“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” – Charles Bukowski
I almost didn’t send this email to you.
I worried it was too long and too philosophical… Too tricky to put into words, and maybe too tricky to understand.
But then I realized:
This is the most important thing in the world to me.
It’s my own, personal 9th Law.
And nothing we can say about success, productivity, meditation, love, business, or any other topic — has any true value until this one core principle is fully understood.
So light a match and burn the boats.
Today, we’re going all the way in 🙂
I guess the place to start is with a simple, fundamental truth about reality that should be plain and obvious to all of us:
There are no copies in nature.
Walk into the forest, and every single tree, every single leaf, every single stone along the path is completely unique.
There are similarities, of course.
But if we look deep enough, everything we see is constructed with a one-of-a-kind intelligence that has never, is never, and will never be replicated.
And the same is true for us.
Every human being, from our DNA to our life experiences, is designed in a completely unique way. Nature has never made one of you before, and will never make one of you again.
This isn’t some new age, feel-good philosophy.
This is a fundamental fact:
Where we’re from, everyone, and every thing, is a one-of-one.
Again, that part should be obvious.
Here’s what’s less obvious:
Nature doesn’t make mistakes.
Look around:
The supreme intelligence of nature has been creating, organizing, and balancing this thing called reality for billions of years without so much as a hiccup.
It seems to know what it’s doing a little better than we do.
Meanwhile, we’re so busy poking away at what we think are our flaws, trying to “fix” or “improve” ourselves, that we fail to notice the absolute perfection of our design.
Like everything in nature, we were custom-designed with exact precision for an exact purpose, like a single key that has been moulded for a single lock.
And, to paraphrase The 9th Law:
The mission of life is to discover that lock — the totally unique purpose you were designed for.
Not an easy task, of course…
…Since everyone seems to have an opinion about what we should and shouldn’t do with our lives.
Parents want to keep us safe, friends want to us to stay on-pace with them (or maybe just a small step behind, if they’re being honest), and society just wants us to plug into the machine and help keep the wheels turning.
Before long, outside opinions have almost completely drowned out that little voice inside…
The one that knows exactly who we are, why we’re here, and what we’re born to do.
The one that has something completely unique to offer the world, and is burning to create it.
It took me nearly a decade to cut through that outer noise, and finally uncover the early seeds of my own purpose.
And it’s a process that continues to this day.
I describe that process, along with all of my best maps, clues, and navigational tools in our 9th Law session.
But before you watch it, I want to wrap this up with something I wrote in a journal contemplation earlier this morning.
When I saw the words appear on the page in front of me…
“Why does helping others uncover their unique purpose matter so much to you?”
…I paused for a moment.
Then, it came through honest and clear:
“Beauty.”
There is nothing more beautiful to me than someone who knows who they are and what they are born to do, and is doing it.
These are the individuals that create the greatest works of art, the most innovative technology, the most inspiring athletic feats, and the most world-changing businesses.
They are a force of nature, because they’ve tapped into the very real force of nature within themselves.
The same force of nature that is within each of us.
And the current evolution of my own purpose is to help you tap back into your own force of nature, and unleash it.
I look forward to the task.
If you made it this far, well done 🙂
I know this was a long (and highly philosophical) one, but damn was it fun to write.
And I’d love to hear what you think.
Did this lesson land, for you?
Let me know.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about something a little more practical…
Maybe 🙂
-T
