Alignment is Not A Brand

Jun 13, 2017

 

I’ve had to ask myself, over the years that I’ve grown this business, if this is what I really want.

 

I suppose anything that has a person awake at 4:30a.m. every day or that causes one to do ridiculous things like shoot videos and post them on the internet would evoke those kinds of questions once in a while.

 

Being an entrepreneur seems like the Hot New Thing right now.  Everywhere you turn you see a new internet celebrity offering a webinar on how they made their first six figure month (blah blah blah) and I’m willing to bet, if you surround yourself with the same kind of people I seem to, that you personally know quite a few individuals who are self-employed or have entrepreneurial dreams.

Perhaps you, too, are one of those people.

 

And The World makes entrepreneurship look damn fine.  It seems as though Everyone On The Internet is working a 4 Hour Work Week, tapping out blog posts on the beach and running multi-million dollar businesses out of their van (and if you haven’t been exposed to all this, just look up the hashtag #vanlife and you’ll get a taste).

 

As a natural rebel, I had to ask myself:  do I want to own this business because everyone else is doing it and because it *looks* AWESOME?  Or is entrepreneurship truly the path of alignment for me?

 

 

Just because something *looks* aligned on social media or for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s aligned FOR YOU.

Just because nobody’s posting glamorshots of themselves typing out government reports in a sun-flare-lit cubicle doesn’t mean that a job with an employer, benefits and vacation time isn’t absolutely perfect, if you feel like it is, for you.

 

Your Alignment is not a brand.

 

It doesn’t need to be Instagram-worthy.  It doesn’t even have to be pretty.  It doesn’t have to be something you *do right.*

 

And it certainly doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s Alignment.

 

I would love to know…how does this land for you?  Are there aspects of your life that feel aligned but aren’t conventional or that you feel aren’t as valued in society today?

 

The Becoming Podcast has been on a short hiatus while I focus on writing my book, but oh what a comeback episode I have for you!

This month, I spoke to Toko-pa Turner, who many of you may know as the unofficial patron saint of many of my circles and gatherings because of the sheer number of times I’ve quoted from the wisdom of her book, Belonging.

Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, she founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and nature. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages so far. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.

Here’s some of what Toko-pa and I talk about in this episode:

> The dream that changed Toko-pa’s life, causing her to question her career and, ultimately, her identity

> How we can court our dreams to support us during times of radical transformation – and the reasons so many of us have a hard time remembering and working with what shows up in our dreamscape

> Toko-pa’s perspective on the message of Belonging after the divisiveness our society has experienced in the years since it was published

> What happened for both Toko-pa and I when we fell out of belonging from the ideologies of the “wellness world”

> How to build community when you’re under-resourced

> “The Big Lie” when it comes to belonging, and how we can reclaim a sense of belonging to the greater family of things, as Mary Oliver so famously wrote

Listen to the episode on iTunes

 

Show Notes

Toko-pa’s Website

Belonging:  Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa’s book

The David Abram video about animism mentioned in the interview

Toko-pa’s self-guided program, Dream Drops

Companion, the program that accompanies Belonging

 

Also, while you’re at it, if you enjoy The Becoming Podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review, and even subscribe to it on iTunes.  That goes a long way to helping more and more people find and benefit from hearing these interviews!  Thank you so much!