How unlocking your potential will unlock a new paradigm — Our vision for 2020 & beyond
As we’re just a few weeks away from the end of the decade, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting lately. In taking stock of where I’ve been and who I’m becoming, I recently remembered how in high school I thought I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. As a teenager, I felt like there were pieces of me that were missing.
If you think about it, it’s an odd and surprisingly meta thought for a high schooler. So even though I was self-aware in one way,
I felt stuck because I didn’t know how to reclaim the parts I had lost, or what to do to grow into the person I sensed I could become.
The Path of Should vs Aliveness
Without clarity or guidance about how to grow into what I felt was possible for me — off I went to college and the working world in my 20s — where I got swept up into what I thought I should do. The internalized hopes and fears of my family, teachers and co-workers dominated the way I saw the world:
“I should take a practical path because I’ll be financially secure, and therefore happy.”
“By working hard, I’ll be respected.”
“I should take a traditional path because it’s the least risky way to ‘make it’ in life.”
But the more that I lived from SHOULD versus what I felt called to, the more I died inside. Waiting for an elevator in my mid-20s — in one of the rare moments I had in between rushing between meetings — I thought to myself:
“I feel like the Tin Man, hollow inside”. I was running around being ‘productive’, yet hardly alive.
It was finally my dad’s unexpected death in my early 30s that shook me hard enough to start looking at what I had deadened inside me to fit myself into a traditional path, and over time develop the skills / capacities to open up to living from and nurture the authentic depths of my unique soul’s desires.
A Deeper Calling from Soul
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my journey, it’s that living from Soul is by no means convenient:
It was by no means convenient to look at all the trauma that I’d experienced and had cut myself off from so that I didn’t have to feel those experiences fully.
It was by no means convenient to tell my very conservative family that I’m queer.
It’s by no means been easy to have gotten a MBA at Harvard and then realize that what my soul wants me to do is to fully step into being a spiritual guide.
And while I’ve been on this very accelerated journey over the last 7 years since my dad’s death — there have been a lot of times where I just craved going back to my simpler, more traditional life where I didn’t look at these hard, inconvenient things. Sometimes I just crave the simplicity of having a normal 9-5 job where my benefits are taken care of, and I get a steady paycheck.
What keeps calling me is that voice that tugged on me as a teenager to go find those parts of me that went missing so that I can grow into what my soul is uniquely asking of me.
And that’s why over the last few years we’ve put so much into building Hestia.
Hestia’s purpose is to ignite the unique Soul possibilities living in each of us to help shepherd in a new paradigm
Redefining success beyond what we currently think is possible
If you’re reading this, you likely already sense that you’re not here to live a life defined by convention. You know at your core is a set of possibilities that only you can bring into the world.
And you probably also deeply feel at your core a deep sadness about the breakdown of our political / cultural institutions and the health of the environment.
Our hypothesis at Hestia is that break down is the time most ripe for new possibilities to emerge.
When the dust has settled from the dramatic transition our world is going through — individually and collectively — people are going to be looking for examples for how the world can be rebuilt.
Our 5-10 year vision is for Hestia to be a breeding ground for successful role models of what’s possible with new ways of being, living and organizing.
Similar to the role that Esalen played in transforming American culture in the 60s and 70s, Hestia aims to be a place where people who are questioning deep cultural assumptions in service of our collective flourishing can gather, collaborate and amplify their impact.
When there’s a critical mass operating from wholeness / their inner compass, this is where cultural regeneration & renaissance will flourish
Trusting the power of Heart & Soul in integrity is the core work of this moment in history.
The power of the Human Heart & Soul in integrity is the only form of power that can never be taken away from us. And when more people are able to draw upon and invoke the power of Heart and Soul, this is what powers social change to claim its integrity. By taking our inner life seriously, we learn to access the unique power that’s in us individually and collectively.
So, to bring this to a more tactical level — a Q that often comes up in this community is:
“How can I make the transition to living from Soul when the world around me doesn’t really support it?”
And from my own personal experience, there’s 3 things we need to learn to live from Soul:
Tools / practices / resources to learn to listen beyond the noise of day-to-day life and hear the voice of our Soul to see where we’re authentically being called (which is why we introduced the Soul curriculum this past year, and why the clarity of the land in Shasta is so essential to the work we do together.)
Inner work to learn to work with our own limiting beliefs and step beyond what we knew or thought was possible. Because it’s usually our own inner conflict that keeps us from being the fullest version of ourselves.
Supportive community of others who have made or are making the same journey, helping us feel sane for our choice to listen to our Soul. …and have the courage to embody ways of being that may be different from what the rest of society tells us is ok — including Ease, Grace and Joy.
In 2020, Hestia’s primary goal is to pilot new ways to unlock the potential of our community members and collaboratively support each other in living towards our Soul dreams
…along with our on-going goals of growing the community / our network’s reach, and achieving financial sustainability.
Some of the ways we’re currently thinking about doing this are:
Highlighting a specific challenge that a community member would like help with at one of the Breaking Breads each month — through brainstorming or requests for help.
Starting Mastermind groups of 5-8 people who are committed to making the journey towards a more Soul aligned direction — both personally and professionally.
Revamping the Living from Soul curriculum to include more tactical guidance on how to identify your Soul gifts, and then practically learn how to put food on the table thanks to them.
We’d love to hear more about how you’d ideally like to be supported by the Hestia community. Please email us with your ideas!
We’d also love your support as community members in making this vision a reality
To grow the impact of the community, we need your help. Currently Hestia is run primarily on a volunteer basis by the group of 5 Founding Friends. But this isn’t sustainable, and to grow into the next phase, we specifically need support around:
Outreach / Recruiting new members. We need your help to reach out to people who are aligned with Hestia’s values and vision. We’d love to double the number of regular community members by the end of 2020. So please invite your friends who you think would be a fit to upcoming Breaking Breads, events in Shasta, or for personal retreats on the land.
Financial sustainability. The physical infrastructure of Hestia’s retreat center needs significant upgrades from what was originally built 50 years ago. In order to support the depth of inner work that’s possible on land as clear as Hestia’s, significant investments are needed to build cabins for private accommodations, and upgrades the electrical and plumbing systems.
Stewarding the land. We need help with tending the land at Hestia — everything from helping us figure out how to install solar infrastructure to splitting wood / making paths. This would be an opportunity to spend more time on Hestia’s transformational land, while also giving back.
Documenting / Photographing / Serving as Hestia Historian. To support our longer term goal of being a role model for others, we know we need to be documenting what we’re doing now so that it’s easier to tell the story of Hestia later. If you have a passion for photography at our events or for writing about what we’re doing, this would be a great way to contribute.
Marketing. To help us more regularly connect with our community and a broader audience, we need help from a talented marketer who can help us refine the Hestia voice, and who enjoys writing marketing copy, and is a master at tracking things like click through rates and open rates.