Your wildness & The raw power of Nature’s systems without human intervention
Part 4 (of 4): The key to unlocking regenerative business…
Here's what we know:
- When nature designs it creates resilient, thriving, self-sustaining forests.
- When humans design they build exploitative factory farms – resilience comes from build/install phase for roots to go down - shiny objects = no roots ever take root
- Nature is a better designer than humans
- The reason business has been hard is because most people been running their business like a factory instead of a regenerative ecosystem
You probably won’t be surprised (thanks to the email I sent out last week) that in 2011 I started developing a bit of a doomsday mentality, after I had my dark night of the soul and realized the world was sprinting forward in the wrong direction…
My reptile brain decided that society was fucked and I needed to take care of myself.
I’d WWOOFed on the Big Island of Hawaii the year before, which seemed to attract similarly traumatized people—people who believed society was fucked, so they at least wanted a little slice of paradise to hide in while everything collapsed.
It’s not a cute look, let me tell you.
(A little side note here is that the most dysfunctional humans I’ve met are those who decided to set up “conscious communities.” Instead of doing inner work and shadow work to deal with the darkness within themselves, they believe there are bad guys out there running the show. So they decide they’ll just live outside society because they think they can do it better.
And YES, there are “bad guys out there running the show.” But to me, truly integrated people know that we’re in this together and need to fix it from within.)
Let’s circle back to the Industrial Revolution to underline this —
The Side Effects of the Industrial Revolution (or Separating from Nature)
The Industrial Revolution seeded a perspective of the world that we take into our businesses and our lives. It impacts the way we interact with other humans, eat food, speak, care for our bodies, and spend our time.
An industrialized society sees everything and everyone as a tool to exploit.
“How do I get the most out of this?”
“How do I get the biggest bang for my buck?”
“How do I best use my time?”
There’s no appreciation for the texture of life. The little moments. The boredom needed for the big idea to come through. How priceless art is, or the joy of finding the perfect wall color. Or the feeling of life when you hold a seed in your bare hands. The smell of the earth after it rains. That cookie that reminds you of your grandma.
Life becomes devoid of meaning. It becomes devoid of life itself, because we objectify everything. Things become things that don’t hold memories or energy or stories or potential.
From the industrial lens, our business is a way to extract money, not liberate society.
Other Side Effects of the Industrial Revolution
Objectification: Everything and everyone is a tool to be used.
Limited resources: There’s no focus on renewal, so we need to grab up what’s available as quickly as possible (definitely before the next guy), or else we could lose out on it.
Exploitation: Everything and everyone is a tool to exploit because money and efficiency are more important than Nature (including humans).
Time is an entity: Before the Industrial Revolution, we based time on the moon and the sun. We woke and slept with the sun rising and setting. With industrialization, we had to make time an entity we could measure so we could be the most efficient little workers.
Standardization: There’s one right way—a right body, a right way of thinking, a right way of doing—because, efficiency!
Ready to make that switch??
What’s worse is it’s like the blind leading the blind… most mentors and “success stories” in the online business space are steeped in this industrial mindset.
(I’ve heard WAY too many horror stories of people being duped or scammed or overpaying for bullshit or stepping into something their nervous system wasn’t ready for it — and let’s be honest! I have some serious horror stories of my own!)
The solutions already exist
In Hawaii, I was introduced to regenerative agriculture, which was the first beacon of hope in the desert of despair that’s the environmental movement. It taught how Nature can heal. That Nature’s systems are more brilliant than we can know, and that when we actually create in alignment with Nature—when we mimic Nature—even the most toxic, dead situation can heal.
The solutions to massive world problems already exist. People just need to work closer to Nature to unveil them.
When we align our lives and businesses with Nature, we thrive.
When we eat in-season, local, unprocessed foods, we’re healthier.
When we rely more on darkness and candlelight after sunset, we sleep better.
When we make meaningful in-person connections, we’re happier.
Through our desire to control Nature and be like gods, we’ve separated ourselves from a powerful force and source of wisdom and guidance.
And the exciting thing is that we can align our entire businesses with Nature.
Just like we can regenerate soil, and reforest and sequester carbon through using Nature’s systems, and just like we can heal and nourish our bodies through eating from and living close to Nature, the other systems that run our lives can be improved upon and strengthened through using the principles of Nature.
When we align our businesses with these principles, we bring in more revenue, attract better clients and employees, stop overworking and burning out, and create a legacy.
But before we can talk systems, we gotta look at life without human intervention.
Your wildness.
Wildness is raw power. It’s the weed that grows in your neighbor’s yard no matter how much weed-control chemical they douse the yard with. It’s the ocean currents. It’s the circle of life. It’s flowers in full bloom in spring.
It’s the most destructive and fertile parts of you.
It’s both sides of that coin.
It’s no surprise to me that, as our society continues to sterilize culture, to standardize and homogenize, to control Nature and control our natures, actual human fertility is declining (1% per year between 1960-2018, which is fucking massive).
Our fertility is our somatic drive to live. And as we kill the planet, and kill other species, and kill our wildness, and objectify other people and things, our own drive to live is declining. Our disrespect for life itself is rippling inward.
Death and rot are indeed natural. But within Nature’s systems, rot and poop are broken down and reincorporated into the larger picture.
On the other side, on the man-made side, humans deal with waste by taking it away to stew and rot and fester. In human systems, we take garbage to the dump, (with a lot of the material ripe for composting or recycling) and just leave it in a mound. We separate it from society or ship it to another country altogether so we don’t have to look at it or deal with it.
We throw things away, when there actually is no “away.”
Civilization wants you to hide or discard your wild self. It honestly doesn’t care what you do with it as long as it doesn’t have to see it.
To have a life and business that are abundant, fulfilling, and impactful, you have to reconnect with your wildness. If you’re reading this here, I have a strong feeling that you already have the conscious desire to do just that.
Here’s your invitation.
Connecting to and having a relationship with your wildness is what will bring about your most fertile thoughts, creativity, and ideas.
When you tap into your wildness, you tap into the pulse of life within you that wants to express itself through you in this lifetime.
Many people stop here (I mean, connecting with your wildness will change your life alone)
BUT
Most creative online business owners I mean don’t want to be dragged around by the pulse of life.
They want some sort of CONTAINMENT to pulse within.
This is where a regenerative business ecosystem comes in.
An ecosystem has many parts, layers, elements, cycles, species in collaboration. It’s not just you, and it’s not just on you.
You can produce that first acorn with your pulse of wild, fertile life, and plant it in the ground and nurture it. But the ecosystem you can build up around it is what will free you. It’s the antidote to the factory-inspired business model. You are no longer a cog in the machine — you are a wild being within a lush ecosystem.
We’ll be looking at all the pieces of a regenerative business ecosystem next week, but if you want to get a head start (I can hear your heartbeat racing as you’re aroused by this whole concept 😜 — check out my free Sacred Growth video series to dive deep into this right now.
Summary:
- The Industrial mindset has serious side effects & is the underlying paradigm of the online business world.
- Society has very good reason to squash your creative impulse – you’re easy to exploit that way…
- Tapping into your wildness is the key to having the most impactful, fertile, abundant regenerative business.
In your corner,
Sam
P.S.
I have something very exciting dropping on May 20th.
If you want to be the first to know, and on the list of a secret discount… click here to get on the list.
