Many of the systems that exist today—from education to healthcare to work to our monetary system and politics—no longer serve the vast majority of humanity. While many people are feeling stuck or lost—not seeing a way out of these decaying paradigms—we can become aware that there is abundant hope to anchor in.
Are you the person who feels like you don’t fit into this world because you’re here to create a healthier life for yourself, and your community?
The current models dispense Band-Aids solutions and continuously show us that changing the deck chairs on a sinking ship does not change much. A not so radical thought expressed by sages that walked the earth before us asks us whether it’s time for some of these institutions and models to simply die so healthier ones can emerge? “New” or “better” are’nt always the answer as much as becoming aware of what’s healthy and unhealthy for us.
1-Do you understand what’s unhealthy for you? When we stay in a flurry of complaining, judging and pointing fingers of blame, we simply stay stuck. Constantly bringing new into the fold is not always healthy. For some, there’s no way out of the maze we constructed for ourselves. And yet, there are no locks on the prisons of the mind and no guards caging us in.
2-Are you becoming increasingly aware of what’s healthy for you? Consider observing and becoming aware of how you think, what and who you consume, how you behave, and understand what you’re creating in the world through your words and actions. It starts with a journey within ourselves to explore how we can begin living as a creator, while connecting with others—with a vivid imagination, strength of conviction, the curiosity of an adventurer and the spark of love. A love we are here to reignite.
3-Does kindness start with you? All we can do is be kind to ourselves first. Lift up and inspire by being the example of what we want to become. Healthy people act in healthy ways; learning and growing, like nature, along the way. When we make a commitment, we live up to it. And instead of living in disappointment or unmet expectations, we have open exchanges on what we can and can’t deliver. We don’t just talk, we do the hard work of creating healthy, trusted relationships with ourselves and those around us. There’s no one to blame or judge. That’s something that has been ingrained and conditioned into us, which we can learn to extract. And sometimes, we’ll encounter unhealthy predators and toxic lessons to grow from since we’re here to learn from everything and be aware of what we buy into and how we react.
How many tomatoes can one person truly consume?
If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard about the need to hustle and all the experts who are “successful” bring the energy of competition and winning at all costs to our world. We get flooded by these messages of the need to blog, post on social media, have massive following and all the things to get our business profitable and flourishing. In this model, success is always correlated to being validated by others and the amount of money we generate.
And isn’t it ironic that many of us simply want to make a meaningful impact and why we started our business in the first place? Sure, we need to pay our bills but why do we need constant growth when nature teaches us to plant seeds, water, nurture and see which ones sprout and flourish.
There’s abundance in the world and yet we treat what is scarce–natural resources with a mindset of abundance, and what is abundant–opportunities, imagination, trust and relationships–with a mindset of scarcity. This is one mental model that we can easily shift and also teach our children to become aware that everything’s here to be discovered. More isn’t the answer. Knowing your enough can guide you to knowing how much and what to consume. How many tomatoes can we actually consume when we plant abundantly?
What’s possible when we’re ready?
We can be in a place of presence and clarity of intention. We don’t talk ourselves out of what our intuition and heart whispers to us. We know life can be an adventure of natural growth.
Our societal conditioning has forced us into a paradigm where we spend most of our time working so we can live. There are people working three jobs to pay their bills. The media doesn’t tell us the stories of ridesharing drivers who sleep in their cars and spend weeks away from their families in cities where they can make more money. Young single moms who work from 5-10 am driving and then head to their full-time job at noon.
What quality of life are we providing our children with absent parents? Is this the life we want for our children? Who is truly architecting the future of work to serve us, and not line someone else’s pocket with our hard work? And then there are some of us living in 3500 square foot homes, feeling lonely and depressed. And the irony is that we, humans, created loneliness when we broke away from the natural cycles of nature.
We’ve been forced into a paradigm of endless competition, external metrics and material compensation of what success should be. When you look at the earth from the sky, there are no borders or property lines. The deep societal separation that we have created is unnatural and one of the reasons human history repeats itself. For one side to win, another must lose. There are no bridges to lift us up but deep divisions to tear us apart.
But you might ask what we can do. And one of the biggest areas is to become aware of the smoke and mirrors and what’s hiding behind them. When we become aware that humans are creating these beliefs and paradigms, and that fear has simply been implanted in us as a way to stop us from finding our voice.
When we live in irrational fear, we are supporting the current systems and digging deeper divides, always wanting to win and crush the enemy. Our opportunity is to not panic but see opportunities and possibilities where we have been told are problems. Solving problems will not get out of this mess until we adopt a mindset of an opportunity creator who aligns our energy to everything we create.
When is enough, enough?
When we realize that our metrics are foundationally flawed—followers, likes, money, awards and job titles—we can start focusing on why we came to the planet or why we are in a relationship or why we are working at a soulless company that doesn’t appreciate our value. When we’re focused on external metrics of success, we lose sight of our life energy.
The reason to go spend time in nature is to become aware of what is natural and what is artificial in our world. We will remember that pausing is healthy and that like nature, there is no need to rush or be a slave to busyness. At the end of the day, where does “getting ahead” or succeeding get us? And more importantly, is it worth it?
And sure, we need to be grounded in reality as we still need to pay our bills and be able to take care of ourselves and our families. And this is where knowing our enough plays a huge role, and it’s not just financial. Knowing our enough means that we are aware of not only how much money we need to choose the lifestyle that’s enough for us, but how much stuff we need and how much we need to live the life that we ourselves want; not what society dictates to us as success.
How much money would we need to truly live an authentic life where we didn’t need to rush and wait for a vacation to live? Of course, we want our kids to be fed and taken care of but do they really need more of our attention and time than just material abundance? What is the biggest gift we can give?
There are unsung people in our world building healthy schools and institutes and some say it’s not enough. But what if it is? What if it instead of complaining and blaming, we created in our own unique way? It can simply start by spending time connecting heart to heart with the people who matter in our life. Can we stop focusing on the lack and the scarcity that we have been taught to believe is the only way to be? In our current model, financial success and abundance is our drug for survival. But what if there is another way? What if we changed this story? How free are you to create something that truly impacts our collective by taking one action in your life?
Where is the inspiration we need?
The most inspiring people I have met are not the ones standing in front of a room sharing their expertise from a podium or a stage. The most inspiring people I’ve had the honor to meet didn’t know where their next meal would come from. They had hope and faced adversity head on. They didn’t want us to come into their lives and offer charity or a handout. They wanted to be seen for their potential and demanded dignity. They didn’t want to be saved or fixed. These youth simply wanted an opportunity to make an impact and lead a healthy life. They wanted to earn their way and walked away from people thinking they knew what they needed most.
Some people may not know where their next meal will come from and there are billions of people who are lonely on this planet. We live in a time where we can each do our part in our own way by simply remembering our humanity and reconnecting with the source energy of nature. There’s no need to rush when we un-condition and un-learn years of limiing beliefs implanted in our psyche.
You have the key to unlock yourself when you start your journey of discovery. Ask yourself, what’s my enough? And, when is enough, enough?