If I say to you now “get naked”, can you easily do it? Can you step into your authenticity, fearlessly, fully and completely?
Every day I see how people struggle to find their voice – whether they run a large organization or a small business… or even in their relationship with their loved ones…
So, let’s have a conversation, let’s explore what it would really mean for you to discover that voice that will make you vibrate with your unique sense of meaning, purpose; the voice that will make you feel fully self-expressed and passionate about what you do and what you bring to the world…
No, I will not encourage you to (or sell courses on how to) find your life purpose – from where I stand there is no other purpose to life than the life itself. All our searches for some imagined purpose are just procrastination – an escape from living the purpose – from living life with pure aliveness.
I will not encourage you to make your life meaningful either – you can’t make life meaningful, it IS meaningful. But what is the meaning of your particular life does depend on the meaning you assign to it. So, it’s not a matter of discovering the meaning and purpose, it is assigning a meaning and purpose to your life. Make it up and play fiercely. No, not fake – play.
Now, the trick is to discover (or often, rediscover) your passions. See, when we turn a certain age (biological years are irrelevant, life experience is…) we realize the vanity of many things that we believed in or strived for… With that realization a certain detachment comes. But wise detached living is one thing – a dispassionate existence is another.
All your passions might have disappeared as your illusions fell away because passion is often driven by illusions, imagination, values and your belief system. What is one to do when a default meaninglessness of life reveals itself and becomes clear, when all our searches point to a single thing, and it’s not some meaning for which we were searching, it’s life’s default state of emptiness?
Well, what the majority of us do is pretend. They fake it… And they take antidepressants to cope with the sense of emptiness. Isn’t it true?
There is a certain truth to the saying “ignorance is a bliss”. Youth is beautiful in some sense, because it’s full of illusions about life. It often causes unnecessary pain, of course (just see how teens suffer, especially in Western countries)… But at the same time young people go around fighting with ghosts and finding “meaning” in rebellion, group identity, style, making money proving themselves, or in “saving the world”.
But what to do when it becomes clear – you just can’t save the world. Nobody can. And… it’s not our job anyway. Our Ego wraps itself around a thought that we are special, we are important, we are knowledgeable, etc., and that we know what is better for the world and that we can make it so… Of course beliefs also harm. Just look at what is masked by well-intended revolutions and wars.
So, HOW DOES ALL THIS RELATE TO YOU, TO YOUR BUSINESS, TO YOUR RELATIONSHIPS?
Well, let’s look at the life of average Joe.
Let’s say Joe has just turned 40. He has been around the block, worked for several companies. He made and lost some money. He made love with, fell in love with, won and lost various women (or men)…
Joe has seen it all… as it seems… and although he probably doesn’t admit it, Joe is very sad. It’s not so easy to see it since Joe has learned to have a happy face. He carries it around everywhere he goes. He wears it at work, he wears it at home… And then he goes to bed … And then he wakes up in the morning and puts it back on, but he lives asleep…
Joe outgrew his job but realizes that working for just another jack ass is a very unattractive option, so why change it?
Joe instead is ready to start something of his own. For Joe it’s not a “movement towards”, how it would be in his youth – towards money, towards fame, towards success, towards accomplishments and recognition… No, Joe doesn’t cherish any of it as he used to… For Joe it’s rather a “movement from” – from stressful, from shallow, from unreal, from dispassionate… from boredom, from routine… from aging…
So, Joe started up something… Let’s say he figured out how he can make some money with his idea without working too much and too hard, he hired someone to put some web site together… (and whatever else…)
And now it’s time for Joe to launch, to tell the world about his new pet project… All is good, only Joe has no steam to believe passionately in what he is doing… Remember, for Joe it was a “movement from”…
So, what does Joe do? He searches internet on “how to”, learns about public speaking, content marketing and search engine optimization… and starts writing search engine optimized crap.
Ok… Well, you can’t blame Joe, he is doing the best he can. He knows he needs to make money, he knows he needs to market to sell… He hates the idea of selling someone else’s junk, so he figures he better sell his. And it’s not junk really, he kinda believes in it, somewhat… He is half way with it – hey it does have potential. No, really!… and some people might be interested…
SO, he writes and writes, speaks and writes… AND… Nobody gives a damn…
Hm… Now Joe is really puzzled…
Now he goes to branding specialists, they do some market research and come up with a punch line, and a nice photograph with a wax smile, so he glues it all on his forehead to carry everywhere he goes…
Ok…
Joe writes his butt off till exhaustion, comes up with all sort of copywriting tricks, and… guess what. Nobody cares… I mean, some people might buy, BUT NOBODY CARES!…
Do you understand what I am saying, and what Joe feels?
WTF!
What is the point? What is the point of all of this, Joe thinks… I wish I’d won a lottery… or better idea… I wish I was never born into this stupid world…
Sound to any degree familiar? Well, if not, give yourself a bit more time. You are most probably very young and beautifully stupid. Pardon my French, I am being very fond with this word 🙂 Being young and stupid is better than being (feeling) like an old fart.
Ok, kids… Let’s dissect it all and get to the core – to what’s real, and what we to any degree can attribute as “what matters”…
FORGET ABOUT PERSONAL BRAND. FORGET ABOUT PERSONAL ANYTHING. DIVE INTO IMPERSONAL.
What do I mean by that…
Brand, accordingly to one dictionary definition, is an identifying mark burned on livestock or (esp. formerly) criminals or slaves with a branding iron. Well, we are not sheep, are we? We are human beings… or at least we claim to be humans, but we are definitely beings…
As soon as we “brand” ourselves, as beings we are dead. We are marked, labeled, reduced to our partiality. The totality that makes us this glorious representation of life, departs…
So, as brands we are walking statements. BUT, each statement is a single idea. As human beings we are a fountains gushing ideas, and many of them are not in sync at all, many – counterintuitive and contradictory. Yet that’s what makes us, humans, and so beautiful. Our confusions, our paradoxes, our puzzles – all quite precious from a creation stand point. Remove that and what is left is a brand. The whole person worthy of my time (and maybe yours) is gone, their soul is gone.
So, now what.
Now, let’s reverse it all.
Let’s go backwards.
Let’s go back to a time before you became a brand.
Let’s unravel, unknot all the marketing nonsense and find YOU underneath it all.
But now, the real juicy question comes to play. BUT WHO ARE YOU?
Ah, and that puppy, is my favorite question… That’s the only question worth asking and worth answering…
Who the heck are you?
No, not your place of birth, not your profession, not your life story.
Let’s get down to the very beginning of your personality. Let’s go not to the very edge where the question itself stops making sense, but just right to the beginning of personality as it starts forming in the womb of great creation.
LET’S GET TO EVERYTHING YOU’VE LEARNED TO HIDE, from others, from yourself… all motions of your soul, all your aliveness, all your animalistic impulses, all your creative bursts. Let’s get to the raw within you, unrepressed, unsuppressed by societal nonsense and imposed guilt, shame, embarrassments… Let’s touch everything you disregarded as not practical, idealistic, too edgy, too bold, too controversial, too that or not enough what others will like…
See, you think you have no passions because it feels like that. But it is because we learned to deny our passions. We learned to not feel what cannot be of use.
You loved drawing once – the process would take you in undiscovered dimensions of your being, but then your wife said you will never be a Picasso and can’t feed your family with that baloney. That was the end of it.
You feel very sexual and want to dance in some bizarre way to move that beautiful spontaneous energy within you and Rumi like as you whirl poetry gets written, but then your church said it’s unacceptable because your God apparently doesn’t like it.
See, it’s not a matter of discovering that single thing that can define you, and doing it. It’s to see and embrace all of yourselves, and be able to express all of what wants to be expressed. Maybe one at a time, maybe all at once.
Once you express yourself freely, more and more starts to burst forth, the creative process becomes this massive explosion. It is never ending.
THE ONLY THING THAT ENDS THE CREATIVE PROCESS IS A THOUGHT.
Where the thought begins creativity ends…
And what are those thoughts? Should not, cannot, must not…
We repress the deepest movements of our soul, our spirit (call it in any way you want), our nature… Because of social dogmas, because of beliefs imposed by our families, schools, all institutions…
Because if you are free you are dangerous to institutions. You are not convenient. You are not manageable. You cannot be manipulated.
So, you are brainwashed everywhere you go.
But see, MEDIA, POLITICIANS AND CULTS ARE NOT A PROBLEM. YOU BELIEVING IN WHAT YOU HEAR IS A PROBLEM.
So, the trick (which is pretty easy, when you get down to it) is to unlearn the habit of believing in your thoughts that are manifested as doubts, low energy level, absence of motivation etc…
If you feel dispassionate and unmotivated it’s not because you don’t have passions. It’s because at some point of your life you repressed them and start faking life.
PASSION IS FOUND UNDERNEATH ALL YOUR FEARS… SEARCH FOR THEM THERE…
You stopped being “yourself”, you started living someone else’s life. You became a brand. Whether in business, your professional career, or family. You became what you think someone else wanted you to be. Because that’s how you were told you could get acceptance.
But passion has nothing to do with acceptance. Your passion is not for others to accept or appreciate, you passion is not even for you to accept or appreciate. Your passion is not theirs or yours, it’s impersonal. It belongs to no one, it listens to no one, it’s tamed by no one…
….
There is so much more to say… But I will stop here… I will allow you some time to ride this roller-coaster of memories, if only you give yourself time… and allow yourself to remember those moment when one by one you didn’t lose but just repressed your passions…
And then… go, RUIN YOUR BRAND… LIVE YOUR LIFE INSTEAD…
And interestingly, someone will start to truly care about your message! But you have to first stop faking it…
Trust me on that one… I am a not only a healer and a “coach”, but also a professional marketer. So, we, marketers, fake a lot in life. 🙂 And some point, you just get tired…
So, go play. Don’t fake. Play!
And if someone doesn’t like what wants to express itself through you, let them go f-k themselves…
Deal? 🙂
All my love to you….
