Breaking with Convention

I’ve been thinking more about just how important it is for leaders of the Shift to be willing (and able) to break with conventional thinking and the herd mentality — to stay true to our unique vision and build a new world.

If we sacrifice our visionary truth, we shut down communication with our soul. In a recent online event featuring Sonia Choquette, she made the point that when we orient too much to the beliefs of others, it can shut down our intuition, which is the pipeline to our soul.

The converse is true as well — when we’re willing to follow our own inner knowing even if no one else is going along with it, we empower ourselves to create out-of-the-box solutions, visionary possibilities, and transformative disruption. That’s when we truly can change the world.

After I first got the download about The Shift Network in a meditation retreat, I was the only one who thought it was possible for quite some time. I knew that to be successful, this enterprise would need to break out of a lot of boxes, including creating a spiritually based business, transmitting wisdom teachings online, and actually making money from spiritual products.

I had to overcome a lot of biases and trust my inner knowing that it was possible — and that the only way it would become reality was to resolve that quitting was not an option. We now have 800,000 people active in the Network.

Going against conventional wisdom or the consensus reality requires a bit of tolerance for discomfort and the fortitude to weather outright attacks. I thought of this recently, when Rep. Justin Amash broke with his fellow Republican party members in calling for Trump’s impeachment. That took real courage.

I’ve been talking about this with mentees in our current Mentorship program, one of whom is bringing creative, embodied, and very unconventional practices into a corporate setting. And she’s putting out a 7-figure revenue goal in her first year!

Rather than argue with her that this was not possible, I opened to a more transformative way of thinking: What if it is possible? How might we get there? This led to some great strategic insights and ultimately to stunning levels of success.

Another person comes to mind when thinking about this quality: Clare Dubois, the founder of TreeSisters, who received clear inner guidance that she needed to reforest the tropics in a decade, with women leading the way. Rather than surrendering to the conventional thinking that it was impossible, she created her organization, which is now planting two million trees per year and activating massive collaborations amongst groups to declare The Year of the Tree and to scale up their planting efforts into the billions.

Too often, when we look at the future, we do so through the lens of fear and the expectation that the current mentality will dictate what we can or can’t do. However, disruptive, game-changing innovators trust their inner knowing and go forward with audacious solutions to really move the needle toward the Shift that our planet needs.

The truth is that humanity is capable of very rapid changes if small groups of people are willing to go outside the norms, dream bold dreams, and roll up their sleeves to make them happen.

It doesn’t matter how young or old we are, or even what our social station is. I’ve met some amazing teens who are lighting things up, and plenty of people with very few resources who are making amazing things happen.

It all begins with ourselves. Are we willing to trust our deepest dreams and most powerful inner guidance even if no one else validates them for some time? Are we willing to give everything we’ve got to breathe life into our vision, even if success appears unlikely

That’s the difference between living a good life and living an epic life. An epic life demands that we take the necessary risks of forging our own path — beyond the limits of conventional thinking.

A particularly powerful way to activate your own willingness to think outside the box and create an epic life that truly makes a difference is to come to our Visionaries Summit, taking place September 20-22 in Sacramento, California.

It’s a gathering of catalytic innovators, out-of-the-box thinkers, and heart-centered activists who are marrying personal growth, societal change, and conscious politics to forge the society we truly want and need to see.

Amazing speakers and allies will be there in abundance — and I sincerely hope you’ll be there too.

And even if I don’t see you there, I encourage you to be courageous and trust your inner guidance, even when it leads into terrain that no one else has explored. You’re serving the expansion of new possibilities for us all.