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What must you do or become in order to die complete?

I came across this question recently in David Deida's "Enlightened Sex" program. I don't know about you, but I love enlightenment, and I love sex, so what's not to love about the combination?

Well, turns out it's actually a pretty good program. I recommend it. (And I'll get a small commission if you care to use the link above to buy it from Amazon.)

SO for the masculine partner, he talks about the need to know what you must do or become in order to die complete.

And I think that's a fucking good question.

And an important one, too.

What must you do or become in order to die complete?

It touches on so many aspects of who I am. And I don't have a good answer. And I don't like how that feels.

Now, I try and tell myself that "I know what I need to do next", but it's not quite the same.

And I think the "or become" part is really really important. It's not just about what you must do.

We humans tend to be more "Human Doings" than "Human Beings", and that's a problem. But maybe if you managed to become what you need to become, the doing would take care of itself? I tend to think it would.

He also shares an exercise during the program, which I find really compelling. It goes something like this (and I say "something" because I'm paraphrasing from memory here):

You sit with a couple of friends, and you take turns expressing your purpose, what you must do or become in order to die complete, in one sentence. And the others will rate you on whether you were credible or not.

And the interesting thing to me is that he mentions how many times, you'll rate it just based on the energy that you sense, even before they've said a single word. I can totally relate to that.

A couple weeks ago I gave a presentation at Startup Bootcamp, a TechStars/Y!Combinator clone i Copenhagen. But before my presentation, I was forced to listen to the elevator pitch of each of the 10 participating startups, and give a 1-word feedback.

After number 3, I was busily searching for another way to say "I don't feel a thing" in one word. Preferably one I hadn't used before.

To me, that's what matters. If I don't feel that connection from your heart, it doesn't mean anything to me. I can't relate. To me, your words are just details. I listen for the connection to your soul. I'm like that. (Which is also why I truly hate the safety demonstrations and other announcements on planes.)

Keep in mind that this likely has nothing to do with your chances of success. I'm sure you can become very successful with no heart in it at all, if you pick the right opportunity at the right time and you execute well. That's fine by me. That's not what I really care about. There are lots of things in the world that are successful and great that I have no passion for.

What I care about is seeing people express "their art", as Seth Godin would put it. About seeing people express themselves through entrepreneurship. Seeing people do "personal development through entrepreneurship" (a term I coined informally many years ago).

I think there's a higher-than-average chance of success when a connection to your soul is present in your business, because you're a lot less likely to give up, and you have access to deeper unconscious and perhaps even universal resources, but it might not be favorable to the "multiplier" of how lucrative the opportunity is.

I don't care.

What must you do or become in order to die complete?

Answer that question in a way that I can feel, in a way that activates my tear ducts, and you will have won me over.

I think we all intuitively know how to rank your answer on a scale from 1 to 10 when we hear it.

I think you know yourself where your answer ranks.

But it can be awfully painful to realize that you don't yet have the answer.

Perhaps it helps to realize that (a) 95+% of the population don't have their answer to that question, and (b) unless you recognize that you don't have the answer, you have no chance of finding it. In other words, you have to acknowledge the problem in order to find a solution.

I would think it does.

1 comment

Mark Aufflick
 

Lars you're the perfect advisor for a YCombinator! clone - there would be no lame companies coming out if you could get to them.
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