grass roots expertise
unfracturing
Do you really need a training or certificate or degree for the next phase of your journey or to do that ‘thing’ you feel an aching towards in your heart?
Hear me out. This is not ‘I want to be a surgeon’ or ‘I want to be a pilot’. You definitely want to go the training route for those (and we want you to go that route too!). This is the ‘I want to paint’ or ‘I have a strong interest in this area but I don’t want to go back to school for it’ or 'I want to help people' or ‘I keep hearing that I should write a book’ or ‘how can I turn my listening skills into a business’. Too often, we look at our interests, the things we’re passionate about, and we measure them against a ruler of training, certifications, and degrees. And the person with the most-est in any of those must be the best-est. And we don’t have any of those so we must be the least best-est. So why even get started?
And yet, some of the most creative, innovative, intuitive, connected folks in an area are not the ones who have racked up a bunch of trainings and credentials. They’re the ones who simply started where they were with what they had and then, along the way, allowed themselves to listen for the next right step.
Some examples from my life
Prior to 2012, I painted … walls. And ceilings, and trim. But about this time in 2011, I heard a voice inside my heart saying it wanted to paint. So, in early 2012, I took a class – but not really with the idea of ‘learning how to paint’ but to begin to paint. And in the first session, we painted. I painted (that’s me in the photo). And I learned, and continue to learn, by doing and/or figuring out how to translate the idea I have to an image. In retrospect, what I find fascinating about this between the time of ‘hearing the voice’ and ‘starting the class’, I didn’t do anything to explore painting. This was in a time period when I was firmly in the belief system of ‘let someone else tell you that you are good enough because you’ve completed a training, got a certificate/degree, etc’.
In 2009, I had an abdominal surgery that resulted in some complications. One surfaced immediately after the surgery; others several years downstream. This, and other things, began to open up the world of ‘trauma’ to me. Trauma in the sense of the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual impacts of things that happen to us, the support we have or don’t have, our responses to these, and how we heal from these. I have read and studied a lot but have no certifications or other credentials. I love this field a lot; I think there’s tremendous breakthrough work occurring and it is already helping folks heal. My old hard-wiring occasionally kicks in with ‘you should get a degree in this’, but when I go deeper I recognize I don’t want another degree, I especially don’t want the training that would likely come from some of the very same systems that are supporting ongoing trauma in our world, and I want to be able to blend, merge, and synthesize this into my journey and life interactions in ways that might be considered outside of the norm. Where does that leave me? Looking for the next right steps while ‘doing the stuff’ which right now involves 1-1 interactions.
My take on all this is that we’re entering a season in the evolution of us as humans where there will be greater opportunities for grass roots emergence of wisdom, innovation, and expertise. More and more entrepreneurs are entering into service provision areas that in the past couple of hundred years have become progressively more and more funneled into educational systems, religions, and political structures that controlled have controlled both the access and the range of practice. This is the pendulum swinging the other way. Of course, there is push-back to the pendulum swinging from power-over systems who, in general, have strongly controlled innovation and growth to maintain their power and financial streams. However, I believe the pendulum will continue to swing to power-with, collaborative, synergistic growths. One only has to watch the younger generation(s) to see this happening.
So, circling back to where this started. If you want to be a surgeon, you will need training and degrees. And if you want to be a surgeon, you should go for it! But if you have a more general desire to help folks regain health, consider the deeper questions of what that means. What exactly is the area that you have an interest in? What makes your heart beat a little faster? Is it seeing folks walk again? Is it that their mind, body, spirit come together in a more holistic way? Is it helping families create meals that are healthy and sustainable for them and the planet? There are many ways to do these things. And many don’t require taking on debt and/or years of training to get started in.
ps, anytime you purchase something, you are voting with your $ about the type of world you want to live in. Where can we directly support someone for their talents, thus supporting our community, versus supporting a big box, big online presence, billionaire ...
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