Over the last two years I have poured every bit of myself into writing Unwritten. I’ve examined history and those who have shaped it, in the hope of uncovering an archetype as to how we can best build the future. While continuing to launch new ventures and invest in great businesses, I’ve lost myself in timeless philosophy and explored my own spirituality, bringing it all together into one book that attempts to piece together the mosaic of human potential.
Today I wanted to share with you a small piece of Unwritten, to give you an insight into what’s to come.
“Whatever you do in life may seem insignificant to you. But it’s important you do it, because no one else will.”– Mahatma Gandhi
It starts off as a whisper. A feeling from within hints ever so gently that you may be destined for something more. Normal isn’t you. The traditional life is not who you are.
When you dare to pay attention to the whisper, it grows slightly louder to tell you that you can do something great. Something that matters.
Soon you are walking along a different path – one that will be awe-inspiring, that will challenge you to become more of yourself. This is a path where the outward journey and the ‘doing’ will always perfectly reflect the inner journey of your being. Your life’s work is now an extension of who you are.
I am talking about entrepreneurship. And I don’t just mean running your own business – although that is certainly one expression of it – but rather any form of taking ownership of your life and creating something that doesn’t yet exist, be it a business, a career, or anything of which you are proud.
Regardless of what flavour of entrepreneurship you pursue, when what you do is fuelled by who you are, you will do your life’s best work.
Entrepreneurship is not a rational decision. To be somebody treading an unbeaten path towards a dream unfulfilled is not something we one day wake up, weigh up, and decide to do. It is more than that; it is who we are. We do not walk such a challenging path because it gives us something to do; The reason we heard the whisper, when so many don’t, is that it resonated with the deepest part of us.
Over many months, or maybe many years or decades (everyone’s different), we became more dissatisfied with the traditional way of life, and the whisper grew louder. Day by day, it intensified, until it became a roar we could no longer ignore. It was at that point where we decided to live a life that wasn’t governed by what was safe or tried or proven, but by our own unique sense of purpose. In this sense, entrepreneurship is a response to a higher calling.
I’m not a religious person. However, I am a spiritual person. I think even the most pragmatic among us realise there’s more to who we are and the world around us than what the naked eye can see. For me, spirituality is about exploring our consciousness and our essence beyond our physicality. In this sense, I view the world and our place in it through a very spiritual lens.
I believe that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe that God is all of us, and that we create ourselves and our world. I believe we are each capable of becoming more. To live a life that aligns with and honours our higher selves is to live an extraordinary life. And I am fully, absolutely, with every cell in my body, happy for you to believe the same thing or believe something different.
We make far too many judgements, and I think that ‘right and wrong’ is a very shallow paradigm through which to view the world. I believe that fully recognising our own truths and living in accordance with them, while encouraging others to do the same, is the next step in our evolution.
Entrepreneurship is a spiritual endeavour because, at its essence, it is about creation. What starts out as nothing more than a compelling feeling in our heart and an inspired thought in our mind soon grows into something real. We talk about it with someone else, we share it, we dream about it, love it, wrestle with it, cry with it, and soon enough we begin to act on it and live with it.
What was initially an intangible seed planted inside us soon becomes something very real – something people can touch, interact with and use in their everyday lives. As it grows further, it reaches out into the world, touching the lives of many, even employing others who want to contribute to the journey.
What was once the seed of an idea is now giving others the opportunity to dotheir life’s best work. There is immense joy in finding others who are passionate about a vision that you now share. If they are the right people, they will do things they once thought impossible, each becoming a person they had never envisaged.
Their entire life changes because they are part of a mission that has grown into something meaningful, something real. Yesterday, it was a thought, and today, through a whole lot of hard work and a little bit of magic, it exists.
To me, entrepreneurship mirrors life. It magnifies our experience. It is the path we walk on our quest to becoming the best versions of ourselves. It is us experiencing what we are capable of and what we can contribute to the world.When work doesn’t feel like work, we stop worrying about work–life balance, because we’ve achieved work–life harmony. The two are no longer competing forces but, rather, different colours that make up the landscape of our lives. We have not lost ourselves in our work; we have found ourselves in our quest.
Life, like entrepreneurship, is a constant process of creation. Through our thoughts, words and deeds, we are constantly creating who we are and, in a very real sense, creating the world around us. Every inch of it. And it all starts from within. For me, the purpose of life is to consciously create who you want to be and the contribution you want to make.
This is a book that examines timeless principles to enable you to do just that. It is for those who recognise they can create, who recognise that life is led by choice and not by chance. It is for those who dream of things that never were, and who want to change things for the better. It is for those who see how malleable the world truly is and recognise they are already shaping it. And it is for those who realise the world only changes as we do.
We all leave a legacy, whether it be through the upbringing of a great family, the growth of a veggie patch, the way in which we touch the lives of others, the establishment of a business or large-scale societal change. Every life shifts the world in some small or large way. Legacy cares not for scale.
This is not a book about breadth, but rather about depth. It’s less about how far-reaching your influence is and more about ensuring that whatever you do is a representation of who you truly are. Mahatma Gandhi said of legacy, ‘Whatever you do in life may seem insignificant to you. But it’s important you do it, because no one else will.’
This is not a book about making money, although I don’t see making money as a bad thing. With money, intention grows and influence amplifies. This is not a book primarily about business, although business can be an incredibly effective vehicle to carry one’s vision into the world. This is not a book about becoming the next Nelson Mandela or Oprah Winfrey. Much can be learnt from their stories, but to copy these people is to not learn from them.
This is a book about becoming more of you. About continuously growing out of and into your best self. It’s a book of unconventional wisdom for living a life on purpose. It contains stories that will shed light on how you can shape the world around you and be an example for those who want to do the same. When enough of us do so, together we can reinvent tomorrow.