Becoming a Pro-Sumer for a More Inspired and Joyful Life
A big issue in our world today is we are in a consumer-centric society.
Don’t get me wrong, I love consumption.
Consumption is a part of life.
If we didn’t consume we would wither and die.
We need to eat food and drink water for survival.
So do other animals.
Plants even need to consume to survive - they consume sunlight and water and nutrients from the soil.
And beyond basic needs, we as humans consume to keep our social networks healthy.
I’m sharing all about how you can become a pro-sumer on the podcast this week. Listen below!
Commerce and trade are key in forming human bonds with each other and between larger communities.
But there’s no question that we’ve gotten a liiiiiiiittle out of balance with our consumption.
We see it in more than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese.
We see it in the rise of fast fashion.
We see it in Some reports indicating we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago & then the average American throwing away 65 pounds of clothing per year
( Source: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/clutter-stats/ )
Consuming is necessary. It’s a healthy thing to do on a physical, social, and even spiritual level.
We’re just out of balance.
So let’s talk about a solution.
Becoming a Pro-Sumer.
The Pro-sumer is someone who produces more than they consume.
I was consuming a lot of information at the time, without really doing anything with it. Lots of reading - books, blogs, whatever.
Without Producing anything.
I was miserable & felt so lost & now I can look back and really see it’s connection to taking in without creating. Without producing.
In this beautiful in flow and out flow of life.
We’ve all had that friend that is so enlivened by life. They create, they act, they do.
Overconsumption is the disease of our modern world.
It’s Stuck energy
Like a blockage in the river
Have you ever seen this?
I grew up in Michigan - the metro Detroit area- with a pond and a creek in my backyard.
Every so often branches would build up in a bend in the creek and block the water in the river and low and behold the water in that part of the stream becomes nasty.
Weird bacteria starts breeding, all sorts of random stuff gets stuck in it. It gets cloudy and murky and green. And it smells horrible.
Why is this?
It’s not like someone came by and added foul smelly poop water to that part of the stream.
It’s the same water as is flowing in the rest of the stream.
It’s just blocked.
And the lack of motion. The lack of fresh energy becomes rancid. Foul. Gross.
We need to both inhale and exhale.
We need consistent fresh energy moving through us.
When I was 19 I did a year long ashtanga yoga apprenticeship.
Apart of the study was a reading list.
I tried to figure out the book I’m referring to was when prepping for this podcast, but I couldn’t. So I’m just sharing a memory.
In a well known book written by one of the main dudes that brought yoga to the west...
He wrote about the importance of pranayama. The importance of the breath.
Working with the breath is the more advanced form of yoga. Where Asana / body movement is the first step, the initiation into working with the breath.
This teacher spoke on, in an oh so concise guru way, how breath is the most important nourishment there is, and the most important health practice there is.
It’s the first way we take in the world. From the moment we’re born
We sit on our couches & consume too much food without presence, we buy a bunch of stuff off of amazon
We keep riding the shoppers high
Retail therapy is called therapy for a reason. It brings us pleasure, however fleeting, on a molecular level with pleasure chemicals being released in your brain with every purchase, every act of consumption.
Or we’re exhausted after a long day of work
We’re producing but meaningless shit - not the true inspiration birthed from our souls
Unnecessary busy work in our business because we haven’t distilled our business and our systems down to the core genius
There is an unquestionable difference between doing and creating.
You can spend 8 hours DOING work. That work can be exhilarating and fulfilling, or pure drudgery.
Where creating, producing something from your soul, producing something that weaves together everything you’ve consumed... that’s not just doing.
I have lived in Maui since 2013 & in the Hawaiian language white people are called ha’oles.
Ha’ole
Without breath
How Hawaiians say hello is sharing a breath together forehead to forehead touching. Sharing a breath, sharing HA.
AloHA.
The white men that came to colonize greeted by... hand shake. Without breath.
What a great representation of colonization
In a colonizer based society - We inhale - we take in - but we don’t exhale - let go, give back, create from our genius.
So the white colonizers, the haoles, came in & took. Without breath.
And we have a diseased people, without breath. A diseased society, without breath. A stuck, foul smelling energy blockage, without breath.
Because the truth is —
We are all creators. We are all creative beings.
We all have genius.
We can create a local economy, and an ethical economy that honors and respects each others gifts and creations and genius. That gives and receives, produces and consumes
There was this story on Instagram I came across a year or so ago about a woman working at a factory in some country our consumer society had laid waste to
She spoke of working in the factory day in and day out to barely get by. She didn’t know of another option to support herself or her family. But she got some level of satisfaction in knowing that at least the stuff her factory was producing was so embedded with the despair & tragedy of all the workers, the people who were essentially endentured servants, that no one would buy these items. They would be hit so intensely with the embedded despair of the items that they would run away from them.
So this woman Gets to the US after some string of events & Goes to some big store & is horrified by all the people buying the thing. No one has noticed. No one feels the embedded despair in the unethically produced STUFF.
Imagine the true power & meaning of buying a cashmere —
If you KNOW the person who grows your arugula
And you know that the woman who made your sweater was paid well & has a pleasant workplace.
And the sheep who grew the wool were treated well on a pasture instead of brutally abused.
As magical people we create meaning
Through ritual, through offering, through prayer, through acknowledging the meaning & connection of everything where others truly miss it
You already know the power of this, even if it’s an unconscious knowing.
You know the significance of consuming things that were made with love. You should also know the significance of YOU producing things out of love and play & being apart of the beautiful inhale & exhale of our upcoming pro-Sumer society.
Some action for you:
What’s your producer to consumer ratio?
How much do you consume compared to how much you produce?
What are the divinely inspired creations that are stuck inside of you that you aren’t actively releasing?
Shout out to Helena Grant hgrantstyle.com who inspired this entire podcast
She interviewed me for her Divine Instruments Summit & we had this full epic un-planned conversation after she stopped recording.
Check the link in the show notes to sign up page, or go to
DIVINE INSTRUMENTS:
Attaining Sovereignty Through Transcendence
May 24th-28th, 2021
On a final note I do want to bring up that Creation begets creation.
When you start a writing practice more tends to flow
Our brains start becoming more efficient and being inspired and making connections
So get going! It gets easier.
Also, ask yourself:
How can you expand being a pro Sumer into other areas of my life?
I’m all for batching, I’m all for specialization. I often tell clients to focus on their sphere of genius and delegate the rest...
But we’re also not machines.
The industrial revolution brought the innovation of the assembly line, where each person in the line did one specialized task & it made assembling a car significantly more efficient. Like ridiculously so.
Specialization and niching echos this.
And just because specializing in our work life can bring us more joy & money, taking it off balance will sap us of joy.
This is where producing and creating and having hobbies and passions outside of our businesses comes in. It nourishes us on a deep deep level.
Especially if you work online from home on a computer.
Becoming a pro-Sumer in your personal life so that you’re using your hands and your body and your senses actually feeds your business.
It gives you more inspiration.
It helps your brain make more connections so that you can develop your most innovative and life changing ideas and concepts.
I see this every time I spend time in the gardens, at my husbands farm. It is so consistent that my brain makes more connections and comes up with new ideas when my hands are in the dirt and I’m surrounded by plants.
And nature is the biggest producer and consumer that there is.
Our ultimate source of inspiration as humans.
So have a great week everyone!
I’ll talk to you next Thursday & if you want to play with me before then, head on over to the Business As A Magical Practice Facebook group.
REFERENCES:
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