[New Year, New You] Day 13: How to Find Your Rebel Spirit
In yesterday’s blog post I wrote about how other people’s ideas, comments and behaviour can influence how you view the world–sometimes without your even realizing it. I mentioned the idea of the “dusty puppets” in your personal psychodrama as these shadows of the people who have been there and passed along their ideas or behaviours to you and that with so many of these influencing you in any given moment, sometimes it can be hard to figure out which ones are really you. What are the goals you have because you “think you’re supposed to” and what are the goals you have because that’s what you, as a spiritual firecracker, actually yearn for?
The pressure to fit in and follow the rules can be all-consuming. It’s much easier to be socially acceptable than to feel like there’s something about you other people don’t like or can’t readily accept. But finding your rebel spirit–your personal goals, aspirations, beliefs, values and ideas that you are willing to hold in spite of any pressure or rejection–that’s one of the most important things you’ll ever do.
At the end of your days, if you haven’t found that, who have you lived your life for?
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan.
And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
-Jim Rohn
Social Veneer: The Thick, Sticky Layer of B.S. Coating Real Life
Tomorrow’s podcast and blog lesson will be doozies, so I encourage you to stay tuned for that one, but leading up to it I want to explore first this idea of “social veneer” – the thick and sticky coating on life that tells you how to act, dress, talk, walk and engage in life so as to be socially acceptable to other people. Social veneer is what prevents people from rocking boats, ruffling feathers or being “confrontational.” But social veneer is also what has prevented people for many years from understanding the earth wasn’t flat and not all women are witches!
While there are wild, brave and beautiful exceptions to the rule, for many of us, it feels easy to follow the crowd and fit in. It feels easy to eat your Wheaties and pass your tests in class. It’s easy to buckle down and shut up and do what you’re told because everybody likes you that way and being liked feels good. It certainly makes life easier for everyone else around you when you don’t fiddle in class, make noise in public, or talk about the wild and unreasonable things you want to do with your life.
But it’s a slow road to spiritual death and the greatest ideas, the most earth-shaking realizations and mind-boggling discoveries never came from a “mob” of socially compliant robots, they came from one brave, person who was willing to see things outside of the box–someone who dared to defy “the way things are” and actually change them!
“If I had asked people what they wanted,
they would have said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford
Broken Calculators Can’t Add
If you have a calculator with a pushed down digit on it, then no matter what you try to put into that tool as a calculation, it will always come out wrong. And if you don’t realize that there is a pushed down button, it will be even more confusion. There are a lot of people with stuck digits on their mental calculators–people can only give you answers with the information they have available to them–with the ideas and world view they’ve got, based on their limitations, experiences and understanding.
If you just do what you’re told, believe what the people around you say is true about life, then chances are you’re going to be missing a lot of other information that could give you a fuller picture of what life’s about, and you’ll keep getting information from the same people with the same limitations. You have to pay attention to the firecracker inside. You have to notice what grabs your attention and you have to start noticing that little feeling inside you when you back down, shut up or give up on something that tugged on your firecracker’s heart strings.
Please make sure you take the time to listen to today’s podcast which accompanies this blog post, because there are some additional and inspiring ideas to help you out with this. In today’s podcast, I shared a story about a great friend, Sarah, whose story you can find here in more detail, but which I cover in the podcast pretty well. This call is totally going to inspire you to let your rebel spirit out.
You Came Into the World Rebel, Then Got Reasonable
Chances are pretty good that at first when you learned to express some of your ideas and desires in life, you had an unencumbered vision of what you wanted to be, do or have in the future. Your ballet dancer, rockstar dreams of being a famous actress and marrying a prince were perfectly realistic to you when you were three years old!
If you were like most children, you felt genuine love and admiration for everyone and everything–your sister, brothers, dog, cat, mother and peanut butter sandwiches were all amazing! You didn’t think too much before you’d act or question whether the things you wanted to have and do were “realistic” or “appropriate.” You could make chocolate cream pies out of mud, magical wands out of broken sticks and intergalactic aliens out of dysfunctionally proportioned Barbie dolls! You could turn anything in your environment into exactly what you wanted it to be, and with a sense of certainty that kept you entertained for hours!!
You were not afraid of being rejected and didn’t worry about what other people thought.
You were busy creating a world no matter whether other people believed you, or not!
And that was when being alive felt alive.
Over the years you spilled milk, broke dishes and got in trouble when you were just trying to help. You accidentally offended, insulted and ruffled someone’s feathers the wrong way, when you were just speaking your mind. You lost friends and lovers, fell off your bike and lost your wallet. You failed tests, broke promises and told a few “little while lies” that made a big ugly mess.
And along the way you learned it was a little more comfortable to stay quiet than to risk making more mistakes. So you got better at shutting up than speaking up, and better at smiling politely than giving anyone a piece of your mind. And that little rebel spirit you came into life with got very, very reasonable.
But if you’re ready for a revival of your firecracker self, and want to worry a little less about what others think, then I strongly recommend you check out the accompanying podcast for this lesson. (It sounds like there’s a weird little echo in the recording and I’m sorry if it makes listening less enjoyable, but the content kicks butt and will inspire you to ride a Harley into the sunset, chase your wildest dreams with confidence and let your rebel spirit ROAR!)
Love,
Tera