• I was reading Brené Brown again the other morning as I was eating scrambled eggs with avocado.

    Brené (I don’t actually know her so as to be on a first name basis, but like to pretend I do) was talking about barriers to vulnerability.

    She was talking about masks. The masks we wear.

    The things that we put on, so that we look like the personality we think we need to be. So people like us. So we don’t rock the boat. So we fit in. So we’re not alone.

    I’m an expert, and you should listen to me

    I was trying to write something on marketing. And it wasn’t really working. I noticed an unpleasant feeling. It was familiar.

    I’d always assumed it was the effect of not finding my flow. I can’t write, so I feel contracted,

    But I realized it wasn’t. I realized it was the cause. I wasn’t in flow, because I wasn’t writing. A mask was.

    So, I put the mask centre stage and let it write. This is what it said.

    “I’m an expert. And you’re not. Listen to me, because I know. Be quiet and you may actually learn something.”

    And it’s said in this slightly bored voiced, like really you should know better, but since you don’t, I’ll grace you with my superior wisdom. Though I’m making it clear it’s begrudging. But not clear enough that you could comment on it.

    I’ve christened him Bartholomew Snooty III.

    I remember being on a personal development course years ago. The leaders had offered me a free place because I’d started an audacious business that professed to be a hub for the kind of work they were teaching.

    I thought I was better than them.

    I’d silently critique their teaching from the back of the room.

    And I ended up pissing some people off. Because I wasn’t committed, and I dropped out, and broke some promises I made. And even though I felt ashamed underneath, I covered it by looking down my nose at them, and dismissing their quaint complaints.

    And that’s how he works. He covers my insecurity with indifferent arrogance.

    Meanwhile, I’m still lonely.

    Oh! Look how vulnerable I am!

    I have another one. It’s the “I’m vulnerable” mask.

    The one where I pretend to be vulnerable. Because it’s a deep value of mine (the vulnerability not the pretending). And I think I need to be like that all the time.

    “I did this thing. It was really vulnerable. But look at me, I’m so brave to be sharing it like this with you. How good am I?”

    I remember a couple of years ago. I was having a fight with my girlfriend, and my best friend Joel was there too. And I got really upset, and started crying uncontrollably.

    Joel didn’t buy it.

    He said he understood I was upset, but it seemed like I was making a show of it.

    I froze.

    “This is a matrix moment Ewan.” He said.

    And he was right.

    It felt so real. And I was hurt, but even more, I was trying to get seen.

    And maybe that’s why I do it more often.

    Don’t see me

    Don’t look at me. Because if I show you the real me, you’ll reject me. Like you did when I was innocent, and didn’t know about masks.

    I never fitted in at school. Maybe none of us do.

    I had the wrong shoes. And no Nintendo. And brown bread sandwiches with cucumber and vegetarian pate.

    I stood out, like a weird thumb. And the other kids, with their Nike trainers wouldn’t let me join in.

    So I started fashioning some masks. So I wasn’t so lonely.

    Maybe you did too.

    And none of us realized that we were all wearing masks, and participating in an invented stage play. All secretly wanting to fit in.

    And I’m still doing it.

    “Like me! I’m really good at writing! Can I play with you?”

    I wrote that on facebook the other day. That I still felt like I was 5-years old trying to get people to be my friend.

    And lots of people said they would be my friend.

    And it was lovely. But it didn’t really change anything.

    The naked truth

    Because it’s not about winning friends. It’s about saying what I have to say. The real one, who nakedly says the things that he can’t help but care about.

    And it would be really shitty if that meant no-one likes me anymore. But even that I’d endure. If that was what my art demanded.

    Walt Whitman was like that. Most people hated what he wrote. And he didn’t get huge thanks or success. And then he died. And then everyone realized how brilliant he was, and how beautiful his writing was. And how revolutionary.

    I hope that doesn’t happen to me. That would suck.

    But I’m realizing how it’s really not about getting friends. That little 5 year old has lost his chance.

    It’s about speaking the truth.

    I can feel the masks start to melt. And as more of the naked truth starts to reverberate around my world, I realize I’m no longer in control of the plot.

    So I cross my fingers, and hope it all has a happy ending.

    And I’m stacking all my chips on this. The belief that if I keep speaking what wants to be spoken, then something will happen. And that ending will be the happiest one.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • You’re here for a reason. It’s not a mistake.

    You have to work to do. You have things to create, wisdom to convey, gifts to offer. Your work is just that. It is your Work. It is unique. And if you don’t create it, the world will never have it.

    Your work is something you did not ultimately choose. But it is something that if you commit to uncover and give it, will transform reality in ways you can’t imagine.

    Your work is to create the Work you were made for.

    And yet as we follow the path of living our work, reality tests us. God challenges us. We doubt it. We doubt ourselves. It’s inevitable.

    There are stories we so often tell ourselves, that stop us from offering our true work to the world. They’re stories I’ve told myself, they’re stories my clients tell themselves, they’re stories my friends have told themselves.

    The stories will always spin. But when you mistake them for the truth, the world is robbed of your genius, and you are robbed of your destiny.

    Here are 6 such stories. And how to re-frame them.

    1. Who am I to…

    Who am I to write about the spiritual nature of business? Who am I to coach people on business success? Who the fuck am I to call my brand The Realized Entrepreneur!?

    I doubted it all. I was terrified of arrogance. Of pretending a level of authority that I neither felt nor deserved.

    There’s a myth that we need to have mastered something in order to teach it. You train to become qualified, and then you teach.

    I train for 5 years to become an engineer, then I start engineering. I spend $12,000 on coach training, then I start being a coach.

    This myth relies on the notion of expertise; that I need a certain amount of knowledge to qualify as someone who can then practice. It’s a two-step process. Novice, expert. Student, teacher.

    On the deepest level however, we are each asked to teach that which we most need to learn. The very thing that we are afraid of, yet are attracted to, is our teaching. The very thing that we struggle with, yet are captivated by is our lesson.

    Do not wait until you feel qualified to teach it. Do not wait until it feels safe to give it.

    The journey into the unknown is anything but safe. The winding cosmic pathway toward expressing your God-given essence is littered with discomfort.

    But it is also imbued with light. Follow the light. It’s in you.

    It is you.

    2. I’ll be Judged

    They’ll say I’m arrogant, or delusional. They’ll condemn me, as worthless, or worse. They’ll dismiss me as a naïve narcissist. I’ll be judged.

    Yes. You will.

    People will judge you. They’ll judge you for sticking your head up above the safety line. They’ll dismiss you. They’ll attack you. They’ll ignore you. They’ll bad-mouth you.

    You can’t escape it.

    As Seth Godin says: “You can’t both fit in, and stand out.”

    If you offer your true work, you’ll stand out. And you’ll indirectly illuminate the fact that there are people who are scared, and who are hiding, and not giving their work, and they know it.

    When you shine, they’ll squirm. And the more they squirm, the more they’ll look for a source of the pain and discomfort. And if they don’t look at themselves, they might look at you.

    Your enlightened offerings, have illuminated their shadowed ambitions. Your piercing brilliance, has highlighted their dark desires.

    And if they aren’t vulnerable enough to burn in that discomfort, they’ll disperse the energy.

    The more you offer your true work, the more those who aren’t, will assess and judge you. It’s not a sign that you’re getting it wrong, it’s a sign that you’re getting it right.

    It’s nothing to do with you, or even them. It’s just God inviting us all deeper.

    3. This will ruin my reputation

    My family will never look at me the same way. I have a carefully created reputation with my community and customers, I don’t want to risk that by putting out this risky stuff. No-one will take me seriously if I say what I really think.

    When a relatively little known researcher on vulnerability decided to see what would happen if she presented her study findings while actually showing her own vulnerability, she was terrified it would ruin her professional reputation. 20 million video views later, and Brene Brown’s reputation as a global leader in vulnerability is well established.

    A reputation that is not based on your true work, is a reputation that insulates you from what you’re called to create.

    Something old needs to be broken down, before something new can be created.

    What is the box you have created for yourself? What is the label you’ve carefully applied to you and your work? Is it truly you? Truly you?

    Maybe not.

    4. I don’t know if it’s good enough

    I don’t know if it works. I don’t know if I like it, or if anyone else will like it. I don’t know if it’s good enough.

    Doubting quality means you’re in true creativity. Creativity comes from the frothy space of tension between success and failure. If it’s sure to work, it’s not creative.

    It is not your role to judge the value of what you create. That privilege lies with your tribe, those you’re serving.

    It’s not about perfecting it, then giving it. It’s about experimenting and then experimenting. It’s about the never ending dance, at the edges of your lived expression, as you offer what seems to be in your soul, and the world around you responds with peculiar originality.

    It’s about never knowing if it’s good enough. Because it’s not about good enough anymore, it’s about brave enough, or surrendered enough.

    I wrote a piece recently. I didn’t like it. I wanted to bin it and write something else, but I didn’t have time. So I threw it out, and people loved it. They wouldn’t have, if I’d have listened to my own judgement.

    Are you brave enough to share the work that you literally don’t know the quality of?

    Are you surrendered enough to discover who you are, and what your work is, as you continually give it, and the world continually responds, and you continually pivot and weave, and the world continues in its immeasurably beautiful dance?

    5. I don’t want to be seen

    A couple of months ago someone plagiarized one of my articles. And I don’t mean ripping off a few lines here and there, I mean the whole 1800 word thing, copied and pasted, under his own name.

    I swapped emails with the guy. I assumed good intent. He gave me some pseudo-spiritual justification for the deception. I asked him to attribute it to me. He refused. I decided to share about the episode on Facebook, as it was happening.

    The thread went crazy. My website traffic sky-rocketed. I felt delighted. I felt uncomfortable.

    The next morning, I sat down to journal about the experience. And I realized that the uncomfortable feeling was one of not wanting to be seen.

    I felt exposed. I felt illuminated. I felt witnessed. I wanted crawl back under the cover of obscurity.

    I knew this wouldn’t be the last time. It felt like a watershed moment. I knew I couldn’t go back. People were starting to see me. I was scared. And it was exactly what I wanted.

    I do want to be seen. I want my work to be seen. By thousands of people. Maybe millions. And I’m scared. And so are you.

    6. What if it’s not my true work?

    I’m just not sure this is my true calling. I’m just not sure that this is what I’m here to do. What if this isn’t my purpose? What if I’ve got the wrong thing?

    Your true work is not a thing. It’s an ever evolving expression. It’s not something you discover once, and then spend your life making. It’s something you continually deepen into, finding new edges, new delights and new expressions.

    Your true work is discovered by continually creating what you believe your true work to be, and weaving as you go, reflecting, adjusting, pivoting, embracing.

    To try and clarify and define it before you start creating it, is futile at best.

    If you don’t know what your true work is, then you have a huge open space within which to go and explore. Don’t deliberate. Create.

    A wonderful man taught me something recently. He said: “Ewan, just jam a stake in the ground and then fucking go at it. And if things change? Move the stake, and then fucking go at it.”

    It’s not about getting it right. It’s about going at it, and getting it wrong. It’s about the going, not the getting.

    Go create your work.

    Releasing yourself  from story

    Stories are like old soundtracks that you used to like listening to, but forgot to turn off. Can you hear them? They’re humming along in the background, drowning out the voice of your creative expression.

    Don’t shout louder. Get quieter. And when you really hear them, you can find the off switch.

    The world wants your work. And I know you want to give it.

    It begins with the smallest step imaginable.

    A whisper.

    “Yes. I want to create my true work.”

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Entrepreneurship and anxiety go hand in hand. You can’t separate them. Though I tried.

    I spent the majority of my early adult life trying to run from anxiety. I was scared about feeling scared.

    My first job was putting cheese on shelves in a big supermarket. It felt perfect at the time, because it was almost impossible to fuck up. And I was horrifically anxious about fucking up.

    Throughout my professional life, I used my considerable intelligence to avoid things that scared me. I turned down promotions, I dodged taking on more responsibility, and I tried to stick to stuff I knew I could do.

    Anxiety was something I felt but didn’t want.

    It was also something I considered a dysfunction.

    “People who are successful, and have their shit together, and are talented don’t get anxious. Anxiety is for people who get burn out or panic attacks.”

    And then I started getting panic attacks.

    It started right around the time I quit my last corporate job, nearly four years ago now. It scared the shit out of me the first time it happened – an intense pain across my diaphragm and solar plexus. 30 minutes where I struggled to breathe and keep my head above the panic.

    There was nothing in particular that would seem to trigger them. One would just erupt, and I’d try and ride it out. When I started getting woken up by them in the middle of the night, I got really scared.

    Something had to shift.

    I got interested in anxiety

    Even as an entrepreneur, I’ve spent considerable time and energy avoiding things I felt anxious about.

    It’s why I liked being the marketing guy. I could hide behind the scenes, and construct powerful strategies and funnels, without having to actually face people.

    My anxiety hit new levels during a hugely challenging, yet ultimately transformational period where I started asking the most powerful question I know.

    My relationship had fallen apart, my work was a mess, and I was living back in England with my parents at the age of 32.

    Things were not going well.

    I felt stuck in a loop. Desperately wanting to quit the start-up I’d co-founded, but having no idea how on earth I could earn money without it. I’d churn it round and round in my mind, day after day.

    The anxiety levels in my body were so high that I started meditating every day, simply to allow myself to function. I’d go on long daily walks in the woods or fields, caressing myself through panic and hopelessness.

    It was during this period that I started to actually get interested in anxiety.

    Anxiety comes in two (very different) varieties

    It was last year that I got interested in work of the amazingly pioneering, yet frighteningly under-celebrated business philosopher Peter Koestenbaulm.

    His work is quite unlike anything else I’ve read, and was a huge inspiration to me while I teased out my early ideas for The Realized Entrepreneur.

    In a freakishly synchronous moment, I discovered that one of my clients had been a student of Dr. K (as she called him). During a work week with her in Colorado, I found myself thumbing through an old out of print book by Dr. K that she’d lent me.

    I came across a distinction that has utterly fascinated me ever since. He said there are two kinds of anxiety.

    One is dysfunctional. One is not.

    One is inevitable. One is not.

    Neurotic Anxiety

    “Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance.” – Seth Godin

    Neurotic anxiety is simply a poor use of the human mind.

    As human beings we have a quite remarkable gift. We can imagine the future. We can imagine possibility. Neurotic anxiety is taking that gift, and using it to envision futures that we really don’t want.

    “But if I publish this thing, what happens if no-one at all likes it? What if it doesn’t work? And I discover I’m actually talentless, and a fraud, and I have to go back to stacking cheese on shelves for the rest of my life, and die, miserable and alone…?”

    Neurotic anxiety is experiencing failure in advance.

    The failure hasn’t even happened yet. Yet you’re already imagining it, and visualizing it, and expecting it.

    But your nervous system can’t tell the difference between your neurotic dragon, or a real tiger in front of you. The sensations in your body are the same.

    It’s an insidious habit. It’s a destructive habit. It’s a useless habit. It’s a warped and kinked experience of the true nature of anxiety.

    Existential Anxiety

    “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Soren Kierkegaard

    Or to put it another way. Anxiety is the feeling of the unknown. Anxiety is what you experience when you step into something you don’t know.

    The feeling in my nervous system is exactly the same, whether the anxiety is neurotic or existential. In other words, my body is hard wired to feel anxiety when faced with something I can’t predict, and something important is on the line.

    Anxiety is not an emotion. It’s a condition. It is the natural condition of a human being

    It’s the condition of aliveness, and being faced with a level of freedom that no other being we know about has access to. It’s the condition of having our feet on earth, our head in heaven, and the consciousness to notice.

    Are you scared of your own freedom?

    You are. It’s hardwired. When faced with the possibility of greater freedom, wider awareness, larger wealth, we’re built to pull back. Is it safe? We get dizzy, like vertigo.

    Anxiety is just the feeling of unexpressed creative potential. Anxiety is the jittery pulsing of a manifesting force, yet to be uncovered. Anxiety is the consequence of not daring to grasp the latent power we carry.

    Anxiety is the material from which the road of growth is made. Anxiety is the excess energy that you haven’t yet learned to conduct. Anxiety is the inevitable consequence of creating something that didn’t exist before.

    It’s not something to be avoided.

    It’s not even something to be tolerated.

    Anxiety is something to be sought out, like the bread crumbs of God, leading us deeper into the magnificence that we are.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • We can think of marketing as having two different ways.

    The first way of marketing is presenting ourselves, skillfully, strategically, deliberately.

    It’s writing our persuasive website copy, designing a logo that gives just the right feel to the brand, it’s concocting our taglines that inspire and inform people.

    This is the common form of marketing. It’s important.

    The second way of marketing is revealing ourselves, transparently, vulnerably, passionately.

    It’s sharing the blog that we don’t want to share because it’s too personal, or feels inappropriate. It’s offering our naked heart, without agenda.

    This is the less common form. It’s essential.

    You could think about the first kind of marketing as being about surfaces. How do I appear to the world? What will people’s first impressions be? Will I be attractive to my ideal clients?

    Surfaces are not less important. It’s like wearing clothes, or getting a haircut.

    The second way of marketing is about the heart. It’s revealing who you really are, even though you may doubt the strategy of it. It is removing the curtains, beautiful though they may be.

    The realized entrepreneur understands both these ways of marketing. For he understands that he is both depth, and surface. She wants to be seen for her true heart, and for her true skin.

    He works hard to create surfaces that reflect his depth in powerful ways – marketing that can attract people magically.

    And she also remembers that the heart of meeting is in revealing herself, and relating to the world from chosen nakedness.

    This First Way of Marketing Is Like Makeup

    I love it when my partner wears mascara and eye-liner. It brings out her big beautiful blue eyes in such an evocatively delicate way. It draws out her natural beauty. It helps me see more of her. I love seeing her.

    And then there’s the woman whose make-up is so thick and loud, that I cannot see her true face. Her natural beauty is smeared over like a mask that she hides behind.

    Salt, I find, is a wonderful ingredient for bringing out the flavors in a dish. I taste them more. But too much and it tastes like something fake and unpleasant. Sometimes, food can be so salty, I don’t know what the natural flavors actually are, or even if there are any.

    So many people are marketing themselves with mountains of makeup and salt, while our hungry marketplace is crying out for something real, something heart-full, something truly beautiful.

    Marketing Is Simply Relating

    Marketing is a practice of relating with the world around you, not persuading the world of your worth.

    Marketing is about seeing your community, clients and customers. And being seen in return. It’s a practice of speaking and being spoken to.

    Makeup is good, and fine. Use it to bring out your attractiveness, and have those with roving eyes notice you amongst the crowd.

    But don’t hide behind it.

    The first way of marketing is an invitation, not a mask.

    What’s in your heart? What do you care about so much that you feel ashamed to shout it to the entire world?

    I want to meet you, feel you, see you.

    Know you.

    Will You Show Yourself?

    You are beautiful.

    It’s not a beauty that can be assessed according to a universal scale, or compared to the beauty of another. It’s yours. Truly and completely.

    And the more you are able to push the voice of your anxiety away, and disclose that beauty, the more the natural world will rise up to meet that beauty.

    When you reveal yourself, your true self, your true community will discover you.

    If you fake it, and manufacture your image from the form of another, you will attract people who are meant to be served by another.

    If you craft your marketing with thick makeup, trying to persuade the world that you are someone you are not, you will attract customers who relate with you as that someone you are not. And they will expect of you, the promises of that someone you are not.

    And they will not be served.

    And you will not be seen.

    Let your marketing be a full expression of who you truly are, and not a mask to divert people’s powerful gaze.

    Let them see you.

    Let those who turn away, turn away.

    Let those who come closer, come closer.

    Ewan Townhead

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