What are you doing with your life? Discovering Your Conscious Crusade

I have a theory. My theory is that fatness, unhappiness & disease is an indirect result of not having an authentic mission of service that you are actively pursuing in your life.

I was introduced to the concept of a “conscious crusade” last year by my marketing mentor Amber McLean and I love, love, love it.

What is a conscious crusade?

My definition of a conscious crusade is a mission or quest that you consciously undertake that is congruent with your life’s purpose. It is a mission that is larger than yourself, to create positive effects within the world, to improve or benefit the conditions for a group of living beings. Your conscious crusade is ecological at every level, good for you, good for your family, good for your environment, good for society, good for the world. It is a win: win: win. You benefit and everyone benefits. It is something you are authentically passionate about and that brings out the best in you. Your conscious crusade utilizes your natural gifts and talents and allows you to work in flow.

Your conscious crusade does not have to be on a global scale, it could be to mother your children and raise them in love, to be a great teacher, writer or artist. To create delicious meals for a light-filled cafe, or it could be to raise funds for schools in Africa, to help the plight of abused animals, or to plant a tree, and another, and another. To spread the word of ecological consciousness, or to bring kindness back into fashion.

When you have a conscious crusade that you are passionate about and inspires you, you have an intrinsic drive to get up and get stuff done, to make progress and move forward that mission to help and serve. You feel good about yourself because you are contributing in the world, which presupposes that you have something of worth to offer and therefore are worthy. (Which you are, of course!) You easily build deep connections and relationships with people who share the same passions, and you are only focused on yourself inasmuch as creating the energy and vitality to get on with your bigger conscious crusade.

Existential suffering. What’s my purpose?

I believe that too many people are suffering existentially from a lack of this larger mission. There was recently an article in the SMH about nonsense jobs by anthropology professor David Graeber.  Millions of people are working day to day in jobs that they feel are purposeless in the grander scheme and serve no other function in their lives than paying the bills and keeping the economy wheels turning.

“Huge swathes of people in the Western world spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed.”

Nonsense jobs according to Graeber are the professional, clerical, paper-pushing roles, the middle management, administration and telemarketing; he calls ‘bullshit jobs’. “It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.” Of course that’s his opinion, and people can find meaning and growth in working at any level doing anything at all. I think that the time has come for everyone who feels called to do so, find an expression of themselves inside their work that is deeply meaningful and leaves a contribution to the world.

We are hardwired for connection and helping, for growth and development. We have a brain that loves to learn, grow and create. If you think back to tribal villages and communities, everyone had to pull their weight and actively produce or create for the community to survive. There were many different ways to serve the community, and all were productive.

When do you feel satisfied?

When do you feel most satisfied at the end of a day? My bet is when you have been productive. When you have DONE something tangible; either created or improved something, or practiced and improved at some skill you are trying to master.

I believe there is too much paper-pushing, too much skimming the surface of life, too much focus on celebrity & image, way too much email and social media keeping us busy, busy, busy, doing, doing without much deep thought, and very little mastery. There are SO many distractions in our modern age that in order to create the time to practice, and think deeply, you have to consciously switch other things off. Switch off the mindless busy pursuits and face the deep discomfort of those existential questions: What am I DOING with my life?

Focus.  You get what you focus on.

When you are focused on your larger mission, you are naturally in a state of drive and inspiration, you are focused on giving. Your RAS or Reticular Activation System in your brain helps you to notice more of those things that you focus on. If you focus on lack, fatness, disease, discord and emptiness even as you are trying to get away from it, all you see and create are more of those conditions. When you shift your focus towards giving and contribution you notice more possibilities and create connections and opportunities for growth and development, energy, vitality, aliveness and fulfillment.

3 questions dig deep.

Brendan Burchard, an inspiring leader in the field of modern personal development posits in his book Life’s Golden Ticket that when we die we will ask ourselves 3 questions: “Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?” These are simple and profound questions we can ask ourselves each and every day, to keep our focus on the priorities that we fill our days with. Of course everybody needs to do the dishes, shop for food and go to the toilet, these kind of basic survival needs are important, but we’re also filling our precious moments of life with mindless stuff, and it’s making us depressed, sick and fat.

Self Actualisation psychology tells us that humans are most happy when they are growing, creating, and contributing; when we are actualising something deeply meaningful to us. In order to create a grounded base for our self-actualisation, our lower order needs must be adequately satisfied and we must prioritise TIME for thinking & creating.

These lower order needs are:

1. Physiological: breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep.
2. Safety & Security: health, employment, family & social stability.
3. Love & Belonging: friendship, family, intimacy, connectedness.
4. Self-Esteem; confidence, achievement, respect, needs to be a unique individual.

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Check your self actualisation needs are being met.

• Did I take care of my physiological needs today? Fresh air, water, sleep?
• Do I feel safe and secure in my position in life? Am I furthering my home base of security? Saving, exercising, eating well, looking after my home & current source of income?
• Did I love today? Am I spending quality moments with those people who matter most to me?
• Am I acknowledging my daily achievements, great and small?
• Do I calmly stand up for myself, respect my own and others’ boundaries and say no when I need to?
• Do I accept and allow myself to feel all of my emotions? Even the uncomfortable ones?
• Do I give myself time and space to daydream, breathe and think?
• Do I acknowledge my innate creativity and worth as a human being?
• Do I accept my weaknesses and strengths and give my best at all that I do?

You can move forward on all of these needs simultaneously, lower and higher, by spending your time doing something meaningful, and making meaningfulness out of everything that you do.

Face the discomfort.

I believe your conscious crusade is on the other side of that nagging, gnawing inner discomfort and emptiness. That emptiness that you might try to squash down with food and the constant checking of social media. Embrace and go through the pain, face the fact that you may be wasting mindless hours of your life on unproductive pursuits. It’s only through facing the pain that we find the momentum to change. I challenge you to think deeply about these questions:

• What am I passionate about?
• What do I love to do?
• What do I love to talk about?
• What do I love learning?
• Where do my gifts and talents lie?
• What am I doing when I’m exhilarated and in the zone?
• How can I help my family, my community, my world in a way that fulfils me?
• What service could I deliver?
• What could I master and teach or share with others?
• What would I LOVE to dedicate my life to?
• What is most meaningful to me?
• How could I act on that meaningfulness?

I believe that when you ask yourself the big questions, something shifts within. You don’t need to know all the answers now, though I bet there’s something inside your heart that is clamouring to get out if you only listen. You can begin with a vague outcome and let it crystallise along the journey. Just get started. Give yourself the time for the introspection required to discover what you really want to do. The time will pass anyway, don’t waste it spending hours inside your “feeds” filling your mind with comparison, judgement and other people’s thoughts. Even filling your mind with positive thoughts, inspirational quotes and other people’s creations is stopping you from giving yourself the time to act on your own inspiration.

When you are actively following your passionate conscious crusade, whatever that might be; you naturally decide to look after yourself. Eating is only lead by genuine hunger, not boredom or escapism. Exercise is a joyful experience of physical energy and growth that sustains and energises you. Sleep is a comforting release after a well-spent day.

This is my conscious crusade.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and working on these topics so I’ll share the current incarnations of my conscious crusade with you in the hope it may inspire your own.

My life’s purpose is to awaken women to their inner glory and magnificence. I do this by radiantly demonstrating what’s possible as a mother, creative, entrepreneur, artist, teacher, writer, speaker, and inspirational leader. I do this by living authentically, and having graceful compassion for myself along my own journey of evolution and growth.

My conscious crusade is to awaken women who have been struggling with their weight, to liberate them from the weight loss matrix of diets, deprivation, calorie obsession, self-loathing, and comparison. To teach them of a gentler, more holistic approach to transforming their bodies and to allow them to find and listen to their own bodies inner wisdom, so that they too find the courage and confidence to follow their own dreams and desires.

My crusade is a reflection of my life values, which have evolved over time to these top 5.

1. RADIANT LOVE – Family, love, self-care, kindness, compassion, service
2. WILD ABUNDANCE – time, energy, wealth, $$, Zest, joy, Freedom.
3. POWERFUL FOCUS – discipline, productivity, clarity, efficiency, getting shit done.
4. PASSIONATE CREATION – contribution, self-expression, teaching,  music, writing, art.
5. GRACEFUL EVOLUTION – Learning, growth, expansion, clarity, forgiveness,

 My Current Work Projects – Big picture.

• Refine my Goddess Body Quest Online Program make it as effective & transformational as possible. (Even more than it already is!) Serve the amazing ladies working through the program now to the highest level.
• Test marketing campaigns to reach and serve 1000 women within the next 2 years, who need my help to awaken their inner goddess mindset and create their ultimate body.
• Refine ideas for my debut book. Write.
• Refine ideas for artist album of songs that ignite the soul fire. Write, play, practice and record.

To the critics.

Some people might say, “Well it’s alright for you to say all this. You work for yourself, you can do what you want, you can spend time thinking of these things and work your own hours. You get to choose what you do. I have to X, Y, Z so I can’t do this, it’s impossible”. To those critics and disbelievers, I would say that anyone can do this. I spent many years working for others, while I dreamed of creating the life I now am blessed to live. I slowly worked towards it day by day. I spent thousands of dollars and countless unpaid hours in pursuit of mastery. My life today was an act of conscious creation, it had nothing to do with luck or talent. Now even more than ever everybody has the potential to create a life on their own terms that serves them, serves their family and serves the world. Allow yourself the possibility of doing it too. With love, Kylie.