My heroes punched through the bag
Your heroes will shape your understanding of success. Do not let them be chosen for you. Actively choose them for yourself.
On a recent Zoom call, I was asked; “Where do Marketing Greats like Seth Godin fit in my ethical framework of marketing and media. Especially when he says things like:
“People are only after status and affiliation”.
That’s antithesis to what we’re told to pursue if we’re perusing a God-centric lifestyle.
So what of writing to sell and selling to write? How do I help companies “doing good” do more good while keeping in mind that growth rests on aligning their advertising (9.9 times out of 10) with a worldly pursuit of status?
What’s our next move if the vocal + visible Talented Merchants are constantly enticing us into a life of accumulating wealth and status and affiliation?
We can’t limit our heroes to the Seth Godins.
And this is no offence to Seth, in fact, I like what he has to say and I listen intently. But he doesn’t seem to hold justice in as high esteem as my other heroes. And, he has only ever taught me how to pursue a worldly success. Which, for someone like me, is lack-lustre at best. It’s actually almost boring. It’s done. It’s tired. I’m tired of it.
If we’re not careful, people who are visible will have us thinking they’re admirable. They’re not. They’ve just got PR.
Worldly success changes too often for me to use it as an anchor.
So I have looked to real anchors.
Those whose success is based on aligning themselves with success in the afterlife. Necessarily, that means that they spent their life aligning themselves with their innate skills and what ONLY they can bring to the table. And that meant that they could really contribute. So they didn’t care for the glory As you can imagine, some of them therefore attained glory and fame in this life. Simply because their talents aligned with being well known and gained them notoriety. But it remained by-the-by.
While some just continued to shine silently to the casual listener.
And they’ll continue to be labelled as “unsung heroes”, so I recommend we all get better at lip reading.
The start of the rebellion would be a re-defining of what we believe greatness is.
I get that we are all enamoured with becoming millionaires and monetising our talents. I’m a freelancer and not exempt in any way. But being in the business of sales makes me certain that we are usually buying or consuming as a quick fix to a deeply internal wound. If we felt whole, consuming would look so different.
Next time we’re collaging the vision board of future material achievements that we KNOW will lose their novelty once we attain them, let’s pause. Let’s ask if our heroes lead us down a dark alley then robbed us blind.
Comparison doesn’t just steal your joy.
It also robs you of your wealth.
So, again, my heroes didn’t care about accumulating wealth. But who we’re told to admire today are those who have “leveraged” their “products or services” to attain “financial freedom”. But more than knowing this, I am certain that there has to be more.
Even people who have lots of wealth will scream at you that there has to be more. So why not listen to that, too?
That’s not to say that my heroes don’t/ didn’t have “wealth”.
Some of them had a wild amount of wealth. But it wasn’t their purpose, it wasn’t what they were aiming for. They were punching right through the dunya. Their material wealth only tells you they had material wealth. It’s a lifeless metric that doesn’t capture joy, meaning, purpose, peace, effort…
(Their wealth was barely even classified as “their” wealth by them.)
Material wealth isn’t a full or interesting enough metric to indicate anything beyond material wealth. Sounds refreshing.
Because it sounds different when you’re punching through the bag.
So, I urge you to actively look for, and be inspired by heroes who display traits that you admire. And I mean sit down and search for them. Read, google, listen out for them.
If the boxing metaphor of punching through the goal isn’t for you. Kick through it. Just aim for more than what you can “see” when you’re aiming.
Here’s a mediation metaphor.
All cultures agree that we should witness our emotions, not get swept up by them. Because they are fleeting (but important) pieces of information. So we cannot let them control us, just inform us about the world around us.
Culture is the emotion of the current time.
Do not let the emotions of the current time choose your heroes for you. Do not let the talented merchant become your North Star of success because we happen to live in a predominantly capitalist world.
Witness it, observe the Capitalism and the Merchant. Then take time to decide if this is the success you crave. Or if you want a different more peaceful life. If you want a life filled with joy and hugs and pursuit of something greater.
Actively rejecting the Talented Merchant as your idol would be a powerful act of rebellion in this era. It is helpful to reframe your aims in anyway that doesn’t prioritise material accumulation, but takes it into consideration. Aligning yourself with something bigger will only ever benefit you.
It doesn’t have to be God.
I would just recommend that it isn’t something as immediate or as fickle as status or imaginary numbers on a screen. Because this will never be satiated.
And you will know, in the quiet.
When nobody is praising you.
Nobody is responding to your stories.
Nobody cares about your product launch.
Or nobody is acknowledging your new shiny purchase.
What happens then?
Once we’re sad that the efforts prescribed by our heroes haven’t resulted in the social indicators we were promised.
How’s that dark alley working out for you?