The Mug

I had just come back from the gym.

This was almost fifteen years ago. I was taking my first steps as an entrepreneur and everything looked hard. I was reading The Secret and every book like it, listening to anyone who talked about motivation and manifestation. I believed there was a key in there somewhere.

On a trip to Argentina I had found a mug in a coffee shop. It said: everything is possible. That became my mantra. I wrote it down with a handful of others and kept them in front of me. I repeated them every day and did the exercises the books listed.

It felt mechanical. I was saying the words and waiting for something to happen.

That morning, something did. It wasn't a thought, it was a sensation, and I still feel it today. The word is only the first step. It takes an idea out of your head and puts it in the world. But saying “I will get there” and feeling that you will are two different things.

Everything lives in the gut.

When I tried to feel it, I found out what else was in there. The thing you want, and everything built up against it since you were small: the chances that went wrong, the answers that never came, the doubt and the anxiety. All of it sits in the same place, and it is loud.

That is what “trust your instinct” means to me. The instinct is the clean feeling underneath, and the rest is noise. The work is to filter the noise, see the obstacles for what they are, and go back to the feeling until it is pure enough to believe.

There is nothing wrong with wanting something. Stay with the feeling until you can honestly feel that everything is possible.

Christian, founder