#10 Be a rebel

Living your REAL life is an act of pure, delicious, unadulterated rebellion.

Why? Because you are not a follower. You are not here to just pay your taxes, and watch tv, and go to work everyday. You are here to make a valuable and vital contribution to the world, and to really do that you HAVE to buck the system, you have to question, you have to go your own way.

And by “the system” I don’t just mean the government, or society, or your parents, or your peers. I mean EVERYTHING you are involved with, including your own consciousness.

Rebellion gets a bad rap because it causes the status quo all kinds of trouble. It creates instability, it exposes problems, and it makes a stand for individuality. When you’re trying to get stuff done, it’s easier to not have to address these pesky things. Let’s face it, it’s easier to herd sheep if they just do what you tell them. So the status quo will always try to shut rebellion down.

But rebellion brings with it a vital surge of creativity and human expression that we are LESSOR without.

Why be a rebel? 

Reason 1:

Today’s rebels are tomorrow’s frontrunners. My mum was a total weirdo when 40 years ago she called my brother and me after trees, grew an organic garden and did yoga everyday. People thought she was crazy, but really she was just ahead of her time. Just about every global trend we experience now was once on the fringes – totally unacceptable to the majority. If you want to lead the charge, you have to rebel.

Reason 2:

Questioning is what makes you a free thinker, rather than a herd animal. And you won’t ever be able to really use someone else’s wisdom unless you question it. If you accept it and run with it like a sheep, you’ll always be a follower, and what you produce will at best be a poor imitation of them. To find your own voice, to shine your own light, to LIVE your real life, you’ve got to be better than that. Be inspired by others, but don’t let their ideas govern you. This is the most insidious and dangerous form of slavery there is. If you want to be free, you have to rebel.

Reason 3:

Your real self, your real voice – it’s unique. It’s not like anyone else’s. If you don’t rebel enough to find your own edges, for yourself, you won’t find yourself. And not finding yourself leaves you in a pale imitation of life. If you want to be real, you have to rebel.

Reason 4:

What was once your salvation will become your prison if you stay still. I’m serious. That therapy, that modality, that person who changed your life will be the trap that is holding you back before too long. It’s just like your parents – in the beginning they kept you safe and well fed and taught you about life (well, we hope so…), but there comes a time where it’s right to let them go, and if you don’t, you will stagnate. It’s the same with everything we learn, everything that causes growth. I started in a modality very young because it totally blew my mind open, and admittedly changed my life, but then I stayed there way too long because I thought because it transformed me once then it was the answer to everything. Then the very thing that had saved my life was preventing me from actually having my life. I had to leave, and break out of the chains of that doctrine, before ANY of the results that really mattered to me came into my life. To save your life, you must rebel.

Reason 5:

There’s a status quo inside your own consciousness that needs to be questioned also. What you think you are capable of. Where you perceive your limits. What kind of work you think you should do, whether you can have what you want or not. None of this is static or pre-ordained UNLESS we make it so. One of the things I teach my clients is that you can have anything that you really want – it’s easy actually – but you first have to beat your way out of the quagmire of limitation in your mind. To evolve, you have to rebel.

Rebellion brings life. It brings energy. It brings innovation.

Whatever you are in, it has to be shaken up. YOU have to be shaken up.

People may not whole-heartedly support your rebellion. This is not a valid excuse to avoid it. You should not tone yourself down to make others feel okay.

A participant in my MASTERCLASS recently decided enough was enough of keeping herself silent and she started speaking her truth. It started with a voice of her own into her daily journal. That spilled over into telling the truth at work. She began speaking out about a toxic workplace and inappropriate behavior. A trickle became a flood. She tells me she just found once she started she couldn’t stop. Partly, for sure, because she didn’t want to.

Pretty soon it was too much for her employer and they decided to part ways. Now she was free of a prison she had never thought she could leave. Days after that she was able to devote her new time to her long-held dream of working as a healer. She told me recently she has had bookings every single day since she left her job. She tells me the future may not be certain, but it is full of promise, and for the first time in a long time, she is filled with passion for what she does.

So yes, the “system” may not applaud you for being a rebel. They may try to quash you, both overtly and covertly.

What happened when, at 17, I had the audacity to bare my breasts on the lawn of my private girl’s school at lunchtime?

I was quietly and firmly asked to leave the school.

What happened when I questioned some of my old guru’s teachings and business practices?

He defamed me all over town.

When you rebel, the status quo will often be threatened and lash out. But so what? It’s worth it. Like my client, you will find your voice. You will find your life. You will find a source of inspiration that no-one and nothing can take away.

So, above all else, question.

Above all else, be an individual.

And if this means you have to rebel against someone or something, then do it with gusto!

So that’s the end. But for those who like stories, here’s a tale about how I recognized the power and the importance of rebellion:

Florence

Rusty and I and Rowan like to go out to camp with this group of crazy alternative people by a beautiful river.

This particular instance, it was New Years, it was hot, and over 100 of us had been there for a week, sharing communal food, cooking on an open fire, walking around naked…

Alternative people have this habit of thinking they are immune to the status quo. But groupthink is everywhere.

So here we have a comfortable community – relationships are established, delineations are made between okay sexual behavior and not okay, some people are single, some are married, and we know where we stand. We think we are open-minded and permissive.

In walks a woman I will call Florence because we dubbed her “Florence Nightingale”, not because she is kind.

She is young, and everything physically about her is perfect. Like the embodiment of Aphrodite, her body screams sex and before long she’s working her way through the men of the camp. The first one is okay, nobody minds that – he’s a lout anyway. But when she moves easily onto another and another (breaking some hearts along the way), the women begin to whisper.

Now she is a threat, and the voices that speak out against her are full of spite.

I join them for a bit, because I’m threatened too, although I’m not sure why, because I also think she’s a child. I’m starting to get angry and I want to call her out, I’m telling myself its my duty as a communal woman to tell a youngster “how it is here” (funny that – I’m almost 40 now – the beginnings of being an elder). I fantasize about putting her firmly back in her place, like I know I can.

Then I hear that she waits for me to walk away from the fire one night and then brazenly propositions my husband, suggesting he must be bored with the sex with me by now.

Now I’m furious, and ready to call her out publicly, and I’m churning inside, waiting for my moment.

And then, on New Years Eve, the stage lights burn out, and:

This image of her will stay with me forever: She stands at the top of a high ladder, on the big stage (which you can see from almost every part of the camp), and reaches up high above her head to change a light bulb. Her white nightdress is lit up and rendered completely see-through, she is stark naked underneath, and 5 men are at the bottom of the ladder, “helping” her…

(How many vixen does it take to change a light bulb?

Only one. But she will have 100 male eyes glued to her.)

It’s one of the funniest, most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I was moved by her near-nakedness – it excited me. I saw the goddess in her and I wanted to worship it.

At the same time the whole picture was so ridiculous – this young, unaware child using sexuality to tempt and entrap, but without, I could see, either the courage or the ability to actually receive the male attention she was begging for. And all the wonderful men of our camp rendered helpless and hungry in the face of her siren call.

Suddenly she is ridiculous and sublime at the same time and I am delighted by her. Yes, there are elements of her performance that are infuriating, childish, and selfish. Yet she is purely herself. She is not bowing to social convention, or taming her impulses to keep others happy. She is embodying sex in a way that no other woman there dared to.

Instead of trying to shut her down, now I am emboldened by her, and I am grateful for her contribution. I see how it is truly a gift to the whole community.

Not the only reason, but worth noting that my sex life with Rusty was totally rampant for a full month after that moment.

Just one of the many gifts rebellion can bring…