Nollind Whachell

I created this back during the summer for myself and I wasn’t so sure why at the time. It was simply an inspirational quote that I had come up with, attached to one of the Captain America movie wallpapers. Now I think I get it. To me it represents the external influences that are pressured on us daily and how we need to resist them to defend our sense of self-identity and spirit. And if anything, this is doubly true while we are at work.

Creativity energy can be birthed from a variety of emotions.

Update June 7/12: I’ve been thinking about this some more. More than anything I think we need to resist apathy. It is the silent killer today that is turning us symbolically into zombies without us ever realizing it because of its creeping normalcy. What can we do to fight apathy? Anything that makes us feel alive. This means letting our feelings flow through us and savouring them. It doesn’t matter if we’re happy, sad, or mad. The trick though is obviously to let them flow through you, your heart, without letting them influence and affect your mind in a negative way. This is why in times of sorrow or anger, I try to utilize that emotional energy in a positive way, rather than letting it eat away at me in a negative way. If you look at a lot of amazing creative artists in the world today or in its history, you’ll see that they emulate this same approach. Creativity energy can be birthed from a variety of emotions.

I’ve been thinking about how I naturally want to gravitate to positions where I’m helping to create a positive culture within an organization through training and inspiration. This in turn got me wondering if there are any companies out there who actually are inspirational or create inspirational products themselves. What’s important to realize though is what I define as “inspirational” because it’s often misinterpreted with the other word “innovative”. To me, something that is inspirational gives someone a new perspective on life thus allowing them to both solidify and stabilize it through empowerment. In effect, if it doesn’t make their life better by making them feel more whole and complete then it’s not inspirational to me. For example, there are a lot of great innovative products out there that do amazing things but for the most part they don’t empower you, making you more independent. If anything, they weaken and fracture your life, making you more reliant upon them. Put another way, an inspirational product should empower people with what they already have, like a great tool, rather than empower them via an external dependent source that if cut off leaves them neutered and useless.

…an inspirational product should empower people with what they already have…

Quickly doing a search on the Web for “inspirational companies”, I found a listing of Most Inspiring Companies as indicated by “an online survey of 1,752 consumers”. After looking at the list, I thought to myself “If these are the most inspiring companies in the world right then we as a society are in serious trouble.”  Other than TOM Shoes which I wholeheartedly believe is inspirational, most of these companies are some of the largest and greediest corporate companies in the world. If they do anything that’s good it’s only because it directly helps their profit or brand image. For example, I’ve worked at Starbucks and it was one of the most worst experiences in my life. So much so that it scarred me psychologically and almost irreparably damaged my values and internal cultural compass. That’s because there wasn’t one ounce of authenticity or caring in the experience. They basically treated their employees like they were machines and their training program was nothing but a “sink or swim” approach.

Doing another search for “inspirational products”, again I didn’t find much. At the top of the list was Apple’s products which without a doubt I find highly innovative and enjoyable to use but still I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are inspirational. Yes, without a doubt, devices like the iPad and iPhone are changing the way we live but are they truly empowering us in a way that we feel more whole and independent within our lives? Again from what I’m seeing, these devices are no different from other computers in their ability to distract us and if anything they distract and fracture us even more so because they are so mobile and are with us all the time now. No, if anything, these devices are just stepping stones to something much more powerful that will hopefully give us the ability to see relational and contextual data in a completely new way, thus causing a paradigm shift which alters our world view and in turn provides us with the inspiration to see things in a completely new light.

Until then though, even though I have a strong sense of self-identity, I’m still not fully sure of the path I’m supposed to be taking. In effect, I know my passion but my purpose is still somewhat hazy. I have some rough ideas up my sleeve for creating some inspirational things but it still feels like I’m missing something very important and very obvious. One thing that keeps tugging on me time and again though is the way we work right now in our society. It seems completely flawed and outdated to the point that it is fracturing the very humanity of individuals within it, yet we happily plod along as though everything is completely normal (i.e. profits are up!). I fear if something isn’t done soon, we’ll soon be encountering a tipping point where people with their last ounce of humanity will rise up and revolt against the “machine” of present day work practices. At the same time, in the back of my mind, I feel like I intuitively know a better way of working, yet I haven’t visualized it in such a way that it can easily be interpreted by others yet. In other words, until I can easily articulate my vision, I may as well be speaking a foreign language because people won’t be able to grasp it and thus utilize it. Hilariously enough, in thinking about this, you could say that in looking for inspirational work, I’m actually trying to make work more inspirational, so that people can feel like a whole connected human being at the end of their work day rather than a broken disconnected machine.

I’ve been reviewing the four personality temperaments (or “classes” as I like to call them) to understand how they interact as a cohesive team or group and it’s quite intriguing. To understand them more easily, I imagined them as the four separate corps of an imaginary army.

Artisans are the tactical corps. These are the front line soldiers who are “concerned with the conduct of an engagement” (i.e. a battle within a war).

Rationalists are the strategic corps. These are the high command soldiers who are “concerned with how different engagements are linked” together (i.e. the overall war).

Guardians are the logistical corps. These are the support soldiers who ensure the front line troops have the resources and security they need.

Idealists are the diplomatic corps. These are the cultural soldiers who are responsible for the training, counseling and morale of the entire army. In effect, they are the spirit corps or heart of the army.

As a Healer under the Idealist “diplomatic” corps of this army, I find it interesting how it compares quite closely to my past experiences. For example, when I played Counter-Strike, I was one of the leaders of our clan but not in the regular sense. Instead of being the figurehead leader, I was the leader behind the scenes who served to maintain the integrity of the unit. So I focused on the growth and development of people, ensuring they got the right training in the game, and more importantly I ensured a positive collaborative environment that fostered a high sense of moral and appreciation for everyone, no matter their status with the clan. In other words, I was like the chief cultural officer of the clan (if you visualized it as a corporate business).

And this is even more interesting because this is exactly how I acted when I was a Senior Web Developer at a firm in the past as well. In effect, I was a hub for people, assisting them in a variety of ways, primarily in a personal growth and development process (i.e. mentoring, training, guiding, etc) but also with regards to operational efficiency (i.e making the whole better and more stable). Most important of all, I was a strong “advocate” for our staff, ensuring they got the appreciation and recognition they deserved. For example, whenever we’d go out for lunch, I’d try to cover the bill if I could and if it was someone’s birthday, I’d always try to run out and get them a birthday cake at lunch time as well. Again looking back, I felt like I was naturally responsible for the spirit, heart, or culture of the company as a whole, ensuring that everyone was feeling valued and everything was progressing in a positive direction.

Within the World of Warcraft, my character that I played was a Protection Paladin whose primary role was as a “tank”. Within life, the character that I naturally “play” is a Healer Idealist whose primary role is as an “advocate”. But what does this really mean? Well let me try to break it down into parts, almost as though you were reading a “Player’s Manual” for the “Game of Life”.

Idealist Class

Think of my Idealist temperament as a “class” which is always forward thinking on the possibilities of what could be, thus always wanting to help improve the things around them. To be able to fully understand what needs to be improved though, requires a huge amount of knowledge and understanding. To achieve such things, Idealists utilize their highly evolved intuitions to become aware and understand the complex interactions of the systems around them, no matter if it’s the human body, an organization of many people, or even the software that’s utilized within the organization.

Healer Spec

As a specific variant of an Idealist, a Healer specializes in the ability to “heal” the things around them. And no this doesn’t mean a Healer can somehow cast magical spells to heal people. What it does mean though is that Healers have the uncanny ability to fix or improve things to the point that it almost seems “magically” in nature to others. For example, my family (particularly my mother) says I have an uncanny ability to “heal” them with my hands utilizing massage techniques on their head, hands, and feet. Doing tech support in the past, I’ve had people amazed at my ability to figure out the most bizarre problems and return both software and hardware to its optimal working state. And even as a team lead, I’ve had people amazed at my ability to assist them with process or workflow problems that seem to effortlessly disappear after assisting them.

Advocate Role

Last but not least, my primary role is as an advocate which means I will voraciously defend the causes I strongly believe in. This is one aspect of the Idealist class that can seem quite strange to people, as an Idealist can quickly go from being very laid back and easy going to almost bearish in the skip of a heartbeat, if they feel their causes are being attacked in any way, shape, or form.

For those used to playing massively multiplayer online games, you know that when you create your character, you often have to choose a class and then a further specialization to determine your role and play style within the game. For example, within the World of Warcraft, I had a character who was a paladin class that specialized in protection. Thus his role as a Protection Paladin was as a “tank” at the front lines, often taking the brunt of the enemy attacks for his party. What a lot of people don’t realize though is that just like these games you can actually determine your “class” and “specialization” within life itself using a personality profile system such as the ones created by Isabel Briggs Myers and David Keirsey (and often easily determined via a personality profile service). For example, during World War II, Isabel and her mother created what is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment so as to help women find suitable jobs that matched their personalities.

What’s important to realize in understanding this though is that your “role” or personality type is not a job type by any means. For example, you don’t take a personality test with an outcome of being told “Your optimal role in life is a WEB DESIGNER!” Instead think of your role as actions that you naturally gravitate towards so as to truly express your authentic self within life, thus making you feel truly alive and meaningful. It’s important to realize this because when you first glance at your optimal job types that match your role, they may seem completely different and without any similarities on the surface. Once you fully understand your role in life though, you’ll see that the jobs recommended for you are actually very similar below the surface because the actions that are performed within them are very similar in nature with a common pattern or theme to them. For example, some of the recommended career paths for my personality type are as a writer, counselor, teacher, psychologist, psychiatrist, musician, or clergy. Again, on the surface these careers couldn’t seem farther apart, yet with understanding they are very very similar in nature,  particularly because of what they achieve as an outcome for the individual working within that career.

I’ve been off the grid for a while. I needed time to reflect and think about what I’ve been doing with my life and what I’ve been doing with this website as well. In effect, am I still going in the direction I want to be going in? During this downtime, I’ve been anything but inactive. I actually got a full time retail job about 15 minutes walking distance from my house. It doesn’t pay much but it covers my basic bills and my other co-workers are some of the nicest and most caring people I’ve ever worked with in my life. The work itself is pretty intense, leaving you exhausted at the end of the day and wiped out at the end of the week (both physically and mentally). That said, I do love the social interaction with the customers we get, as I have a naturally affinity for helping people out.

Over the past couple of weeks though, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with myself because I just haven’t had any considerable time to research my passion and purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always jotting down notes and thoughts but I really haven’t had that much time to reflect and think about them in detail, primarily because I’ve been so exhausted. That all changed yesterday when I decided to finally read a book that I’ve been wanting to read for quite some time. The book is entitled The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Reading the first few chapters at night, before I went to bed, got me quite interested and in the morning I proceeded to voraciously read the rest of the book. By the time I was done, something noticeable had changed within me.

You see The Alchemist is a fable about a boy who in search of a treasure in a distant land discovers a more important treasure within himself. What might sound strange though is that I was already familiar with the story before I even began reading it. Not because I had heard of the story from someone else but because the story is the same story of my own life. And even more so, the universal truths relayed within the story are many of which I firmly believe in. So if anything, the book for me was a validation and an iconic reminder of what I had been doing my entire life already, particularly the last ten years of it.

Later that evening, after my wife returned from work, I described the impact the book had on me and what it made me realize with my life. Strange but true, I’ve had a vision of creating something since I was in my early twenties, after having read The Matador Trilogy by Steve Perry. Within this vision, I saw myself creating a community of people who collectively are striving to bring about a positive change to the world we live within. Similar to the characters within The Matador Trilogy, this community of people are striving to tear down antiquated beliefs and systems that are beginning to rip apart our society and build new ones which can restore our humanity. At the time of the vision in my early twenties, I just thought it was a childish fantasy but now looking back on the last twenty five years of my life since that vision, I realize I’ve been trying to accomplish this without even knowing it.

For example, during my time building video game communities online, I always built them upon a positive cultural foundation. In effect, I wanted them to be havens apart from the stereotypical negative culture that 80% or more of the community normally proliferated. And amazing enough, with the help of some close friends, we were able to pull this off and create positive and caring environments of learning and knowledge sharing that many of us still fondly remember to this very day. But simply put, even though at the time I was doing it for fun, deep within me my heart was naturally doing it for a specific reason, almost as though it was an experiment or test for something greater to come.

And yet in reviewing this all last night and this morning, one important question remained for me. During a lot of my online community building, where I built communities to share my video game knowledge and experience, I did so because I had first achieved a sense of mastery and awareness of the game. The question that was left unanswered though was what mastery and awareness did I have to share in real life? It obviously didn’t have anything to do with my technical or design skills (i.e. web design, coding, scripting, etc) because there are a ton of people out there who have a greater mastery of those skills than I do. No, whatever my mastery and awareness is, it must come naturally to me. And that’s when I realized my mastery and awareness is self-identity, something which is a prevalent problem with many people today, particularly the youth of the world. And again a perfect example of this mastery is the enjoyment I received in helping people with their website branding and identity. In fact, many people whom I helped often expressed excitement and joy after clarifying their identity and differentiation as a business. And even from my perspective, I enjoyed this identity “discovery” aspect of the work much more so than the actual designing and building of the website.

So now that I know what I’ve naturally been progressing towards my entire life, now comes the challenge of how to get there and manifest this vision of mine into a reality. For now, the natural thing to do is to continue what I started on this website and share my thoughts with others but aimed more specifically at self-discovery because if I can help even just one other person with their own self-discovery and passion then it will all be worth it. In light of this, I’ve changed my site byline from “Life in Design” back to my previous mantra of “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” I’ve done this for two reasons. The first reason being that before you can connect, empower, and inspire others, you must first connect, empower, and inspire yourself. Secondly while we are all striving to “design” a better life for ourselves, we must realize it is more about chipping away the layers to reveal what’s at our heart, rather than reshaping what we naturally already are.

In closing, below is a short snippet from The Alchemist that I think is a great metaphor for the life and journey of self-discovery that I have experienced thus so far.

The desert was all sand in some stretches, and rocky in others. When the caravan was blocked by a boulder, it had to go around it; if there was a large rocky area, they had to make a major detour. If the sand was too fine for for the animals’ hooves, they sought a way where the sand was more substantial. In some places, the ground was covered with the salt of dried-up lakes. The animals balked at such places, and the camel drivers were forced to dismount and unburden their charges. The drivers carried the freight themselves over such treacherous footing, and then reloaded the camels. If a guide were to fall ill or die, the camel drivers would draw lots and appoint a new one.

But all this happened for one basic reason: no matter how many detours and adjustments it made, the caravan moved toward the same compass point. Once obstacles were overcome, it returned to its course, sighting on a star that indicated the location of the oasis. When the people saw that star shining in the morning sky, they knew they were on the right course toward water, palm trees, shelter, and other people.

I grew up immersed within nature. It was an incredible feeling because I felt like I knew who I was and how I fit into the greater scheme of things on this planet.

As I got older though and started joining the work force of society, that naturalness quickly evaporated to be replaced by a feeling of totally unnaturalness and alienation. For a short time, I was perplexed as to why business worked so unnaturally, yet eventually I just accepted it as “the way things were and had always been”. Today, however, I realize that this isn’t the case. We as a society have created this unnaturalness and alienation around us. And so too can we as a collective create a better and more natural future for ourselves once again, if we so choose to do so.

And you realize that during a moment
where they experienced a grievance
that anyone in this audience could imagine possibly
encountering or feeling themselves,
they felt alienated.

Jared Cohen, Thinking and Doing Around Radicalization

Isn’t alienation at the root of so many of our problems? Alienated individuals make an alienated society. And we are that — alienated from nature, from the Great Spirit of life, from our own souls and their gifts, and from each other. Isn’t there at the base of apathy, at the root of every mean and violent act, an alienated individual who feels powerless and adrift? Isn’t so much of the hostility we see reflected in our youth today simply a cry, a scream that says, “I can’t do it. I can’t express. I can’t make a constructive difference”? Perhaps as a society, we are better to encourage and develop the good within young people than to concentrate on answering their cries with greater punishment. People are good and will do good if they think they can. Youth look to their elders for the way, but they will not be deceived. There is no substitute for authentic examples.

Laurence G. Boldt, Zen and the Art of Making a Living

Lao Tzu believed that when people do not have a sense of power they become resentful and uncooperative. Individuals who do not feel personal power feel fear. They fear the unknown because they do not identify with the world outside of themselves; thus their psychic integration is severely damaged and they are a danger to their society. Tyrants do not feel power, they feel frustration and impotency. They wield force, but it is a form of aggression, not authority. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that individuals who dominate others are, in fact, enslaved by insecurity and are slowly and mysteriously hurt by their own actions. Lao Tzu attributed most of the world’s ills to the fact that people do not feel powerful and independent.

R.L.Wing, The Tao of Power