A shaman taught me 3 difficult life lessons and changed my life

Four years ago I was living in New York City and was a lonely and frustrated individual.

I didn’t realize it at the time. Back then, I was “thinking big” with my dreams. We had just launched the first version of the Ideapod’s social network. The press was writing about us. We had investors backing us. It was exciting.

But the external indicators of success were hiding a deeper sense of frustration growing within me.

This was when I first met the shaman Rudá Iandé. He started teaching me what he knew about living a life connected deeply with my true nature. It’s changed my life and how I see myself.

While it’s easy to see myself as a different person, it would be more accurate to say that Rudá has helped me to connect more deeply with who I really am.

In the video below, I share three of the more counter-intuitive and difficult life lessons I learned from Rudá Iandé. I believe these are relevant to all of us in the modern age. I would love to know what you think in the comments below.

If you can’t watch the video right now, keep on reading. I’ve summarized the three difficult lessons below.

Making Rudá Iandé’s teachings available to a wider audience

At the end of last year, I approached Rudá and told him I would like to make his teachings available to a wider audience. He only takes on ten new clients per year, and I felt we had an opportunity to reach more people through the Ideapod platform.

Ideapod has a few million monthly readers and thousands of email subscribers. I also have had plans in place for some time now to launch the Ideapod Academy, our platform for delivering online education programs.

Rudá and I decided to join forces. Rudá created Out of the Box, incorporating three decades of experience in helping people to connect deeply with their deeper nature. I created the Ideapod Academy to deliver Out of the Box.

The result:

A truly incredible online workshop that helps people to truly know themselves and embrace their personal power.

If you’d like to find out more about Out of the Box, I recommend enrolling in either of these two free masterclasses with Rudá Iandê:

1. Breaking Through Toxic Relationships to Find True Love
2. Embrace Your Inner Beast: Turning Your Anger into Your Ally

Here are three of the many lessons I have learned along the way.

1) Goals aren’t about the destination; it’s about the journey

This is the kind of insight that is easy to say but very difficult to live out in practice.

Years ago, I was so driven by my goals. I even embraced the “law of attraction” to visualize what life would be like when I achieved my dreams.

The problem was this:

The more I visualized and focused on my goals, the more aware I became that the way I was living my life was far from where I wanted to get to.

I stopped enjoying the process. The journey wasn’t fun anymore.

This contributed to a deeper sense of frustration I was feeling.

Rudá Iandé helped me to see that while goals are important, what matters the most is enjoying the journey.

This wasn’t a simple practice of letting go of my goals. Rather, Rudá helped me to design goals that were more authentic to the life I wanted to live day by day.

Now, my goals for Ideapod are very different. I’m not aiming to create the “next Instagram for ideas” or anything like this. I don’t compare Ideapod (or anything else I’m doing) against external indicators of success.

Ideapod is a simple media and education platform. We’re growing slowly but surely. The fact that you’re reading this right now is our key indicator of success.

2) You don’t need to be perfect all of the time; what does “perfection” even mean?

This was a lesson that was very difficult for me to learn.

My whole life up to that point had been about trying to be perfect at everything I did.

I had achieved academic success with a number of fellowships and lecturing engagements at prestigious universities around the world. As a management consultant, I traveled the world on large-scale projects.

I was a classic “high-achiever”. Yet trying to achieve my goals of “thinking big” for Ideapod was making me very unhappy.

I constantly compared what I was trying to achieve with the success of others all around me.

Then I came upon the realization that I was defining “perfection” according to other people’s standards. Who gets to define what “perfection” even means?

Rudá helped me to see this and continually guided me on my journey of looking within for my own standards of success.

I started to embrace my imperfections. I even enjoyed making mistakes.

Now, I know my limitations. I’m not a “super-entrepreneur” and never will be. I’m just me, a pretty simple Australia guy building a platform where people get together around ideas.

I’m much happier for it.

3) I’m not special and unique, and neither are you

This was a bitter pill to swallow as well.

Western civilization seems to be built around the notion that we are all unique individuals. This has been necessary to grant people individual rights.

However, in the process, I feel like the constant message that we are special and unique has some unintended consequences.

When I believed I was so unique, I felt like the challenges I faced were unique to me. This created an immense feeling of loneliness. There was no-one around me to share in my struggle.

When I started to let go of this idea, with the help of Rudá, I noticed how incredible the people around me really were. I saw that we share our struggles. I started to more deeply connect with others.

My connection with other people comes from a realization that we are all quite insignificant in the journey. As an individual, I don’t have the capability to change the world.

However, when we join forces together from a place of humility, a groundswell of momentum is created. As a collective, we create social movements far more powerful than any individual mind can ever conceive.

When I let go of the notion that I am unique and special, I managed to get out of my own way. Now I’m just happy to be connected with my own deeper nature, and to connect with others from this place.