This morning my inbox was full of marketing emails with loud headlines about how 2021 is here and the “new me” is just around the corner. What luck! Right? Because once the new year arrives my real life can begin. I won’t have to be this person anymore. Once some new product drops in 2021 the path will appear. Like that is when it will be possible to reach full potential. As though whatever the current moment offers and whoever I am in it is not enough - so let’s take a step out of this moment and focus on the future where I am whole. Which is the sole purpose of advertising - to let you know that you are lacking something. To make you feel bad about the current state of things/your life. It is equal parts pathetic and hilarious. There is just so much money to be made in making people feel like we are not enough. It attempts to keep us busy reaching outside of ourselves to find a sense of value and belonging and to keep us waiting for the right moment. If you have ever caught yourself thinking that you will do that thing you dream of doing once ____ happens or you are ____ or you have ____ … that is not an original thought. That is our culture. A lot of money has been spent over generations to teach people to think that way. Teams of people created that narrative and damaging thought pattern, not to help us get what we need but to keep us from ourselves. The advertising industry pulled in about 60 billion dollars this year alone - simply by finding creative and entertaining ways to tell us all that we do not have what we need. It’s yet another way people try to tell us who we are in this life. The recovery experience often involves a lot of personal analysis to uncover the root of our self limiting beliefs which are often found buried deep in the past but… these messages of “not enough” are still coming in! All to keep us from rewriting our own personal narrative. It is someone’s high paying job to make sure that you hear the message. On repeat. It is my hope that if we are looking for a shift we will see the opportunity in any old moment to take a step. That we will audit these relentless messages and hear them for the bs they are. That we will value growth and transformation over transaction and find at least one moment each day where we know and feel completely that we are enough.
Day 351: Toasted sourdough with fancy French cheese, smoked salmon, seedy mustard, kale, blueberries and hemp hearts. Delicious. Say what you will but clearly I am on a mission to prove that blueberries go on everything.