[Throughout the first half of 2026, I hope to provide you with a robust picture of how existential wellness coaches work with their clients on fundamental existential issues. If you’d like to learn more about the Noble-Manhattan Existential Wellness Coaching Certificate Program that I’ve developed, please visit here. There are scholarships available and all of the resources of the Noble Manhattan family. Come take a look. Today’s offering is Part 4 of a mini-series on the weight of individuality. Enjoy!]
Nature is not stupid. Nature makes the calculation that, for an individual to truly be individual, it had better invest them with enough power, passion, energy and appetite to manifest that individuality.
Otherwise individuality would be a cosmic joke, and nature doesn’t joke that way. So, it regularly invests this individual with extra drive. Just as it makes no sense to produce a creature that enjoys the leaves at the tops of trees without also providing it with a long neck, it makes no sense to produce creatures that are built to assert their individuality without providing them with the energy of assertion. This nature regularly does.
Thus, these individuals likely have more energy, more charisma, bigger appetites, stronger needs, greater passion, more aliveness, and more avidity than the next person. This is all the same idea and flows from the same wellspring. It is nature’s way of fueling individuals so that they can be individual. It should also be clear how this extra energy and fuller appetite lead to conditions like addiction, mania and insatiability.
How can you have an out-sized sex drive and not become obsessed with sex? How can you have a ton of energy and not court mania? How can you have a full measure of extra adrenaline course through your system and not need to drive a hundred miles an hour or have several drinks in order to “take the edge off”? Nature, by fitting the individual with sufficient energy to write complex novels and penetrate the mysteries of the universe, inadvertently creates a driven, insatiable, addiction-prone creature.
Nature does not joke, but it does produce unintended consequences. One of the major unfortunate consequences of this extra drive—this extra ambition, this extra egotism, this extra appetite—is that the individual is hard-pressed, and often completely unable, to feel satisfied. They eat a hundred peanuts—not satisfying enough. They write a good book—not satisfying enough. They have a shot of excellent Scotch—not satisfying enough. They win the Nobel Prize—not satisfying enough.
This inability to get satisfied produces constant background unhappiness and makes them want some experience that will mask this feeling or make it go away. So, they have another hundred peanuts or another Scotch without, however, coming any closer to satisfying themselves.
It is as if nature turbocharged some of its creatures and then failed to give them a decent braking system. It provided extra energy—and with it a susceptibility to mania. It provided extra ambition—and with it a susceptibility to grandiosity. It provided extra appetite—and with it a susceptibility to promiscuity, obesity, and alcoholism. It provided extra adrenaline—and with it a susceptibility to car wrecks. If all of these “extras” could be channeled and regulated, we might thank nature for its largesse. As it is, these extras make the individual’s life unruly and fraught with danger.
Nature, which doesn’t joke, nevertheless has its little joke and creates individuals who must know for themselves, follow their own path, and be themselves; puts it in their mind that they are born to do earth-shattering and life-saving work; gives them the energy to pursue this work and the courage to stand in opposition even to the whole world; and then turns around and tortures them. First of all, it heightens their core anxiety by giving them an existential outlook, making sure that nothing will satisfy them, pouring adrenaline through their system, and swelling their head, so that they are primed to tip over, top-heavy, into self-centeredness.
This mandate to individuality forces creative individuals to wonder about life’s large questions—pesters them with those questions—and demands that they respond to what they see going on in the universe. It forces them to write a mournful poem, craft a subversive novel, and walk the earth from one end to the other on some unnamable quest. Each of these is an existential response; that is, a response arising from their plaintive, poignant questioning of the world into which nature has dropped them. On top of everything else, nature tells them that they are responsible for looking out for the world—nothing less is expected of them.
Of course, we aren’t equal to all of this, or even much of this. As individual as we are, as magnificent as we are, we are also quite puny. We may be large, but we are also small. Even if we do manage to persevere—to write our poems, to battle our windmills—it is not without a thousand ups and downs, frustrations and disappointments, rages and dirges. Is this your emotional landscape? Then you are probably a born-creative individual.
Individuality produces all sorts of consequences. Nature may have designated you as one of her individuals but she has not provided you with a blueprint to follow. You (and your clients) will have to work that out, even while nursing a pain in your heart and a pain in your head. Our creative clients are like this. And it can pay dividends to invite them to think about, and maybe journal to, prompts like the following ones.
“How does the issue of individuality relate to you?”
“Have you grown oppositional as you fight to retain your individuality?”
“What kind of ‘balance’ are you able to achieve between retaining your individuality and successfully relating to others and to the world?”
More next week!
[I hope that you’re enjoying this series. Please check out the Noble Manhattan Existential Wellness Coach Certificate Program and my latest books, Brave New Mind and Night Brilliance.]
