#MondayInsight:

This message is about breaking the rules. Like a warped mirror, everything in your world has some degree of distortion, because it’s largely based on interpretation.

The only place there’s NOT interpretation is in your own experience.

Yes, when you share your experience we get into interpretation, but the experience of your experience is simply that – your experience.

For example, as this message comes out, it’s a little muggy in Los Angeles and I’m a little schvitzy (meaning, kinda sticky-sweaty). That’s my experience right now. That’s not distorted. It’s not true or false. You can’t argue with it. It’s simply my experience.

Your experience is a very physical thing. It’s not a mental construct, but a physical experience which you have before any interpretation is added. The only thing that is absolutely count-on-able is your experience – not your beliefs, not your ideas, not your interpretation of things, or the story you have about things, but the actual experience you are having at any given moment.

That’s why when you start to move into intuitive leadership, you start to ask questions like, “What does your gut say? How does that feel in your body? What’s your sense about that?” Those are all experiential sensation questions that get into your body – your physical apparatus of experience.

This is something you knew as a child, which you have to re-learn as you step into your authority as an adult. Because the only place you have true authority is right here, in this physical apparatus of your experience. Your experience is your truth. It’s what you know to be true. It allows you to stand in your own authority and stand in your own truth about your experience.

So what does this have to do with risk taking?

It’s that your experience may guide you into a direction that your mind or other people’s minds might not understand or agree with. Your experience may contradict your own mind’s beliefs about something – a direction you should go… a thing you should do… a strategy you should adopt. And it may contradict that of others, including the experts.

But what’s more reliable? Your body’s knowing, or your mind’s interpretation?

Notice that we don’t say your body’s beliefs, because your body doesn’t have beliefs – your mind does. Your body simply has its experience.

How often in your life, in your business, and with your mission and your creative expression in this world are you attending to your body’s knowing, even if it contradicts what your mind thinks, and what other people say?

That’s the version of risk taking and rule-breaking we’re talking about. It’s breaking your rules and other people’s rules, not out of rebellion (which is a reaction to beliefs) but because your experience leads you in a different direction.

To be that kind of rule breaker, you must be in tune with your own authority, attune to your own experience, accessing it, trust in its direction, and follow it!

Your spouse, family, friends, colleagues and the experts will say things like, “Don’t do this – it will be detrimental,” or “No one will buy that,” or “You’ll ruin your reputation.” And you can say, “I hear you, I understand what you’re saying, you have lots of experience to bring to the table, thank you for sharing it with me. But I’ve got to follow my own authority, and I’m willing to bear whatever consequences come with it.”

If you have mentors, guides, coaches, or experts that you’ve hired that don’t listen to you, don’t back you up and don’t allow your knowing to inform the direction you go in, then let them go and move on. That’s not the right place for you – they’re teaching you to contradict your own authority.

As you adopt this way of living, what you will find is that you will break rules, break norms, break standards, and usher in new ways of working and living that people haven’t seen before.

Like you, your audience is as done with the status quo as you are, and they’re looking for someone who braves and paves a new path.

Your audience is saying, “I’m bored, I’m done. I’ve already tried and burned through the solutions of the status quo and they haven’t worked. They’ve left me wanting – wanting for more, wanting for different, wanting for better, wanting for something more deep and transformational, wanting for something more honest and life giving, wanting for something that serves the all, not just the few, wanting for something that honors the earth, not just the pocketbook. I’m wanting for something more, something different, something better, something whole.”

So we’ll go back to a question we asked earlier: when you are following a strategy – even an expert strategy – the questions we have for you are, “What is the strategy built for? What is that strategy based upon? What beliefs is it based upon? What outcome achievement is it based upon? What are the psychological drivers of the creator of the strategy?” The deeper into having transformation and transformative work being a part of your offer, the less traditional marketing tactics will work for you.

So this is the call: be a rule breaker based on your own authority, your own knowing, your deep listening, and your deep trust in yourself, your guidance, and in this universe. That’s what allows others to trust you, to hear you, to be activated by you, and to join you in the direction you are called to lead them.

We’re calling you to break the rules. Enjoy following your own authority. Be amazed by what opens up by what surprises even the experts! And if you truly want to be surprised, do this consistently. Don’t undo following your own authority by starting down a direction, then second guessing, then applying somebody else’s strategies without first following your own authority.

We’re inviting you to play this game. Follow your own authority through and through. Notice where your mischief is, where your joy is, where your curiosity is, and most of all, where your knowing is. Follow your body. Listen to your body. It’s the only place where there isn’t interpretation, but instead, true knowing.