Handing back my airline Gold Card was harder than handing in my resignation..
It took me years to understand why.
In mid-life transition work, people often talk about the four idols that keep us stuck in a place we know, deep down, no longer serves us:
Money (those infamous golden handcuffs)
Power (the feeling that we’re in control of our destiny)
Status (who doesn’t want to be looked up to?)
Pleasure (the distractions of the modern-day world)
Mine was predominantly status. When I resigned from the corporate world, giving up that Cathay Pacific Gold Card, and the illusion of status it gave me, was bloody hard. And months later, I was still defining myself in conversations by the job I used to do, because the discomfort of not being seen as the big shot advertising guy was too hard to let go of.
Anyone who follows me knows how much I love the ancient Greek wisdom hiding in words, and “idol” is no different. It comes from the ancient Greek eídōlon (εἴδωλον): meaning a likeness, a phantom, an illusion. An image of the real thing, not the real thing.
In the Odyssey, Athena makes an eídōlon of Penelope’s sister, Iphthime, and sends it to her in a dream to comfort her. It looks and sounds like a real person. But when Penelope asks the one question that matters, whether Odysseus is alive, it won’t tell her.
That’s what idols do. They comfort us without telling us the truth.
What idol, or phantom, do you still cling to that keeps you from stepping into the next act of your life? And what would you really lose (and gain) if you gently let it go?
PS It’s been years now, and I still sometimes miss that “Good morning, Mr Quinn, how are you today?” when I board a plane…
