Can You Keep Believing In Yourself?

Design a life that explores your gifts and your greatness. -Lauryn Hill

There are moments in nearly everyone's life when you find yourself faced with these questions:

• Are you ready to believe in yourself?
• Is it time to go for it?
• Is it time to chase your biggest dreams?
• Or maybe even just - are you ready to climb the next step on the ladder to your larger soul purpose?

I believe it's more important to understand what it takes to succeed and live your best life now more than ever. Now's the time to get strategic and look at the big picture.

Because it's only from a place of nourished and supported success that we can begin to address the changes the bigger world needs from us.

What Happens if You Fail?

Success at achieving your biggest dreams and deepest soul purpose is not something you're likely to achieve on the first go round. It takes patience. But losing a round or two of the game is not the same thing as "failing."

When you're young and overconfident, it's all too easy to make bad calls. In your haste to chase greatness you might bet on yourself without a full understanding of the rules of the game, and things just don't end up working out.

This is what's called "a learning experience."

It happens when you're not young too, for the record. Some of us are slow learners.

Failure is a Stepping Stone to Success

No one I'm aware of ever got to greatness without first going through these kinds of learning experiences. These things that feel like failures, even when they're not. I know this sounds super cliche but it's really quite true. Success comes from the persistence to stick to your dreams even after you fail over and over again. There's a reason there are so many quotes about this!

Falling down and failing seasons your soul. It teaches you about yourself and about the world you find yourself living in. It teaches you resilience. It teaches you about what you didn't know you didn't know.

Betting on yourself and feeling like you lost the bet is not fun. In fact, a lot of times it sucks.

If you're lucky, it won't kill you. You know, perspective.

If you want to succeed, you simply have to be willing to keep trying. A growth mindset also helps quite a bit.

Personal evolution is an iterative process. It requires seeing your dreams, putting out the code, TESTING the code, and then going back to refine. Call it the CICD pipeline of personal success if you like.

Chasing Success is a Multilayered Game

Success is not just about you, the single human being with your capabilities, your will, and your dreams. It's about you, a complex being, living in a complex system with multiple dynamics at play. Just because you've cultivated the necessary tools to do the work doesn't mean that your environment is set up to support your unmitigated success.

Success at great endeavors takes not ONLY the skills, will, and vision you can cultivate within. It requires additional ability to read the lay of the land, the other players involved, as well as strategy, nuance, and also some degree of wisdom.

If success was easy - everyone would achieve it!

Chasing Success Today is About MORE Than Achieving Personal Success Alone

Call me a #techhippie, but most of my close friends as well as the people that inspire me are chasing success in hopes of influencing larger systemic changes. Doing good is NOT about getting the approval or respect of others at this point. It's a matter of actual survival!

Whether they're doing work that relates to the climate crisis, social justice, a growing definition of professionalism, or making mental health more accessible and idk, normal... I see my tribe reaching for big goals to benefit the greater good.

Books, podcasts, online courses, coaching, volunteering on the land or in the digital spaces, or even creating beautiful art to inspire the hearts of others - the desire to be successful with this kind of work usually involves a combination of (a) doing good in the world, and (b) working with purpose in a financially sustainable way.

Success is not something to be monetized. It's more than that. In reality, success is the polar opposite of burnout. As Dr Jacqueline Kerr shows in this post - burnout has real ramifications on the system as a whole.

But so does success!

Pursuing your soul work often helps others to succeed!

• I saw my friend Mark Metry has a masterclass now to help others overcome shyness and start extending their gifts into the world.
• My friend Desiree Driesenaar shares her gifts to help others chase the concept of Abundanism.
• My friend Karla Morales-Lee has been self funding the Warrior Women Network, and her amazing podcast to highlight the work of "ordinary intersectional women doing extraordinary things." She's now funded and staffed to continue her efforts!
• My friend Chris P. Nwachukwu has been working with his group Green Promise Initiative International and now is work is extending to Zimbabwe and Liberia. Amazing.

I could go on and list 50 more, but I'll keep it short because not everyone likes to read novels for newsletters. I get it.

What do all these people have in common, beyond having an excellent taste in friends?

THEY BELIEVED IN THEMSELVES UNTIL THEY ACHIEVED SUCCESS.

You can too.

Achieving Success and Changing the Bigger Story Isn't Easy

Changing the bigger system with individual personal effort can feel like trying to turn an aircraft carrier around using only a wooden paddle. Vision provides the map, but paddling takes a LOT of sustained energy. I know it, as many of you do as well.

The more paddles that get put in the water, paddling for the prioritization of love above fear, and paddling for a return to mutual respect and reciprocity between all beings - the easier it gets to turn the big ship.

This escalating crackdown of the draconian systems of violence, abuse, and domination is happening BECAUSE our paddling is getting stronger! It's true.

Can you feel it?

Can you sense it in your bones?

We are starting to make an impact. The ship is creaking around and beginning to turn.

Just this week the UN General Assembly adopted a historic resolution on Thursday, declaring access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, a universal human right.

So Let's Keep Going!

Everyday more and more people are tapping into their deep personal paths, and learning the skills and nuance of turning a soul calling into success. Every day, more and more people are putting their paddles into the water and joining the larger collective effort for change.

Success doesn't require you to quit your corporate job and go plant trees and live in a cave. It doesn't mean you have to jump on board the activism train and go stomp through the streets in raging protests at the system. Although - if this is what your soul is calling for, by all means go for it!

Success DOES require you to keep believing in yourself. It DOES need you to keep betting on the power of your dreams and unique gifts. And it DOES need you to figure out how to cultivate the nourishment and support you're going to need to do your work in the world.

Even if the work you're called to do is utterly private. Even if your work doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with "saving the world." Even if all you do is make yourself happy with the things you're working to succeed at.

It matters.

It matters a lot.

Taking care of yourself is the key to being able to take care of others. And success with a full and happy heart is key to true self-actualization.

It means you need to keep believing in yourself to get there.

So Here Are Your Questions

What would it take for you to keep believing in yourself? What would it take to get to the place where you were willing and able to reach for success on a personal level one more time?

And what would it mean for you to succeed?

I'd love to hear your story!

And speaking of bigger systems, by request I'm moving the moon notes to the bottom of the newsletter instead of posting it at the top. Hopefully this is less confusing.

We're Entering the Month of the Sturgeon Moon

The full moon, and last supermoon of 2022, will rise on August 11th, but this whole month is named for the huge and ancient fish . It's a blue moon, being the fourth full moon of the season. August's moon got this name because the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most readily caught during this part of?summer.

These fascinating fish can be traced back to 136 million years ago. They can live to be 150 years old and grow to a size bigger than a small car! Their unusual name means "the stirrer" because it uses it's large snout to stir up the mud on a lake bottom to look for food. Very appropriate to the topic of this edition of TBG. Because now's the time to stir things up!

What Will Your Hunt For Success Stir Up?

We're facing existential and intersectional crisis on so many levels all over the globe at this moment in history. The world is crying out for your courage and willingness to chase your soul purpose! If you can stay in a positive mindset and really find your self-believe, you will be able to chase that success that can benefit you personally as well as the world at large.

So go for it! Because honestly, what do you have to lose? And what do we all stand to gain?