Deep Prosperity

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT

So I’m very reluctantly making a recording now while I’m bicycling, because I think I might want to make a, a second podcast, which is more of a diary of my own process. Uh, More personal, more rough, pretty much an unedited and treated a snapshot of my own process. Going through building the business that we want to build.

Apologies for the obnoxious beeping in the background.

Truck.

It’s kind of a depressing, sad and lonely. Um, pre-Christmas Sunday sort of thinking all about the different things I wish I could do or should do and cool ideas and songs to create. Learn and things. And then I was like, Chris, you can’t stay on this. It was like depression zone. And I know depression zone quite well.

Uh, perhaps more like mild depression, I guess, but certainly know it. And the biggest cure for me is usually. Well, what’s your goal. So I pulled myself out and got on the bike, another good cure and said, I’m going to do some work on the community and start inviting people to our pre beta. And I guess there’s a couple things I wanted to point out here.

One is. I am absolutely having to live 100% the life of the type of person I envisioned being in our community.

Uh, so, um, there’s a million things I want to do. And now the goal, bringing myself back to the goal again and again and again and again, and yeah, there’s revisiting the goal. There is asking yourself whether there’s a shorter path, there’s looking at the big picture. Um, but then there’s just doing it and that’s what I’m on.

And it’s interesting how much of life is just: now, put another brick onto the building because you could do that today. And it’s the building you decided to build. So let’s put some more bricks on it while we have a chance today and we have a little bit of sunshine and so that’s what I’m going to do.

And there’s so much less time than you think there is, but you can put another brick on the building today and then there will be a, another brick. So we’ll see whether I add this diary entry to the main podcast as a kind of different animal or make a new podcast. I don’t know, but here we are.

This week's episode was actually a conversation between me and Kathryn back in October of last year, 2020, when we were still Essential 3; but I think there's a lot of beautiful things in here — about re-nourishing the local, and how important that is. So, it speaks to a lot of things we really believe in, encouraging the things that make small business and local business really special.

And of course, that doesn't have to mean a struggling business. It can mean prosperous, and sustainable, and thriving, and full of satisfaction in many ways at once — which is really our goal, to support creative business people to do in the world.

Hey there. So this recording was done with me in Kathryn back in November of last year (2020). We were still calling ourselves Essential 3 Consulting; we hadn't gone into being Inspired Success yet. But listening back to it, there were a lot of things I enjoyed about it. We talk about what I called the "guru industrial complex", which is a way of talking... if you're not familiar, the way online teachers tend to pump you up, and pump you up, and pump you up, but not always give you what they could. And we cover some other ground. Some really cool ideas about how to make internet marketing, or any marketing more connected, better and how to be more authentic. A theme that came out of it, listening back to it was learning to trust yourself. And it occurred to me: a thing that's core to what I'm trying to help creators do, is learn to trust ourselves more. And when we learn to trust ourselves, I think we also come off as more authentic, more reachable. All of this episode is about how to be more connected and more genuine; and through that, be more truly and genuinely successful.

This is an edited talk I had with Kathryn, my business partner a few weeks ago, as we were just launching the name "Inspired Success", and it reflects on why we like those two words together. I really enjoyed looking back at our reflections on what creativity really is, what we're really about, and the vulnerability it takes to put something out into the world that's meaningful for others, and still maintain your own integrity, about being that person you want to be, and having all those things come together. This is the exciting space that we're working in, and supporting other people to work in. So I'm excited to share this talk with you.

This is an edited talk I had with Kathryn, my business partner a few weeks ago, as we were just launching the name “Inspired Success”, and it reflects on why we like those two words together. I really enjoyed looking back at our reflections on what creativity really is, what we’re really about, and the vulnerability it takes to put something out into the world that’s meaningful for others, and still maintain your own integrity, about being that person you want to be, and having all those things come together. This is the exciting space that we’re working in, and supporting other people to work in. So I’m excited to share this talk with you.

 

Transcript

So, we could discuss the name inspired success. I’ve gotten a lot of positive responses. And I can obsess, trying to find the perfect phrase. So that’s not always helpful, but that’s why I asked other people instead, and see what their response was.

I’m juxtaposing, I realized that’s my whole thing. I juxtapose things, like: spirituality and money; impact and fulfillment; all those things. It’s an ongoing inquiry. Like: “I don’t know what deep prosperity is. I don’t know what inspired success is” —  in other words, we have a lot of ideas about it, but that’s the whole point, is that it’s an inward, an ever-spiraling inquiry. There’s no one right answer.

“Success” on its own puts you in a one-track mind, and inspired success forces you to spiral around those two ideas. Like: what does it mean, if I take my inspiration and infuse my success with that? Or my success is informed with my inspiration?

Kathryn Gorges: What I like about it is it takes a word that’s a business word that means I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. It’s very business-oriented; it’s very down to earth. It’s, you know, understandable. And then another word that’s not a business word at all. It’s a life word, “inspiration”, “inspired”, anything having to do with that. People don’t usually put it into the business world. They put it into the life realm, right? And, you know, rather than saying a “lifestyle business”, or a small business, or you know, something like a “passion-based” business, inspired success means that you’re inspired, and you want to achieve something. You’re inspired to achieve something. I mean, you said, it’s a juxtaposition and it is; but it shouldn’t be, right? And a lot of times, it really isn’t. So it does some work for us in terms of saying these are married concepts, inspiration, and success. They are married.

Chris Burbridge: Right. When I think about the people that instantly loved it, are people that are creatives, who are in the process of doing that.

Oh, you know, I just realized that the word “inspired” comes from “in-spiration”, which is the breathing of life into something, right? Isn’t that what it means? Yeah. Inspiration.

Kathryn Gorges: Yeah. My dictionary definition is saying it’s referring to the Latin, but it’s also saying it’s in Middle English, “divine guidance”.

Chris Burbridge: Or I’m breathing in air. So I think that’s perfect, because that’s the feeling I get is the idea of success, it’s like breathing life into the idea of success. That’s really perfect, because we are interested in the traditional business stuff and we do like that stuff, and it’s really cool. But then part of our context is like: why is it so cold and sterile and devoid of human personality sometimes? So we’re interested in breathing in heart. Yeah, and we do.

"And I think that the great majority of the problems in the world have some roots in the stuckness that people feel. And then trying to get out of the stuckness through things that are sublimating them, rather than satisfying them. And that's why I'm always on and on about trying to find what true wealth means for you. Instead of the proxy of the hundred millionaire fantasy life, that proxies that experience instead of centering it in our creative impulse, of what we want to give too, and be, on this planet."

“And I think that the great majority of the problems in the world have some roots in the stuckness that people feel. And then trying to get out of the stuckness through things that are sublimating them, rather than satisfying them. And that’s why I’m always on and on about trying to find what true wealth means for you. Instead of the proxy of the hundred millionaire fantasy life, that proxies that experience instead of centering it in our creative impulse, of what we want to give too, and be, on this planet.”

Transcript

I was just doing some inner work that I do with a friend on the phone. And it was really good because I was feeling all these places where I was feeling stuck. And I was feeling kind of.. stiff, or unmoving. Or even where I didn’t know I had feelings, that were stuck underneath. And it was sort of a convenient lack of emotionality. It was sort of pleasant to have this mildly frozen state; but it wasn’t moving!

So then I did this work. There’s a lot of different ways to do that work, but the way I do it, I love. And I was really feeling a lot. And when I was feeling a lot, I could feel the energy moving. I could feel it like an ice flow, where the sun beats down and gradually melts the ice and then all the chunks start to move, and then the whole ice flow starts moving down the river. And the creative energy moves when you have that.

And I realized that I don’t have to know exactly where that creative energy is going to take me. I don’t have to have a plan yet. As soon as I let that creative energy flow, it’s going to flow somewhere. And I will wake up into a space where I know where I want it to go, as well.

And, at the end of the work, there’s an exercise where you look at how the world reflects you and you reflect the world. And there’s a phrase that I said: ” The big problem with the world right now is that the energy is not moving.”

And that was the thing I wanted to talk about for a minute. Because I think it’s very, very important. This project that we’re doing is about business, but for me, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about finding pathways, for people to feel free in their lives, to make things that really matter to them. And the way that that liberates our creativity to do things that are more meaningful, and exciting and powerful. And I think that the great majority of the problems in the world have some roots in the stuckness that people feel. And then trying to get out of the stuckness through things that are sublimating them, rather than satisfying them. And that’s why I’m always on and on about trying to find what true wealth means for you, instead of the proxy of the hundred millionaire fantasy life, that proxies that experience instead of centering it in our creative impulse, of what we want to give to, and be, on this planet.

So what I said was the big problem in the world right now is that the energy is not moving fast enough. So I think that’s really a lot of what’s going on. It’s that a lot of us have a great deal of stuck energy, in the form of emotional stuckness, that gets lodged in places in us. And causes us to lash out. And act out of impulsiveness; or acquisitiveness; in unnecessary ways. And this all might sound so terribly mystical. But I find it eminently practical and pragmatic.

When I feel the feelings that are in me, I connect with the creative current that’s alive in me. That. I suppose it is me. And that creative current gives me an internal aliveliness, that is here. Regardless of whether I have a penny in my bank account, or a billion dollars in my bank account or -$5 million in my

“And I think that the great majority of the problems in the world have some roots in the stuckness that people feel. And then trying to get out of the stuckness through things that are sublimating them, rather than satisfying them. And that’s why I’m always on and on about trying to find what true wealth means for you. Instead of the proxy of the hundred millionaire fantasy life, that proxies that experience instead of centering it in our creative impulse, of what we want to give too, and be, on this planet.”

Transcript

I was just doing some inner work that I do with a friend on the phone. And it was really good because I was feeling all these places where I was feeling stuck. And I was feeling kind of.. stiff, or unmoving. Or even where I didn’t know I had feelings, that were stuck underneath. And it was sort of a convenient lack of emotionality. It was sort of pleasant to have this mildly frozen state; but it wasn’t moving!

So then I did this work. There’s a lot of different ways to do that work, but the way I do it, I love. And I was really feeling a lot. And when I was feeling a lot, I could feel the energy moving. I could feel it like an ice flow, where the sun beats down and gradually melts the ice and then all the chunks start to move, and then the whole ice flow starts moving down the river. And the creative energy moves when you have that.

And I realized that I don’t have to know exactly where that creative energy is going to take me. I don’t have to have a plan yet. As soon as I let that creative energy flow, it’s going to flow somewhere. And I will wake up into a space where I know where I want it to go, as well.

And, at the end of the work, there’s an exercise where you look at how the world reflects you and you reflect the world. And there’s a phrase that I said: ” The big problem with the world right now is that the energy is not moving.”

And that was the thing I wanted to talk about for a minute. Because I think it’s very, very important. This project that we’re doing is about business, but for me, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about finding pathways, for people to feel free in their lives, to make things that really matter to them. And the way that that liberates our creativity to do things that are more meaningful, and exciting and powerful. And I think that the great majority of the problems in the world have some roots in the stuckness that people feel. And then trying to get out of the stuckness through things that are sublimating them, rather than satisfying them. And that’s why I’m always on and on about trying to find what true wealth means for you, instead of the proxy of the hundred millionaire fantasy life, that proxies that experience instead of centering it in our creative impulse, of what we want to give to, and be, on this planet.

So what I said was the big problem in the world right now is that the energy is not moving fast enough. So I think that’s really a lot of what’s going on. It’s that a lot of us have a great deal of stuck energy, in the form of emotional stuckness, that gets lodged in places in us. And causes us to lash out. And act out of impulsiveness; or acquisitiveness; in unnecessary ways. And this all might sound so terribly mystical. But I find it eminently practical and pragmatic.

When I feel the feelings that are in me, I connect with the creative current that’s alive in me. That. I suppose it is me. And that creative current gives me an internal aliveliness, that is here. Regardless of whether I have a penny in my bank account, or a billion dollars in my bank account or -$5 million in my

So this is part of a conversation I had with Kathryn, about a week ago. And at first, I was super critical of all the ways in which it was really — well, not that perfect. That audio is not so great (although I did what I could to make it better). But then, when I listened back to it, I realized it was the kind of thing _I_ would really want to hear, as a creator. And therefore, I realized it might just be the kind of thing you> would want to hear, as a creator.

At the beginning it jumps around a bit. Kathryn begins by talking about the Spotlight Your Brilliance workshops she's been doing on her own brand, and bringing them into our company. And at one point she mentions one of our possible clients, and I edited her name out, to sort of, protect that person's privacy.

But, we are really getting to something here, is what I keep feeling — and I feel that it's very exciting. I share some of my own insights about the ego, and how the ego part of us, really doesn't want to be seen as too special, or ready, or anything. Because we can feel just as vulnerable to be seen then, as anything else, and that can be scary too. So, this was a bit of a revelation to me.

I hope you enjoy it.

I came up with a triangle model this morning, that could help us think about the relation between pay, meaning, and flourishing. And provide a contrast between broken-apart living, and as-a-whole living.

For a transcript, or to leave a comment go to: https://inspiredsucc.es/podcast/contribution-compensation-joy/