You are and will become the product of the things that imprint their influence upon your brain. So who’s choosing them for you?...
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If something’s been nagging at you in life but you can’t figure out what to do then you’ve come to the right place. You can catch up on back episodes of the transformation series here: charleskunken.com/season1
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Even the most rational of people will start to believe in a cult absent counter information to snap them out of it.
This notion of influence exists in all entities surrounding us; religions, political parties, media, brands, celebrities, family, friends, society, work.
A cult is unique in that it typically does not encourage you to consider other points of view. But I ask you to consider, are you perhaps being your own cult leader?
You’re Move
What you come to believe as possible for yourself is a result of the things constantly imprinting their influence on your brain for an extended period of time.
The question you must ask yourself now is are you passive about this or active?
Passive, means your beliefs are at the whim of whatever is in your proximity: work, family, the news.
Active means that you deliberately curate the beliefs you want to be imprinted onto your subconscious.
Mozart
In 2015 I started going deep into learning the guitar. I would spend hours before work and all weekend alone in my apartment practicing. I stopped going to happy hours, I stopped going to brunch, I stopped doing a lot of things that a thirty-something ‘should’ have normally been doing.
I slowly improved my playing but I was really getting good at following my curiosity. There was some concern from home about my newfound ‘condition’.
I wasn’t planning on being a hermit for the rest of my life but I knew what I needed to do so that I could eventually start engaging in the new activities I had in mind.
Encouragement was scarce. It was hard to explain my plan. But luckily I had an antidote.
I would regularly throw on episodes of ‘Mozart In The Jungle’, a show about the misfit drinking, smoking, strangely behaving, unionized musicians who were part of the NY philharmonic. I engrossed myself in this story and others like it, stories about people who said it was ok to dedicate your existence to art. And be strange. And live differently. I was starving for that narrative.
I was deliberately ingesting these different scripts because this was not the norm being expressed within my immediate vicinity.
In 2016 I doubled down on my quest. Through that I met my original Seattle band, For Now, a real life group of misfits who thought sitting around making riffs on a Friday night was a great idea. And that was how I met my wife.
Somethings’ Got To Give
For change to occur habits and patterns will have to change and people will notice.
Some will encourage you (keep them close), some will question you, and others will simply hate.
The bottom line is this - if you want a different life you are going to need different details.
In Closing
It’s time to start becoming extremely ruthless about the impressions that you are allowing to hold sway. There’s the stuff you hear and the stuff you choose to listen to.
If you want change you need to seek out new scripts. You need to intake as much as you possibly can about people doing stuff differently than the thing you are doing every day that is currently leaving you unfulfilled.
Don’t chastise yourself for being lazy, that’s too general. It is very difficult to create from scratch the tactical steps required to move into the life you desire. Chastise yourself for not doing endless amounts of research on people you could emulate.
Here’s a hint for next week. Your strengths, are not necessarily what you are world class at. Your strengths are the things you can’t stand to not participate it.
Tune in next week. You really are doing great.
Leave a comment or Hit me up: charlie@charleskunken.com
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