I was introduced to the concept of a “conscious crusade” last year by my marketing mentor Amber McLean and I love, love, love it.
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.
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 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?
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.
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:
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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.
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:
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.
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.
My Current Work Projects – Big picture.
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.
“Having ongoing training is essential for our team and our business. It’s important to look after the people that look after others. Kylie has the experience, professionalism and knowledge to engage with our team and help them understand about human behaviour and why people do what they do. In the wellness and health industry it’s a different sales and service delivery and it’s imperative to keep on top of these understandings to perform at our best to help others. We couldn’t recommend Kylie high enough.”
“I have worked with Kylie over many years. She has helped me as a Business Mindset Coach, as a motivational speaker for my gym clients at both Vision Personal Training & now at Flow Athletic. I bring her in to train my Personal Training teams in mindset, communication and how to coach our clients better and excel in our own personal mastery as fitness leaders. At my recent Fitness Business event, my gym owner colleagues were blown away by her talk, saying she is the best speaker they have ever seen. After every event we always get rave reviews about her talks and training. I highly recommend Kylie’s work as a coach & speaker.”
“I finished the Spiritual Awakening Course yesterday and I found it truly amazing. An incredible next step after our coach training. I feel so much more enlightened and “opened-up”. It has really opened my eyes to the power of the universe and the energy flowing in each of us. I loved it – thank you.
I am feeling so lucky at the moment. So many things are just falling into my lap. I visualise it and set my intention to manifest it and it comes. Things such as getting more clients, needing help to put my business online, not knowing how to get known in my local community etc. Courses / insights / clients have just fallen into my lap at the right time.”
Of course I am still learning and growing, but the course has really helped. Thank you”
“Before I met Kylie I was feeling very lost working full time in law in Sydney CBD. I’ve known my whole life that I was here to help people, but I just didn’t know exactly how. So when I found Kylie, it just was really fitting that it was going to help me ground my magic. I started the coach training and had an amazing time. It was beautiful to go through the process of having a mentor that had that spiritual element and that holistic element, as well as the very grounded science-based knowledge as well. So that really helped me to conjure that for myself.
I started my business before I even finished the course. I just started putting myself out there. And now I’ve gotten it to a point where I’ve got really grounded solid message, and two years later am running a multi-6 figure coaching business as a leading pioneer in my niche, helping clients all over the world.”
“Before I signed up with Kylie I had a busy PT business… I was exhausted and on the brink of burnout and no matter how hard I tried, I had reached a ceiling in my income that I just couldn’t break through. After completing my NLP Coaching certification, I found my true voice and the energy of my business has been completely transformed. I’ve created an online program, up-levelled my entire business and totally smashed my previous income goals. I make decisions more confidently and I can help my clients create change in their life even faster. On a personal level, NLP gave me the inner strength to leave a toxic situation and rebuild myself which lead to me discovering the love of my life! Today I am living the life that I’ve always wanted – but just hadn’t been able to put into words. I have never been this happy or this powerful. If you want to manifest the life of your dreams I would not hesitate to reach out for help from Kylie.”
Before attaining my NLP Coach certification, I was an online trainer who was getting excellent results for “some” of my clients. I used a mixture of experience, intuition and an exhausting “helicopter-parent” style of accountability coaching. It was like the 20% of the clients who weren’t getting good results took up 80% of my effort, and it was draining my passion for my business. Completing my Certification with Kylie has been the best decision of my career. The very next month after finishing I created a new program and made $30,000 in new sales. I now have a repeatable system to coach my clients and I can get them both immediate AND long-lasting change, sometimes in less than 40 minutes. In the past 12 months, I have doubled my freedom and fulfilment in my business I have created raving clients who snap up my offers.”
I signed up with Kylie because I knew that to have a bigger effect as a PT I needed to improve my understanding of how the mind works. Through NLP Coach training I now have great coaching techniques that break through all sorts of negative behaviour patterns. I’ve noticed big improvements in all areas of my life including my own personal finances and my client retention. This has allowed me new freedom to work on scaling my business and helping even more people with less one on one time from myself. The coach training has given me the ability to fully unlock the power of your mindset and those that don’t have this skill are only tapping into a small amount of their potential.
This morning I had a kick-ass coaching session with Kylie Ryan. We’ve been working together for a couple of months, and she’s the perfect person to help me integrate the rapid transformations I go through regularly. I’d been getting this vision of my fully mature creative and entrepreneurial self. His discipline, commitment, and command of wealth was 10x what mine is now, but it wasn’t really about money for him. Our coaching sessions usually roll with me saying, “Kylie, I want to be, do, and have EVERYTHING” and Kylie helping me find the archetypes and parts that aren’t integrated and bringing them together. MAGICK HAPPENS EVERY TIME.
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