Stories From the Next World: I Must Be From Another Planet
February 22, 2010
This is a companion piece to my blog post of last week, “Swimming Against the Tide.”
I must be from another planet. In fact I’m pretty sure that I am. When someone tells me about the right way to do things, I instinctively think, “Oh no, I can’t do that.” Well actually it’s not that I can, but more like I won’t.
You see I’m from another planet and maybe you are too. On my home planet we would never think of doing everything the same as everyone else. Oh no, on our home planet – we like to be unique and original just like our fingerprints.
We visitors from another planet tend to have this go against the grain streak inside of us that makes us stand out from the crowd. And that’s not a good thing. In a world where difference is seen as a threat to survival it’s not easy to be unique and go against the grain.
Years ago when I was in college, I took a ceramics class and one day our teacher announced that we were going to make a set of 6 mugs all alike. Now given what I’ve said above, I want you to imagine just what my response was? Eeek!
I don’t want to make 6 mugs all alike!’ So I had the guts to speak up and ask, “Why would I do that? If I wanted 6 mugs all the same I could just go to a department store and buy them.”
He was pissed! He didn’t like me messing with his idea. People that have the right way to do things rarely do. They get mad when you muss up their nice little formula for life. I didn’t mean to do that. Honestly, it’s not that I wanted to offend him. It’s just that I cannot, simply CAN-KNOT make 6 pieces of art all alike.
It’s not in me.
It’s not in my DNA, not in my bones and my hands won’t allow me to do it. Guaranteed that if I had tried, I would have gotten a horrible rash on my hands or something just to prove that it’s exactly what I should not be doing.
Now I know that people from this planet all like to do things in a certain set way. I understand the logic of that. But it never works for me nonetheless.
So in my ceramics class I actually slipped to the corner of the room and set about making my one, single, original and totally one-of-a-kind mug, while everyone else was making their six in a row.
It wasn’t comfortable to be doing my totally unique thing but it was necessary. Because had I forced myself to make six all alike, I’m pretty sure that I would be in a mental institution today still making mugs all in a row. We from another planet are very sensitive you see.
When I was done the teacher came over. He actually admitted that my lone original mug was pretty cool. Was I imaging it or was he really longing to break out of the mold and create one all his own? I’m pretty sure I felt his longing. We from another planet can feel things like that.
So don’t worry if you don’t feel the same and you definitely don’t fit all in a nice neat row. It’s ok. You’re from another planet and you’re here to make a difference. Or in some cases you’re here to be the difference.
Just breathe and go with the flow. Don’t worry what anyone else thinks. I still have that mug and I love it.
Be one of a kind because that’s what you are anyway – original, unique and just like your fingerprints, all your own.
Yours in always sharing the stories that make you stand out in a crowd,
Annie
Stories From the Next World: Swimming Against the Tide
February 15, 2010
I must be doing it all wrong. Everyone else is doing it one way and I am doing it the total opposite. I must be a total failure. That’s what I told myself for many years in the area of marketing my business.
Recently I had a conversation with a colleague who is great at marketing, in fact he has a background in corporate sales. He and I have similar training in NLP and Hypnosis and some years ago he went out on his own and created his own business. He’s doing fine but he’s not really thriving. His struggle is to get repeated clients.
But if you ask me (and no one did!), that’s not the real issue. The real issue is that in all he’s doing he is missing a certain level of fulfillment. We all get into the ‘people business’ because we want to help people. Then we are given the dreaded mandate that we need to market ourselves. Eeek! Every creative caring person hates this part.
We didn’t get into business to be in business, we just happened to pick something which required it.
The irony is that even though he is the one with the marketing background and knows all the right ways to do things, I am in fact the one that is thriving. Better than that though is that I am very fulfilled in what I do. The money that keeps me afloat is wonderful but more vital than that is the happiness that I have.
I have nearly total fulfillment in my work. That is the biggest value that my business provides me. I love my clients, love what I do and am working with amazing people from all over the world. How the hell did that happen? Me who didn’t have a clue about marketing myself and never wanted to do it either.
I have been swimming against the tide.
When the experts told me to:
- Have a clear marketing and business plan - I couldn’t.
- Create an exact target market of who I am selling my services to - Uh no, couldn’t do that either. Isn’t it the whole world?
- Get out and network myself with schmaltzy print materials and business cards – Nope, hated that. I went to Starbucks instead.
- Create a one line description of what I do that would totally grab people’s attention in under 10 seconds – Call me old-fashioned but I stuck with regular old human conversation.
- Package my work in a formulaic way that I could sell to businesses – I’d rather have Chinese water torture than do this.
- yada
- yada
- yada
- yada
- yada
Anyway you get the idea. I did it all wrong. I did absolutely everything backwards from what the experts said I should do and much to my surprise - it worked!
Who are these experts anyway? Hmm, good question! Well they are might be people who have tried to find a kind of generic formula so that everyone can win the game. Not a bad idea by any means, many people do succeed this way.
But are they happy? The big question is – can we make money and have personal fulfillment too? The answer is – we must. This is just one of the values of the future - a “we can have it all” paradigm.
In the series that I am writing called, Stories From the Next World, I will be talking about the values of the next world – those values, traits and characteristics of greatness and bravery, that if we embody them now, we will be ahead of our time.
So trait number one is this – swim, swim, swim against the tide little fishes. If the experts tell you to X, Y, Z but you feel in your gut to Q, S and LL then you must. You need to have the courage to swim against the current of the world that says that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things.
Swimming upstream is definitely hazardous. You have to be able to tolerate feeling alone, thinking you’re a failure, have people point out what you’re certainly doing wrong and feeling utterly confused.
But for me I just did it from instinct because I could never tolerate having business ‘success’ at the expense of my personal freedom or fulfillment. No go Joe! At the end of the day, I want to be happy AND peaceful.
The world of the future will not be a world of either or – either I am rich or I am happy. The value of the next world is that it has to be both!
Stay tuned for more in the series of Stories From the Next World and please tune in to my weekly Radio 42 Show where I’ll be sharing more of these stories and secrets of the Universe as well. You wouldn’t want to miss those!
Yours in swimming against the tide that was going in the wrong direction anyway,
Annie
Koyaanisqatsi – Life Out of Balance
February 12, 2010
Koyaanisqatsi, Hopi word
“Crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.”
Over twenty years ago I was privy to hearing the prophecies of Indigenous peoples first hand. I heard them through the mouths of the elders and their stories of the future. But honestly I was naive back then and I wrote them off as ‘doom and gloom.’ I told myself that it wasn’t really true what they were predicting. I was in my twenties and carefree. What the hell did I know about the world to come?
It wasn’t until the year 2000 that I suddenly woke up one day and said, “Oh my God, they were right.” The things that they had predicted were coming true – earth changes, political upheavals, very specific disasters that had been foreseen thousands of years ago.
How did they do that? How did the Hopi and every other indigenous culture around the globe know what was in store for our future? They just did. That’s the best I can say. They predicted it precisely and exactly.
But here’s where a confusion comes in. They never said that it was going to be the end of the world. They said it was going to be the end of A world.
Now what’s the difference? The end of the world vs. the end of a world? There is a huge difference. You see to the native people their frame of time was always told like a story. They hold time as a series of successive worlds, similar to how we have ages, epochs and eras, but their worldview is even more comprehensive than that.
Each ‘world’ had a theme an inevitable evolution. When you can see it that way, it’s easier to understand how they could predict the future. They could see in the span of evolution of the ‘worlds’ what was going to come next.
What they actually said was that it’s up to us to create the next world. This is the part that is always left out when people talk about the end of the world. The world is not ending folks. That would be the easy way out! We’re not getting off the planet that quickly.
It’s much harder to realize that a world is ending and that we need to do something about creating the next one. We can’t just stay asleep. What they said was that it would be the end of an age of darkness and the possible beginning of an era of light and that it is up to us to make the necessary changes in lifestyle and consciousness to usher in another world.
We can no longer go on as we have been – driven by greed and avarice, with complete disregard for human life and our planet. That world needs to end. It is up to each of us to make those small and steady changes every single day day after day, day in and day out.
There is no rest for the bringers of the next world. But that doesn’t mean that we have to be hopeless and cheerless about it. In fact just the opposite. We need to be as filled with light as we can be.
Our hope for the next world lives in us. Each day, day in and day out – not reacting to the craziness of the world around us but quietly and confidently making the necessary changes in ourselves and helping those around us.
Every change you make in yourself contributes to the balance and healing of the world. Today let’s reverse the tide and make our mantra, “Life in balance begins with me.”
You are welcome to listen to my Radio 42 Show on this topic. They can be downloaded any time.
Yours in always making the effort to contribute to a happy and sane world,
Annie
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