Rebel With A Cause, pt II (The Monsters)

December 29th, 2011 § 3 comments § permalink

This is part two of Rebel With A Cause- a reflective series based off my own experiences this year, designed for anyone creating work outside of the status quo. You’ll find part one (The Trajectory) here. Thanks for reading!

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When you’re a rebel with a cause, there are always monsters between where you are + what you’re aiming for. It’s learning to tell the difference between the ones you need to attack, trick, befriend, put to sleep, or (in rare cases) run away from altogether that takes time…

Personally, I’m not a big fan of list posts – the 1st monster below being a good reason in itself for my dislike! But I can think of a few good reasons to keep reading:

1) Below are 11 monsters I’ve fought this year, all in the name of my own cause. See which ones you can commiserate with/laugh over/add to your own battle wisdom accumulated while changemaking it up.
2) It’s a handy little pocket guide for ambitious cats who’ve haven’t yet spent much time battling monsters of the digital or solo-venturing variety.
3) Or a glossy glossary for out-of-the-box-factory thinking, to be used in a pinch. Aren’t I nice? spacer

Speaking of pinches, a few grains of salt don’t hurt either. Everyone’s experience is different! Would love to hear about your own monsters in the comments, by the way.

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#1: Big picture thinker’s demon
Some things you get instinctively, but take much, much longer to understand and experience firsthand. Case in point: every single one of my philosophies, which give me d’oh moments on a daily basis. Don’t knock it even if you’ve already (mentally) tried it…

#2: Dr. Function vs. Mr. Form
“It’s not what you say, but how you say it” might make sense in theory, but is damn hard in practice because Dr. Function tend to seduce those of us with our eyes on a specific goal… even when Mr. Form is RIGHT IN FRONT OF US.

Is your work brilliant because of what you do, or how you do it? Do your best stories share what you experienced, or how you experienced it? Is your philosophy what you think, or – you got it – how you specifically, personally think it?

(For me, it seems to come down to location – have you seen the site’s new tagline?)

#3: Two-headed learning shmearning curve

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Isn’t it hard, you say, to exponentially grow yourself and exponentially grow an online business at the same time? Yes, yes it is… especially because in my experience, you have no choice but to do both simultaneously.

#4: The Webtimeaholic 
Internet Time? What’s that? So you know how all the gurus are like, blog-based businesses miraculously work for you around the clock? Well, that goes two ways. You don’t have to worry about 24/7 maintenance. BUT there’s no ‘Closed’ sign you hang up at the end of the day, either. If you’re a passionate workaholic like me, that means an almost-invitation to burn the midnight oil (or the 2/3/4am oil… oh, is that sunrise?)

#5: Monster tango of appearances
Branding + marketing + heck, the digital screen are MADE for our immediate perceptual triggers. In other words, presentation. If you were a sly little rebel like me growing up and knew how to please people to get your own way, this gremlin sometimes makes a tricky dance partner for authenticity.

#6: Cause Autobiography?
Otherwise known as doing for yourself what you do oh-so-well for other people. Coachs + consultants, I’m looking at you. I like the analogy of reading a book with your nose pressed too-close to the pages or Catherine Caine’s jar metaphor. Case in point: The under-two-hour process I’ve perfected for my clients took yours truly, oh, a few years to figure out for her own core philosophy. Yes, years.

#7: Digi-Philosopher Blues
The Internet can be very slick, and by slick I mean slick-inducing, in that it makes you inclined to craft blog posts and publicize ideas as shallow as the screen they come on. Not that the inclination is unfounded – see #5. I mean, it’s amazing that you’re reading this instead of watching meowcats on Youtube!

A good question to ask yourself- Does the inspiration someone gets from the post outweigh the amount of attention you’ve grabbed? Or the other way around?

#8: The Uncertainty Monster
Learning to make friends with it. Yup.

#9: The Love Monster

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Applied to a person, thing, or even yourself – see #3. Only a monster when you make it out to be scary. Come to think of it, that can possibly be applied to any of these spacer

#10: Mental Monster Traffic Jam
I once declared ‘There’s no such thing as thinking too much, only thinking ineffectively’ and have been quoting myself shamelessly since. But ‘effectiveness’ isn’t always something you can control, unfortunately, and for those of us prone to spiraling around in abysses of self-criticism and/or analysis… it can be, well, a headache. To combat this, I’ve tried: meditation, yoga, running, shiva nata, new playlists, violin jam sessions, different diets… I must be the only one who goes out of her way to eat differently in order to mess with her own mind.

But truly, physical activities can do wonders for rebels who tend to wear their intellect blades thin in battle.

#11: The Escape Artist
Ruuuuun away! I don’t know about you, but when the going gets hard and no one’s really watching, anyway, part of my brain start crafting really clever and creative routes to the nearest yoga studio, nap zone, or a sunny Grecian isle. Sometimes this is a sign that you really do need to take a break. Other times it means you should find ways to work smarter so that one day you can, in fact, extend your pilgrimage to Greece.

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Phew. It’s been an interesting year of filled with interesting struggles, but looking back, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Like I said in part I, it helps to have other rebellious kindred spirits with you on the battlefield!

Your turn, brave one! Which monsters have you faced for your cause this year + lived to tell the tale?

Next up: Rebel With A Cause, pt III (The Cause Itself) 

Rebel With A Cause, pt I (The Trajectory)

December 22nd, 2011 § 6 comments § permalink

Welcome to part one of Rebel With A Cause- a reflective series based off my own experiences this year, designed for anyone creating work outside of the status quo. Enjoy!

You must become so free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” -Camus

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I can’t remember a time when I didn’t dream intently of a better world.

It fueled my rebellious, ambitious streak growing up. I was by far the anomaly in my circle. Most of my college-bound peers were content getting good grades, pleasing their parents, and having fun with their friends. While I participated in some of these things like a good Asian girl, for some reason I always wanted more.

More passion. More freedom. More truth.

It wasn’t until I came online that I realized there were others – a ridiculously inspiring amount of others – driven by similar values. For the first time in my life I discovered a community of kindred spirits, and I wanted nothing more than to engage & empower you guys with as much awareness as possible.

How it manifested: A constant struggle to empower myself along the way.

Back in February, I listened to my gut and took the biggest leap of my life. I left behind the prestigious design institute that had been my dream choice in high school, a great RA job and research position, some of the most wonderful friends a person could ask for, and career plans I’d had for years for scaling the fashion ladder in NY…

… and moved to a tiny island off the Washington coast. By myself.

In the throes of exciting new beginnings, it didn’t strike me as that big of a deal. There, I learned to cook. I befriended my first-ever landlady, her cat, and the locals in the town’s tea shop. And for up to 16 hours a day, I sat in front of my Macbook working on my website, writing my book, scheming, daydreaming, and trying my hand at a different kind of consulting than I’d ever done before.

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Some days were wonderful. I’d never been to the lush Northwest before, and I’d jauntily walk the mile to town, untangling the latest philosophical snarl in my head while breathing in the sweet, clean air. When the ideas untangled themselves beautifully and the sun escaped its cloudy confines, I felt amazed to be alive.

Other days, the picture wasn’t so pretty. I doubted myself a lot. I overworked myself constantly and burned out. I also found that working for myself and in this undefined digital territory was a constant battle- Do I focus on my emerging philosophies, or expand my business? Do I market my ideas, or develop them? Do I try to woo people with extra-special branding, or trust 100% that my passion speaks for me?

Looking back, I realize that it’s not always an either/or situation (how about both? Or neither!) But at the time – which is always when it gets dramatic – my saboteurs and gremlins* often ran the show. I’ll write about these more extensively in Part II, The Monsters.

*Thanks, Sally and Tina for the wise life coach terms spacer

As I sit here and type this before an enormous window (my hometown’s library got renovated while I was away), I glance out at the naked forest. There’s a path snaking through the gray trunks and fallen chestnut leaves that reminds me of the one I used to run and have revelations on back in Portland (where I planted myself post-island.) I was never much of a runner, but I used to motivate myself through miles 3, 4, even 5 by focusing on the part of the path that disappeared just beyond my sight. If I can somehow get around the bend, I thought, I’ll make it.

That disappearing part of the path- the one I couldn’t see- is the aspect of the revolution I never anticipated. You have to not only dare to go for it, but SUSTAIN that going with as much self love and understanding as you can muster.

So. How do you back up your revolution?

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This post is for those of you dreaming big dreams and working with a vision… what do the bolded parts of this sentence look like for you?

Most of us are self-aware enough to know that change doesn’t happen overnight- in fact, it’s revealing itself little by little. But it can be hard to slow down and listen to what’s happening– even when we do it for everyone else.

The steps you’ve taken matter. The lessons you’ve learned matter. The way you think most definitely matters. If only we’d cherish it enough to pay attention!

spacer One of the most common things I hear from my clients is- “Oh, that’s the thing I’ve been doing all along, only I didn’t realize it.” 

It’s like spending months planning for England, then realizing you’ve been trying to get to Australia all along.

Or thinking the issue is clarity when it’s really about empathy.

Or fighting the good fight to empower others when the biggest struggle is really to empower your own thinking first.

Directional awareness is key.

Sure, you’ll explore to your heart’s content along the way, but there’s an internal tug when you’ve gone too far off course. Life has its surprises, but too often ‘go with the flow’ means ‘go with Society’s flow, down the river of the status quo.’ And who wants that?

Why not own your own flow?

Our experiences matter because they help us grow in the direction of our own truth. As my brilliant friend Shawnacy put it the other day: ‘It’s not a chronicle. It’s a trajectory.”

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I’d love to hear your own rebel stories in the comments! What’s been your trajectory so far? Has it been as unruly as mine? What realizations did you leap – or stumble – into this year?

Next up: Rebel With A Cause, pt II (The Monsters) Aka 11 scary-but-revelatory lessons in ’11

Listening irreverently to the questions

December 13th, 2011 § 3 comments § permalink

One of my birthday gifts this past weekend was a copy of J. Krishnamurti’s Think On These Things, which is just about as meta as you can get & of course I opened with delight. But I quickly became interested in not only his profound teachings re: life, inner revolution, education, desire… but in the way that he responded to those who questioned him. Someone would ask him something absurdly general and guru-oriented, like ‘What is Intelligence?’ and rather than rushing to present his perspective, Krishnamurti would say:

“Listen to the question first, because it is very important to understand the question and not just wait for an answer…”

What does this have to do with our own creative approaches?

I think that to create revolutionary experiences, we have to be willing to be a bit irreverent. Not only with the social status quo, but also with the creative quo- the way we’re making things for the world.

The more I blog, the more I cherish the very acts of writing and being read. We often think of blog posts as a means to an ends – a business tool, a piece of a bigger philosophy, a demonstration of our written prowess, whatever. But even more beautiful, I think, is the brief engagement of neurons and personal sensitivity – a moment of your mind linking with mine as I wrote these paragraphs.

What if the fact that you’re reading this is more important than anything specific you get from the post?

It begs the question: To what ends do we create? Is it possible to hold a bigger vision, but also acknowledge that it consists of both content (what we want to say) + form (how we’re saying it- and how it’s heard?)

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Check out a related story, “Poetry as Change,” that I wrote on the recently-launched site Cowbird. It’s a new digital storytelling platform designed for anyone to share his/her own slice of the human experience, and I find it revolutionary in both content + form…

These musings are current sparks coming out of my Innerdisciplinary Residency. (I’m on Day 7 of 21!)

A December experiment, for those desperately seeking creative gestation…

November 30th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

2011 is almost over (you’ve heard, right?) & After months of soaking up life transitions, revelations, and digital frequencies, I feel my inner mental landscape, normally content with rolling forwards + onwards, halt like a petulant child all of a sudden demanding attention:

Only two days left of November. The months have been drawn out like long lines of taffy, sweet and sticky but dropping off abruptly when they reach their limit. I am stretched out on the rack of their sacred sweetness. My awareness these days is lurid, savoring but brutal. Where did this year go, beheaded from the previous body of work through which I had passively denoted as my life? And now, as I run through the self-imposed distance along rivers, under majestic trees, between emails and someone else’s code, am I more fully me or more lost? — if I must know where I am at all times but I do not know presently, is it the ‘must; or the ‘do not’ that I must resolve?

-Leap

What I crave now (you too?) –

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To fly attention inwards, the way geese go south.

To make / unmake / edit with ease.  

To organize the old + uncap the new.

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Because without creative gestation, there is fatigue. The kind of fatigue that comes from thinking around the clock and working in service of your own art but also social change, from juggling online / off, from winding your attention so tight around emails, tweets, bright digital missives until it threatens to snap, and you have to install a LCD-dimming app to save your eyes working late at night.

The straw that broke the camel’s back? I’ve been looking up artist residencies.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the concept of a residency is pure exaggerated bliss: Free housing in a little exotic locale somewhere overlooking the sea. Complimentary studio space and handsome writer’s desks. Most extravagantly – a stretch of total uninterrupted time to create a specific body of work, research, & daydream to one’s heart’s content…

I had all kinds of application forms open when all of a sudden I asked myself:

Wait, why do I need outside permission to focus again?

A ‘duh’ moment. But this desire for permission is worth examining, I think. The status quo basically = permission, after all. Tell someone you’re going to university or working for a Fortune 500, or hide behind pretty labels (i.e. you’re a writer) instead of the real truth (i.e. you’re starting a movement) and heads will nod, because we are taught not to question such schemas.

Rarely will you be asked ‘so what’s that work about?’ or ‘what breakthroughs, what new obsessions are you discovering?’ In other words, through the usual ways of working we are given implicit permission to create mediocrity.

But what if we want to create brilliance?

And that’s why we must push ourselves to ask the harder question. Not “what do THEY want?”, but “what do WE have to say?” We must do the work of looking inside ourselves to find what is beautiful and tremendous within us and summon the courage to put this out. As James Joyce said, “in the particular lies the universal.” [Credit]

My experience is this sort of self-delving takes real time and effort. I’ll go as far as to say it takes the equivalent of which we invest in traditional education programs or think tanks. But when no one else is giving you permission to figure it out, you must give it to yourself.

Want something? Create it. As always. Of course. (Damn my inner rebel.)

Then I had an idea (at least it’s a productive rebel…)

What if I Architected the space in which to grow my art?

What if this December, I held 21 days of personal, sacred, creative space, coinciding with a celebration of my 21st birthday… & called it… the DIY Innerdisciplinary Residency?

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Here’s my fantasy:

*Harvesting the year’s crazy notes/scribbles, stacked up high like untouched leaf piles
*Making some of the raw concepts running through my head behave
*Giving Change Creation an electric facelift, and possibly heart surgery
*Developing shiny things for Rethinking Style
*Reading/researching intensively across the board, from linguistics to evolutionary psychology
*Re-reading books to understand the architecture of what once moved me
*Plotting world domination with my fav visionaries
*Writing, writing, writing
*Ruthless meta-tation
*Getting my hands dirty and making art
*Spending quality time with the people I love + practicing radical self love, because without love my work would be nothing…

“No doubt there are partial answers… [but] by approaching the problem in this fractal, cross-disciplinary way, new insights become visible. Watching the ideas spark on these different scales reveals patterns that single-scale observations easily miss or undervalue.” 

-Steven Johnson

You’re more than invited to my party, of course spacer A few ways to bless my 21st year + get cozy with introspective goodness pre-2012:

* Get provocative blog updates via the RSS feed

* Sign up for sassy, genre-bending LEAPs in your inbox, to gain access to some of the best, rawest work I’m doing these days.

* Fuel up your own vision for 2012 by booking a special December gift consult for yourself (only a few spots left)!

* You can even directly influence my research with a book of your choice from my Amazon wishlist, you wonderful cat you.

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For here’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned this year (so far):

Radical world-vision takes radical self / psyche / habit structuring. Not to mention giving your inner revolutionary the time of day. And studio space. And really good food.

I absolutely welcome you to try your own version! What would your ideal Innerdisciplinary Residency look like? 

Reclaim your big bad vision in 2012 & give yourself the gift of your own truth.

November 21st, 2011 § 4 comments § permalink

Last week, I wrote about what I saw as the real need behind the 99% movement- to reclaim our individual power as visionaries.

But what does that really take?

Let’s use an architectural metaphor, which sprung up in the comments:

You know what’s easy? Copying a blueprint. Placing the bricks where someone instructs you to. Blaming them when it doesn’t work.

You know what’s scary? Designing your own building from the bottom up with your own creative mind.

Have you been invested in creating your own foundation- truly? Or have you been trying to work with someone else’s system, strategies, guidelines- even for entrepreneurship?

If I asked you to write a thesis, a manifesto right now on why your work matters, and on the ONE IDEA that you work from in every single thing you do and long for… would you be able to?

We idolize people like Steve Jobs because he had a vision. But I ask you-

Who are any of us NOT to have one?

There’s a certain level of clarity that we must demand of ourselves now, as creators, if we want to see the change we long for in the world.

In fact, it’s the thing that’s been distinguishing successful businesses from the struggling ones all along.

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can you get me to scrawl epiphanies all over *your* company's napkin?

For example, I realized this I was interrupted while working on the Occupy post (I wish I could fly more, because I seem to get really inspired on airplanes), by Southwest airlines handing out snacks.

Or rather, plopped down a ridiculously huge box of yum – real grocery-aisle snacks, not just peanuts and pretzels – on our tray tables.

“Take as much as you want!” said the cheerful attendant.

I took one look at the box and burst out laughing. Only a few weeks ago my family was telling me horror stories of how, when they came to visit me in Portland, they flew some generic-US-airline-that-shall-not-be-named that literally didn’t even give out peanuts. (You know something’s wrong when your company starts making aphorisms come true…)

In Made to Stick, Southwest is actually used an example of an amazingly core-focused brand. “We are THE budget airline,” is their internal motto, apparently, and every decision comes from that place. They’ve been focused on their core vision all along, and never splurged for the frills and extra services other airlines offered when business was thriving.

The hilarious flip side is that now everyone else is struggling with the recession, while Southwest is still finding creative, core-driven ways to offer all the goodness they want. You can even read an article about this practice here.

What’s easy? Getting distracted by all kinds of short-term strategies for establishing your brand and wooing customers.

What’s scary? Designing a vision from the get-go that is so damn core-focused that it thrives, regardless of pesky external factors.

It starts, of course, with that big daring foundation called your own core clarity- what you want and what you’re going to do about it. I wrote about this extensively on Experiencing Revolution, but it’s never been more relevant than right now.

When you build from a shaky, un-focused starting place, you’re subjecting your creative progress to outside circumstances you can’t control.

You get distracted trying all kinds of short-term strategies that end up leading your brilliance astray in the long run.

The nice thing is when everyone’s doing well, you’ll probably do well too.

But when competition gets too tight or something unforeseen happens (like the systems stop working), your only option is to cut back more and more until you can’t even afford to give out metaphorical peanuts. Or you have to stage protests in the park.

But know what you stand on, and you’ll be able to keep building upwards, making what you truly want and empowering people as you go.

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Give yourself a visionary gift this December.

December’s a special month for me, because in addition to the winter holidays, I’ll also be turning 21!

So what’s a gift that keeps on giving?

I’m offering EpiphanyMaking sessions at more than half off the regular price, this month only.

Yes, you heard that right.

What you’ll get before the New Year: 2 hours of 1:1, lightning clarity drilling right down to your core purpose. As affordable as I can make it, because I know this is sorely needed in the world.

In just the past few months, I’ve helped dozens of entrepreneurs and creatives discover the heart of their work in the world, and what they need to amplify behind-the-scenes. Here’s what they’ve said:

“What Tessa did for me leaves me speechlessly, breathlessly excited. How do I describe the value? Quite possibly her insight just saved me decades of misdirection. She synthesized several epiphanies and dug down deep into the one core mission that threads all my work together. Once I was clear on this core mission, every little snag in my business cleared up, no joke. I began quickly doing all those things I had been stalling on…”

-Amy R. Martin

“Tessa was able to connect the dots, bring the pieces together in a way that would have taken me months, if not years, to figure out on my own. It felt like working with a long-time business partner, rather than a one-time consultancy session.”

-Lisa Robbin Young

“Tessa has been my secret, behind-the-scenes weapon as I’ve undergone my personal and business transformations – the releaser of the stuckness and the conqueror of the unclear. 

I’ve never met anyone who could so concretely define what your purpose looks like.”

-Dusti Arab

What could be a better gift for yourself than your own vision? It might sound crazy (and it is), but I’m giving you the chance to leap into an unprecedented amount of clarity + conversation for only $70.

Not only that, but you’ll also get a free copy of my upcoming book on creating a vision that matters before anyone else (as part of my own vision expansion in ’12!)

My questions for you:

What do you want to catalyze in your lifetime?

What’s one thing you wish people could just understand?

What are you terrifically inspired by?

What’s been the biggest area of confusion for you, vision-wise, that you want to bust through by the New Year?

Go ahead and email me (sans brackets) at t [@] teezeng [.] com with your answers, as well as your name + any relevant links!

& Don’t wait up…

My time will be limited due to exciting b-day celebration plans (you’re all invited, by the way- I’ll be announcing them in the next post spacer ), thus I’ll be only working with the first 10 people who are ready to rock it!

If you’ve been trying to clarify your life’s vision- don’t struggle with it any longer. Our old structures are crumbling, and we’re in dire need of new architecture that we’ve never seen- will you step up to the challenge? If so, let’s get down & dirty with the truth.

 

 

Give me vision, or give me death! (Why the 99% won’t get what they want in the long run.)

November 17th, 2011 § 11 comments § permalink

Somewhere in the stratosphere above Columbus, Ohio (or so the pilot tells us), I am thinking about the Occupy movement with a fierce ache in my heart.

I found myself on tv yesterday, having a last breakfast in PDX with networking maven Dusti Arab, who was being interviewed for a special interest story on Occupy Portland. If you manage to catch the local segment, you’ll see an eloquent redhead speaking about missing class due to possible conflict on her campus… and me daintily eating grapes with a fork. Ha!

(It figures that I’d finally pay attention to #OccupyPortland on the day I leave the fair city, right?)

But what they should have filmed instead is the conversation we had afterwards, talking bluntly about our frustration re: the whole shebang. It seems strange at first glance- both of us fit the Rebel archetype. So why don’t we love a good grassroots rebellion?

Well, frankly, Occupy-anything smacks of unsustainable hopelessness- give us a place to stand in the existing status quo, please? Where’s the vision? The responsibility for our own lives and livelihoods? Dusti herself worked her way, as a single, struggling mom, to a thriving business through sheer creative tenacity and no one else’s permission, thank you.

And I can’t help thinking o

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