I lovingly remember the summer of 2019 as my tongue-in-cheek “Shopify speaking tour across Canada”. Oh the memories!

We had just kicked off a new event series at Shopify—mini events in local markets that would follow our annual Shopify Unite conference—to help educate merchants on the (often intimidating, yet incredibly exciting) new features that Shopify was rolling out that year. We brought together Shopify employees, Shopify Partners, and Shopify merchants to learn, mingle, and celebrate entrepreneurship.

Is there anything better?!

Rewind the tape by a few more years—to the summer of 2016—and I was doing something similar at Mindvalley. Mind you, the events at Mindvalley were three-day extravagant affairs in tropical destinations and with beach-front parties, but overall, the mission was the same: to unite, to learn, and to celebrate entrepreneurship.

While Shopify’s version of entrepreneurship was through the lens of technology, Mindvalley’s version was through the lens of spirituality.

Both holding the same worldview, but from different perspectives:

3D vs. 5D

Grounded vs. enlightened

Practical vs. theoretical

Physical vs. energetic

Often, what I notice in the spiritual world is a disdain for the real world.

We awaken to the darkness around us, discover the possible lightness of a utopian world, and then struggle to exist in our current reality—a place that’s smack in the middle of lightness and darkness.

If you have a deep need to flee society and move into a treehouse somewhere far, far away… Congrats. You’re in the learning curve of spirituality. It’s a learning curve that most of our world is moving through right now.

Awakening from the fog of disempowerment, followed by the disenchantment of our current life. But soon after? White spaces of opportunity will start to appear. Mark my words, the roaring 20’s are coming. And for that? We need to come back down to earth.

On that note, the thing I notice most often in the business world is a fear of giving up control.

We’ve been conditioned to operate from fear of punishment, so “loving yourself” into success is an impossible concept to accept.

If you have a deep fear of accepting your life as it is because you might then “settle” and “lose your ambition”… Congrats. You’re in the learning curve of mindful business. This is the second learning curve that most of our world is moving through right now.

Awakening from the fear tactics used upon us, followed by the curiosity of alternative methods of motivation, like love and acceptance. And my hope? That one day soon, we’ll realize that we haven’t been ambitious because of society’s fear tactics, we’ve been ambitious in spite of those fear tactics. Oh! How much more we can actually achieve without the weight of self-hate!

Being able to hold these two polarities in the same thought is a superpower.

One of my secret passion projects at Shopify, following that summer of 2019, was to build a partnership between Mindvalley and Shopify. I had even started a project brief, circling it around to key players internally and to a few of my close contacts at Mindvalley. Little by little, I was pushing towards an event series (or some kind of experience?) where we could pair the tangible lessons of starting an ecommerce business with the intangible practices of working through imposter syndrome, self worth, and fear of rejection.

Spoiler alert: 2020 put a damper on that passion project. It wasn’t meant to be. I have, of course, left Shopify since then, but it’s interesting to reflect on how that thread has always been a constant throughout my life.

To be both grounded in spirituality and enlightened in business.

It runs through everything I do—from the mission behind these Friday Newsletters, to the types of clients I work with as a project manager, to the personal brand + biz coaching I launched earlier this year for professionals wanting to inject more of an entrepreneurial spirit into their careers.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to be lived. And that requires us to have both feet planted in the real world AND the ability to dream up the version of life we crave to build for ourselves.

Little by little, I’m learning that this is my mission in life. A mission bestowed on a multi-passionate who will carry it out in many different ways.

And that gives me a sense of calmness. That as long as I’m grounded in my spirituality, I can stay enchanted with the current world. And as long as I’m building an enlightened business, I can love myself towards my version of success.

The adventure of my lifetime is to experience every ebb and flow of where my mission takes me and how my career unravels.

And that? I’m forever enchanted with.