscious, and find the freedom to express more of the divine truth of who you are. (If that language makes you wince, that’s interesting, don’t you think?) I say this because it’s what I’ve observed from the coaching chair over the last two decades, and dressing it up in corporate language would be its own kind of BS.

That work leads you to understand why you do what you do. Most of us are running a set of beliefs and behaviours designed to keep us safe from what we fear, and they worked once. But somewhere along the way they stopped protecting you and started holding you back. It’s a handbrake you’ve had on hard for years without noticing. The work is learning to release it.

It also leads to meaning, truth and freedom. These things don’t arrive by accident. They arrive through reflection, sitting with what’s uncomfortable. That’s where the greater truths about yourself start to surface, such as what matters to you, how you wish to be in the world, and what you choose to carry into your career.

Choice two: keep doing the same thing.

Bite down on the flatness, the powerlessness, the relentlessness, the lack of fulfilment. Savour the fleeting thrill of achievement. Then grind it out until the superannuation matures and you can finally start living. Plenty of people take that road. I don’t recommend it.

So, if you’re where my old client was, hollow and hunting for truth, here’s my recommendation. Stop chasing it out there.

Truth is an inside job, so start within.