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A Message for The Weary

You entered this race to take on something difficult, impossible even; you are the inventor of your destiny.

Creating in the arena of wolves is daunting. Most of us, as creators, academics, innovators, or even solopreneurs and startup founders, do not know the way through the forest when we enter it.

Some are fortunate to have wise allies who have fought these battles before; most of us are not so fortunate.  

There comes a crossroads, or crisis, in the Greek tradition, at which we must decide to break away from our past to move forward unencumbered with the old ways of being and thinking. Our childhood may have been marked with the disappointment of rejection, bullying, and abandonment in small or significant ways. These wounds from long ago are reactivated when we search for encouragement and support from people who have no interest in us as human beings, not to mention as innovators. We seek advice, guidance, and allyship from people unable to give these things because we recognize how they treat us as familiar; given new awareness, we can choose differently.

To provide an example, if you are a died-in-the-wool people pleaser raised to keep a smile on your face and make those around you feel pleasant and unchallenged, it should not come as a surprise that when you seek advice or allyship, you find yourself faced with incredulity and even condescension. Many people believe that those who do not speak in a way they understand are just plain wrong. Going to the well to drink this poisonous water is a mistake, and let me warn against it with the full measure of my ability.

Unfortunately, the baggage of our past is not easily released. We must land in the clarity of a moment of reckoning; at this point, we decide to part ways with an old reality to make way for a new one. Let me assure you that the prospects of a reality of your own making will be just the relief you have been waiting for.