The Chase

By Darren Hardy
Darren Hardy is the visionary force behind SUCCESS magazine as its Publisher and Founding Editor.
Darren is also an accomplished entrepreneur, author, keynote speaker, private equity investor, corporate advisor and high-performance mentor.

American mythology has us believe that the goal of life is to retire, or that financial freedom means you can now just travel around going from hotel to hotel, lie on beaches and play golf five days a week…

…But that is NOT how achievers are wired.

Let me share with you my own struggle and discovery with this reality:

When I was 28 years old, I sold a company for a very significant sum. I thought I wanted to “retire” or at least take a couple years off. I moved to South Beach, Miami, bought a Harley, and drove up and down the beach every day and spent two or three hours in the gym. It wasn’t three months before I was going stark raving mad. In fact I was in sheer spiritual, emotional and psychological pain. If I were the depressed kind, I would have been in a state of depression, no doubt.

You see we need The Chase…

The Chase is what gives us life, gives us juice. The Chase is our creative spirit getting a chance to be expressed, stretched and realized. The Chase is the means and the end. You can give it different semantics—like pursuit, purpose, mission or vision.

Proverbs warns us about this, “Without vision people perish.”

“Without vision people perish.”
-Proverbs 29:18

It didn’t say, without golf people perish… or without relaxing people perish. NO, it said without vision… without purpose… without the pursuit… or without The Chase, people perish.

We need The Chase
We love The Chase
The Chase is the very verve of life.

Another discovery I made about The Chase through my own evolution is no matter what I am involved with, I am going to be chasing at full throttle. No matter whether I am running a business with hundreds of employees doing tens of millions in revenue or building a simple pet ecommerce business or an online video and photo-sharing business (a couple of companies I invested in and ended up getting involved with at the C-level), I am going to be all consumed by it… no matter the size or seeming importance of the project.

That is just how I am wired. I am always going to be all in on The Chase, no matter what The Chase.

Here are three pieces of advice I want you to take away when understanding The Chase in your own life:

1) Don’t want what you don’t want.

Don’t even make the goal of your life to not be chasing. You will always be chasing, until you’re not, and that is when they pronounce you dead.

In fact if you want to speed that process up, just retire. It is well known that purpose-driven people, whom eventually retire, die shortly thereafter. Why? They lost their life force, their verve for life… and thus found themselves retired permanently.

2) Pick the right Chase.

Because no matter what it is, you will go head deep into it—make sure it something you really want to be chasing day in and day out.

3) Chase for the right reasons.

Are your motivations intrinsic or extrinsic?

This, too, is another mistake I have made in the past. A while back I sat down with a mentor I had at the time and showed him all my big goals and plans for the coming year. I laid it all out and was proud of my thoughtful and detailed strategic plan. He said, “Sure, but where’s your life in that?”

“Huh?” I said. He said, “Yeah, look at it. With all those goals and plans and the schedule this will demand how are you going to fit a life around that?” He said, “Instead why don’t you flip that model. Instead of trying to fit a life around your business goals, first decide what kind of life you want to live, THEN fit your business around that.”

That was HUGE for me. Now when I say a life, I’m not talking about lying on the beach or starting a bridge club. Eighty percent of your life might still be your business, purpose and passion pursuits, but you can still design those to fit the kind of life you want to live.

Meaning, what kind of people do you want to work with? What do you want to be researching, studying and having to talk about all day? Do you want a long commute or a short one? How do you want to have to dress? Do you want it to involve working nights and weekends? Do you want it to involve travel?

You are going to spend 80–90% of your life working… or chasing. You can choose what you work on and chase. Make sure you choose it to FIT the life you want to lead because it will be your life.

So to summarize:
You are going to be chasing. That is how you are wired and what gives you zeal and purpose in life. So sink in and enjoy it. Don’t want what you don’t want. The alternative is death. Death of spirit and eventually death of body.

And since you are going to be chasing, be very conscious about what you are chasing. Choose what you chase carefully because no matter what you end up doing you will become fully consumed by it. Be sure it amplifies your core internal values and has you leading the kind of life that gives you energy, joy and the style of life you want.

What epiphanies came up for you when reading this week’s post? How would you define The Chase in your own life?