A Moment of Clarity
Tonight at Men’s Group I had one of those moments of absolute clarity. I drove home from Men’s Group in absolute joy feeling immense gratitude for the clarity and abundance that has enriched my life through the last several years.
The Unexpected
Last night I spent a couple of hours at a workshop run by my friend William Whitecloud on tapping into your genius and being one of the 1,000 writers of the 1,000,000 books published every year that succeed in terms of reaching an expansive audience.
William is about more than writing, and his life’s work has been about the magic that comes from your creative spark, your ‘genius’. But as a successful author one of his current passions is helping what he learned about applying the creative spark to writing to become a successful author.
One among a great many ‘Aha Moments’ last night was an element of William’s experience and wisdom, that a critical factor for a successful book is surprise. They create the unexpected. They go somewhere other books haven’t.
William asked the audience of largely first time writers about our book projects. We were all passionate people, all with subjects that are important in the world, like my passion for bringing greater consciousness to business. The trouble is we live in a crowded world where time is precious and the threshold we need to cross as authors is : “will this book change me, move me, take me to a vastly different place that justifies two days of my life to read it?” None of the responses any of us gave would have motivated vast numbers of readers to pick our books off the shelf.
So I had an awesome night with William and among a long list of shifts in my thinking about writing was this point about ‘the unexpected’, and bringing my creative genius that is the unique being I am to creating that.
Extrapolating the Unexpected from Writing into Life
Tonight at Men’s Group as I was sharing and sparked by some of the sharing of the other men attending tonight, I extended the ‘Aha Moment’ about writing the unexpected beyond writing, to life. I am not talking about doing the unexpected in a trite way. A lesson I seek to live is to live from a place of service. So what if now I brought my awareness to coming from a place of service and filling my day by turning up in unexpected ways for those around me. What if I did that for my beautiful wife Pj. What if I did that in every client connection.
I head into tomorrow with a great gift and a gift I plan to live for the rest of my days. But what I’d like to share some more about is how I came to be in a position to receive that gift from a powerful passionate person like William Whitecloud.
Investing in connecting with Passionate Powerful People
I come back to my drive home tonight. On that drive, I felt so many of the pieces of my life puzzle fall into place.
I saw and felt powerfully tonight how one of my mantras for the last couple of years has transformed my life. I have made it a practice to connect with and invest in working with ‘Powerful Passionate People’.
That may seem like a simple thing. It actually is, but knowing it is different from living it. The magic has happened by living it.
Lets go back a step, and share my journey to this knowing, and what is now a way of life for me.
First I built it, but they didn’t come
When I created my private company Authegrity, I thought my passion and my clarity around my life my purpose would be enough, and to some degree I did an ‘If I build it, they will come’. Turns out my shingle wasn’t enough to make them come for quite a while.
Starting with people who know, love and respect me
My outer muse and now wife Pj came along when I was 12 months into my journey of making my passion and life purpose into my business and profession. Then a further 6 months into our journey together in January 2013, Pj shared with me a ‘cracker’ of a piece of wisdom to go spend time with the people who know and love me and to explore ways of creating value with them. I did that, and because those friends knew and trusted me, they introduced me to their friends.
That actually transformed my life. Through that experience I had a 1 + 1 + 1 = 9 experience.
The 1 + 1 + 1 = 9 experience
Late in January 2013, I was introduced by one of my best friends Justyn Wood to Steve Hartley, one of my two co-founders in Evolve Salons.
How that came to pass is noteworthy.
I met Justyn Wood because I attended a Men’s Gathering in June 2011 and made a decision during that gathering to step into the circle at the Closing Ceremony to be of service to that community on a 12 month journey to create the 2012 Gathering as a member of its Organising Committee. I made an investment, on this occasion of my spare time, in the company of another nine powerful passionate men. On that journey Justyn (and several other men whom I have profound stories about for another day) became a close friend and came to experience my power, my passion, and my experience and contribution.
On the strength of that experience with me Justyn introduced me to Steve Hartley and from there came the most significant abundance event in my life to date, all from an investment of some time volunteering.
Justyn connected me with Steve Hartley, and Steve in turn to our other co-founder Iain Horne.
I have been present from early in the journeys of start-up enterprises three times prior to Evolve. This though was my first time present at ground zero, prior to incorporation, where a group of complimentary powerful passionate people through alchemy created something far bigger than ourselves, and which just as I was leaving the company in September 2014 was becoming the largest group of owned hair salons in Australia.
In contrast to my solo journey establishing Authegrity, my journey at Evolve showed me the value of investing in bringing together my passion with the passion of others.
My 1 + Steve’s 1 + Iain’s 1, didn’t add to three. No, it was exponential, it was alchemy. I know that no two of us could have done it without the third. We created the force we needed to build something profound and as the three we could feel we had what it would take, and together we made a whole in a way that enabled us to get our bird airborne. The result of our 1 + 1 + 1 was definately 9 for me, and thats even after me making a decision to exit much earlier than I had planned where 1+1+1+a longer time might have equalled 99.
(footnote: history turned out otherwise for that company’s long term, and there is a long story in that for another day.)
My Web of Powerful Passionate People
I come back again to the joy that was flowing through me on my way home. Tonight I felt and saw clearly the web of powerful passionate people I have attracted into my life. To some degree I have attracted these people all of my life here and there.
The difference now is I have done two things, I have stepped into living a life in my passion and becoming a powerful passionate person myself, and I have created a practice every day of making telephone calls to arrange a coffee, or a lunch, or a weekend get together with other powerful passionate people.
My connection with William Whitecloud last night was through a free workshop. William shares his knowledge freely with any who feel called to learn from a powerful passionate person. He knows some will go deeper and feel called to make an investment with him in becoming one of the one in one thousand authors who achieve significant reach. But even if I didn’t plan to go further with William, by spending even just a couple of hours in the company of that powerful passionate man who is a master at accessing his genius, I got not only a ‘Writing Aha’, but a ‘Life Aha’.
That might sound like a good day, but William was only one of two powerful passionate people who gave me big shifts yesterday, the other being a really generous Writing Publicist Katie McMurray who gave freely of her wisdom to me for an hour yesterday, and who also gave me some big aha moments that will transform the way I approach my writing.
I will more than likely outlay money or share value with many of the powerful passionate people I spend time with. Five years ago I could not have imagined having the ability to do so. Today it is both my deep knowing and my experience and results that when I come from a place of abundance, when I am of service, when I reach out, when I invest in moments in time with other passionate powerful people, my life is transformed.
But its important to remember some of the powerful passionate people I have drawn into my life came through my giving freely of my time. When I go into a meeting, a connection, or an opportunity truly coming from a place of abundance and of sharing there can be many forms of payment, and there can be many kinds of value created through connection.
Today I have a huge network of powerful passionate people. I am connected to many in the real world, who as I have shared have created financial abundance in my life again. But I am also passionate about connecting with likeminded powerful passionate people via social media. I am connected to 1,756 on Facebook who were recently instrumental in driving a blog I wrote to go viral with now 27,352 blog views or better than one in every one thousand Australians. My investment in my social network is my time on blogs like this, and sharing life experience and hard won wisdom.
Tonight’s little gift of the Unexpected
So as of tonight, when I go into the world to meet powerful passionate people, I do so with the intention of bringing to them the unexpected.
Seeing as this blog is a part of communicating with powerful passionate people, I am going to end by giving you a little of the unexpected.
You are a powerful passionate person. Every single one of us is a powerful passionate person. We see that in others when we have learned that we are one, and when we have learned that our heart is the path through which we touch the soul of the other powerful passionate people, that’s where the power and the passion live.
I see you for the soul you truly are, I really do, and when we truly come together consciously with that awareness that’s when alchemy happens. The question in my mind when I sit with you will be “how can I leave you with something unexpected?”.
Ura P Auckland
Business Coach &
Social Entrepreneur
Managing Director
Authegrity Pty Ltd
Ura on Stewardship 
Indeed we are Ura and belief in ourselves is so very important. Lovely piece of writing 🙂