Borrowing Brilliance From Seeds
I am representing a company that recently wants this to be their saying:
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction,” spoken by Cynthia Occelli.
It is certainly appropriate for the business. And these words certainly resonate with my recent endeavors.
Many people would advise against a complete deconstruction of one’s self. To not delve too far into the “dark side.” Or the idea that you get too far in the deep end that you can’t recover from. I can’t say I agree or disagree, and it is certainly a case by case scenario.
Personally, I felt if I did undo my identity and get “undone” with everything except my spiritual beliefs-though I challenged myself on those as well-that I would be better for it. And thus, for those I spend my time with, I would be better company to them.
And so I did it. I put anything that would cause me to have pride in-my work, beliefs, abilities, perceptions of who I am on hold, meaning that I stopped them, as well as past accomplishments, to go along with any insecurities, concerns and darkest fears into a imaginary basket. If they started to come up, rather than try to suppress it, I observed it. I wrote about it. I didn’t judge it. I allowed myself to have conversations with them and about them. Being in South America and traveling alone was a big factor in making this possible.
What I learned about myself was this process helped me simplify. It helped me make decisions. Things I wanted to truly support, that come in the form of people, animals, movements, businesses, non-profits, ideas-it gave me an opportunity to renew my vows to them. I gave myself the opportunity to ask myself, do I really want x,y,z in my life? And if so, how can I be better to them?How can I inspire them? How can I be better inspired by them? I was re-committing and forging stronger bonds to people I cared about, and to my passions.
I also was able to work thru some of my darkest fears, that until recently I didn’t even know that I had. And to go through those things, to outsiders, if people saw me at my worst, it could look like complete destruction. I grew to a point, that if anyone had that viewpoint on me, it was ok. Some may have even thought my traveling was a form of running away from something. It turns out there was some truth to that. But I simply want to be like the seed, and achieve my greatest expression. And I know I have to work at it daily, and not get to down on myself if I have some bad mismanagements along the way.