Touching the Heart Chapter 04
Simulant: Sari Azout
Role: Founder
Company: Sublime
Guided by: Kristian Michail
Role: Founder
Company: Simulations
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Start Simulation
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Reading Time: 45 minutes
In this simulation, a founder is torn between two worlds: the land of venture capital or going it alone. Through simulation, we explore the third way, beyond the fixed set of options that imprison our world.
① Context
Hello Sari, welcome to your simulation. In your own words, tell us about who you are and what you're working on.
It’s funny. I've always like struggled with my about page. I recently read Stuart Brand's about page and he said, he finds things and he founds things, and I was like, that's me! Because I have always hung out at the edges of the internet, the world of scouring for interesting ideas, concepts and people. So finding things, composing ideas and connecting dots is a big part of who I am and then I found things with products. I love to marry theory and philosophy with practice. If I'm thinking about something, I like to manifest it and make it real. And so I've always been an instigator and started stuff. At the moment, I'm spending 110% of my time, building Sublime, which I suspect will we'll get into in the conversation, but it's, it's a personal knowledge management tool that I think is marbled with all of my beliefs about the world. You know, that attention is sacred, that we need to find better ways to be in spaces that feel both personal and communal, and all sorts of things. I'm building software, but with a philosophical point of view. And that's the journey I'm on right now.
So that makes you a software engineer by trade or are you a non-technical founder that like worked at other companies previously?
Well, I was born and raised in Colombia. I moved to the US for college. I studied sociology, philosophy and economics. After that, I started my career in traditional investment banking because it was the only job that would give me a visa to stay in the US. But shortly after I left and started my tech journey. I've been a founder before. I’ve started up a company before, I’ve sold a company before and I spent time as a VC as well. I ran a venture fund for about three, or four years. I ran a strategy for a startup studio. And yeah, I guess I was itching to build again because you know, I'm just a builder by nature. So I've just got back in the limelight. I sort of got to a point where I could do consulting for startups in my sleep, but like, you know, it's easy to kind of suggest a strategy. It's like harder when you know, reality has a lot of detail. And that detail, you're only kind of colliding with when you're kind of in the trenches. So I was itching to be back building and that's, that's what I'm doing now.
So to get a visa into America, you’ve got to become an investment banker or some equivalent?
It's not the only way but I would say I know a lot of people who were international students following that path. The process of getting a visa as a recent college graduate is very expensive. So you need some company to sponsor you. And typically the companies that are sponsoring new grads are kind of the traditional recruiters like McKinsey, Baines and the big banks of the world. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that was the easy, surest way to stay here.
Well, I'm glad you made it out alive.
② Challenge
Let’s proceed. What I’ve found in doing simulations is that a lot of founders will consume all their time thinking about the project or the business that they want to build. But so much of the revelation, genius, breakthrough moments are actually in non-related fields that hold the most secrets. If I asked you to go to your heart and say what's the most important thing that's there for you that you’d want to spend the next hour on, what would it be? What I'm finding more and more is people getting authentic with what they choose to simulate around is a challenge in itself.
I'll share more about sublime, the technology I am building. I've been in tech for a long time. And I definitely want to explore the intersection between Silicon Valley ideology and how we live our lives. Right? Because what’s there for me is the world of Silicon Valley and the language of disruption and things like ‘beat the competition.’ There's just a lot of baggage that comes from that language if you couple that with my history. I was the typical kind of valedictorian in middle school, high school, and the best out of college. I'm on a journey to overcome the need to be exceptional. I don't need to be creating something huge, disruptive and world-changing to deserve a place on earth. If you combine Silicon Valley's ideology, where you have to have a godlike faith in what you're doing and that it's going to change the world, with this need to be exceptional, you have a tension there. This tension has followed me since childhood. The reality I want to build with Sublime is to spend the next decade-plus working on what feels like a life project. It doesn't feel like I'm building this thing for a couple of years to then exit. This is a heart-led thing for me and we can get into kind of like that journey and what it is and why I'm so enthralled by it. But I guess I'm very much trying to figure out how this venture fits in within my personal baggage and the Silicon Valley ideology, especially in the context of fundraising. Maybe I'm rambling, but in Silicon Valley, there’s always the question of what do we want to disrupt? And I'm very interested in these days of the question, what do I want to preserve? And it's just a very different set of values and undoing decades of phrases like, move fast and break things. Like I want to move slow and make this thing endure. God forbid this is the next Facebook. I want this to be like the next Japanese boutique hotel that’s been around for 500 years, you know?
Powerful. I love the question of what do I want to preserve? When you were sharing that, what went through me was “protect the sacred.” I’m awakening to how in many areas of my own life, I’ve ignored this principle. When I look honestly at something non-related to software like my relationship with sex in my twenties, it was less about preserving and protecting the sacred and more like move fast and break things. The programming is undeniable. I bought into a cultural lie of how to be a man as a boy and as I’ve aged, I realise I was conned. I think both men and woman of the modern world have been conned, but that’s another conversation. I'm inspired by preservation as a philosophy. So thanks for sharing and touching a part of my own heart. I just went off-script, but sometimes I do that. It’s a good sign that the simulation is potent. Please continue.
As you know, I am a big thinker. When I think about Sublime, I almost think of it as like, there are two sides to it. There's a very practical side. So Sublime is a personal knowledge management tool. It is the tool that I wish existed to collect and connect ideas because I think that anyone in this world whose job is to think, create and engage more deeply with the world needs to have space and a way to develop, process, think about and capture these ideas and none of the stuff out there was doing it for me. So very practically speaking, I have a lot of things that I encounter daily that make me go ‘whoa, I need to save those idea sparks and reuse them at a later time.’ And that's kind of like a very practical need that Sublime strives to serve. There is this quote from a book that says ‘After the ecstasy, the laundry.’ So functionally, it focuses on a need that follows the ecstasy moment that is coherent, and concrete. What drew me to this was looking at the Internet, looking at how much information there was and how the business model of the web was hijacking our attention. Whilst also understand how many kinds of creativity come not just from staring at a blank page, but from being able to pull from of a vast repository of ideas and from different fields. I have all of these beliefs and they're manifesting right now in this very practical piece of software, but I need to hold the practical and philosophical both at once. You know, we need to build this product, but the product is not enough. It's the product with the philosophy and the community that we're building around that philosophy, that that kind of matters if that makes sense.
So what are you're up against then? Inside of all that, is there something specifically irking you, like was there a trigger this week? Where were you like ‘fuck that’? Try and get specific about the exact challenge in front of you.
So we raised a round of financing from venture capitalists about a year and a half ago, and we still have some runway. But you know, typically the way it works when you raise venture round is you're burning a ton of capital. To then raise another round and the incentive for the investors is to get big, really fast. And I guess my incentive when I kind of come to grips with I want is, I want to build a meaningful company, a company that is very meaningful for the people it serves. On the one hand, I want to work with a small number of people. I'm not interested in growing a team to be 500 people. I have very strict principles that I don't want to compromise. I've seen very closely how incentives guide the universe. The moment that you have the ad-supported internet, the moment that becomes the metric and the product changes. We are building a thing that we're investing in for the future. I don't think it fits squarely into the venture narrative. I want to optimize for playing an infinite game. Finite games are played to win, you know, we win, we play this game, we exit, we leave. I found with Sublime that this is just something I want to chug away at for a long time. But we don't fit squarely into the bootstrap category either. I'm not a one person building this thing on nights, weekends and on the side, nor are we a profitable venture at the moment. We don't fit squarely into a category so here are a lot of decisions between those two paths that we have to make. Like I said I'm a big-picture thinker. I'm not trying to open like a bakery down the street, or, a little kind of workout studio, which I think is amazing if that's the kind of entrepreneurship you want. I'm more of a world builder. And so I guess, there are some contradictions there where VC is designed for big ideas and disruption, and I think Sublime certainly has some of that, but Sublime is the first personal knowledge management tool that is networked and multiplayer. There's just so much potential there. But genuinely, I'm very risk-averse. And I want to do this for a long time. I don't want to buy a lottery ticket for the next two, or three years and see if this works. I just want to build it at whatever scale makes sense. I'm not married to the scale. So yeah, I guess I'm thinking a lot about beefy incentives, who are the right partners to bring along on this journey? And those things have like very clear implications in terms of how we build the company. Do we optimize for growth or sustainability? I guess I'm grappling with a lot of these questions every day.
Got it. It sounds like there are a few roads to walk down. There is the VC unicorn expectation of crushing it, then there's the bootstrapper’s path. But neither is what you are really going for. Maybe there's a third path that hasn't been explored yet. It might be a new consciousness with new language, which might require a synthesis of the existing two paths.
It's funny that you say that because I sort of painted it as: Do you want to be this go big or go home VC unicorn? Or do you want to be a tiny bootstrap thing like the baker down the street? And I think you're right. The thing that I'm getting to is I have agency. There's another way I can will this thing into existence. But there's also a lot of pressure in charting that path and it’s still unknown.
④ Character
Ok, let's get straight up now. If you could create criticize, or at least label this bootstrapped baker character, or these VC unicorn types what would they be? Pick the one that has the most charge. Which one jumps at your first?
The traditional VC world is the challenge. I read Elon Musk's biography by Walter Isaacson, and there's this line that is so simple where he said VCs have no creativity or insight. And I was like, that's so true! I feel like it’s money with the wrong incentives and the wrong expectations. And, every time, I don't get excited about talking to VCs. I get excited about building.
I find the whole world of venture to be just lame to be honest. I also know that good things require resources. So I'm not romanticizing the bootstrapped either. I'm just trying to figure out: how do you avoid venture capital while still building something really interesting and meaningful that requires a team?
If you could give criticism to this VC character in two words, what would it be? If you could look in their face and scream “you are a ….”! It's a fun exercise. You'll see by the end of it why it's valuable to do this. It'll all make sense later, trust me.
Yeah, I mean. I would say you are a joke, you know. It's like they jump from one trend to another, all the time, like hashtag crypto and then six months later its hashtag AI in the Twitter bio. There's just no depth and no patience, no long-term thinking. As a builder, I am all in. All my eggs are in one basket. I'm committed. I'm going to see this through the ups and downs. Reality has a ton of detail. I feel like VC is a joke. It’s superficially throwing around the lame fortune cookie lines to generate an audience and chase the next hyped-up deal, but I just find that so lame. Building a company is the exact opposite of that. It requires being unencumbered by trends and the ups and downs of the market. By going at it and having conviction. Most VCs don't have conviction. They're just trying to chase hype. Yeah, cool!
What you would you label them? Pick two words.
Hype Chasers.
All right. So if they're Hype Chasers, what does that make you?
I think I'm more focused, like anti-hype. I believe in this thing and I'm willing to be misunderstood for a long time. I think the lamest thing I could do is put AI on my landing page. Like, I wouldn't ever do that. Nobody wants AI, they just want what you can do for them. Whether you use AI or something else doesn't matter. I'm just like playing a different game. It requires focus, patience, long-term thinking.
Hype is a finite game because what ends up happening in the world of venture is you take a thing that is hyped, and then you sell it to the next person who believes in that hype, who sells it to the next person who believes in that hype, and maybe at some point that crumbles, but twenty people benefited along the way just by kind of manufacturing hype. And that is like so distant from what I'm interested in. I am interested in preservation. How do I build something that 50 years from now my grandchildren will look at? Slow and steady, you know. I think of Estee Lauder who thought about her company for 40 freaking years I think a lot about the founders, like Brunello Cucinelli or the guys behind Teenage Engineering. It’s like the most enduring and interesting things are anti-hype. They're the things that work and continue to work and took years of unsexy things to make happen. But that's not exciting in the venture world.
I heard some character traits that speak to you like the Infinite Gamer and Sacred Preserver. These are all possibilities to explore, for sure. However, now is not the time to be aspirational. We’ll get to that later. Let’s be blunt. If you could criticise yourself in two words, what would that be? If they are Hype Chasers, what character are you playing? They are just a mirror shining a light back onto you. If you are critical of them it’s because you are critical of yourself to some degree. Our job is to scrape that criticism from the subconscious, so we can turn it into gold. As I said, now is not the time to be aspirational.
Yeah, maybe it's naive. There's a certain amount of games between founders and investors in which you're constantly selling this very exciting vision of the world that you're building. Whether you achieve it or not, it almost doesn't matter to the narrative in raising money in the world of VC. And so, I can very much play that game to secure our future by raising lots of money. I ask myself is it naive of me to not do that? Naivety is one of the things that comes to mind. The highest critique of myself is that I am this heart-led, naive entrepreneur. I like leading with my heart, but I sort of wonder if is that making me naive. A naive heart is is what’s there.
Would you be willing to be willing to explore the next stage of the simulation as that character, Naive Heart? By the end, it won’t even matter because you’ll have transformed into something entirely new.
Naive Heart is not at all how my team would view me. My team thinks I'm a logical, intense, rational, kind of like pushing limits, ideas person. They would disagree with this characterisation. However it feels very much like the relationship I have with myself.
Perfect. Let’s proceed.
⑤ Facts
🅐 Doing
As a Naive Heart, what are you doing day to day? what are the doings of your world? We're just fact-gathering now by looking at the actions you are taking within this character.
I make a lot of decisions. Decisions around who to hire, decisions around product, positioning, and strategy. I write a lot. I do a lot of communication stuff. I develop our roadmap and design the product and I guess I do all of those things. Most of which are driven by intuition.
I'm vibe-checking the world and responding. So much of what I have to do is have a pulse check on culture, the Zeitgeist and kind of respond, you know? Through my art, my software, my community, my writing. I vibe-check so I can weave and make sure that I have cultural relevance.
I'm having a lot of one-on-one conversations with the people in my team and in my community. I'm doing a lot of just explaining and onboarding. I'm constantly context shifting between maker mode, where I'm deep designing something and manager mode, where I'm leading someone towards believing in this thing. Externally, there is a lot of storytelling and talking to people, sharing how this may fit into the world.
Being a mother of three children, I have the naivete of believing that I can both raise a family and build an amazing company. So much of the naivete comes from this tension of do I really think that I can pull off this vision with all of the other responsibilities and not drop the ball?
Great stuff, Naive Heart. Now, let's look at what are you not doing?
I try not to click send on anything that doesn't feel authentically me, that doesn't feel like it has that high standard. But I wonder if there's a path to this that requires less heart, perhaps less putting all of myself into it and being more like the growth hacker you know? You see all these people who have a relationship with their work that is perhaps more detached, more capitalist, more mercenary. I think a lot of the naivete comes from the soulful, heart-lead thing I will click send on versus, how could we partner with an influencer to create a funnel and growth hacker our way into this? There's a world where this could kind of just have a different kind of set of DNA where I'm not necessarily kind of putting so much of myself and my heart into it.
My time is going into building sublime with the entirety of my heart. And that means that my time is not going to a lot of other areas of my life, including being far less present with family stuff. There's a direct toll. I think it takes on all other areas of my life because I'm so committed not just with my brain, but with my heart to this venture.
In some ways, what this has done is it's made me monomaniacal, right? This one thing I'm doing, it's like I am building Sublime, and I'm going to will this thing into existence and I'm going to make it sustainable. And you know, it's that single thing that’s inhabiting my mind and I think part of it is because I just bring so much heart to it. And I say that in a critical way.
Got it. what about the social side of life?
I wake up. I have a home office and I'm on my computer for 10 hours a day on Zoom calls. I'm with my children at night and I repeat this until the weekend when I'm 100% context-shifting into mother mode. I've sort of accepted that I need the next couple of years to be heads down and less active with the social side of my life. The goal is to put it on a path to sustainability and once that's there, I can kind of have more time to travel, socialize and go back to doing yoga. And you know, just being more in touch with like other parts of myself.
I've chosen to live a laptop life. Everything that happens is in bits and atoms. That means I'm just doing a lot less things that require my hands, like gardening and cooking. I've gone full convenience with everything else in my life to make room for this. And so I guess like what I'm not doing is using my hands.
🅑 Having
Let's go to havings now. As a Naive Heart, what do you have in your life? These are the outcomes, the results, the actualities of your world. They may be physical, non-physical, emotional, or even spiritual. You’ve got three children for example. What else do you have?
I have a purpose. When I was doing consulting, there was this nagging feeling that I was just creating presentations to these executives collecting dust and I wasn't building something of my own. A life project. A life's work. I feel scared at times but I feel like I've got a purpose. I've got something that's mine, that I deeply believe in that I'm cultivating. I don't take for granted the fact that most people don't have that. So it's both like a privilege and also a heavy weight to carry.
I may also have a chip on my shoulder. In some ways, I was just like the perfect child and a great student. Nobody ever had to tell me to study for the SATs or pay for an LSAT tutor. I just kind of did everything on my own the right way by the book. On paper, I checked all the boxes always. And then I had all these all these jobs in tech that paid well, but they were jobs. I wasn't building my life's work. And then you know, I kind of slowed down for a couple of years when the kids were younger. And now is the first time that I'm in the trenches building something of my own. People around me have always seen me as exceptional. And so I have this kind of chip on my shoulder that I better be doing something exceptional. I also have a family, a home and good relationship. If you kind of strip away work, I've got the things many people pray for such as health, which I didn't have a couple of years ago. I had a major health situation a while back. The kind of mountain I'm climbing now is more like work and professional than anything else.
And what don’t you have?
I think in some ways, peace of mind. As somebody who can hold many contradictory ideas at once, it makes it harder to have peace of mind, you know? So that feels like something I feel called to say. I think there's an element of just like, presence, right? I don't have the ability at the moment to turn off and context shift.
I carry the things that I'm thinking of when it comes to Sublime everywhere. So it's maybe back to the mono-maniacal reference. When you are monomaniacal, you lose the ability to be present. You know, because you are constantly thinking about one thing instead of just being in the moment. I'm thinking a lot about just how can I stay present when I've got a storm inside of me.
When it comes to Sublime, I don’t have financial stability, right? This is a company that raised venture funding from investors that has still runway, but I'm paying myself much less than I was before. And you know, I am very much wanting to build an infinite game. But right now, you know, we don't have that financial stability.
🅒 Being
Fantastic. Let's look at how you are being now, Naive Heart. Obviously, naive is one way of being. Let’s look for other ways of being in the world that colour your reality. Beings are the way you express yourself. For example, before you said you’re being missionary, not mercenary in your approach.
For sure, I am being missionary for sure versus mercenary. I am being deep versus wide. I am being crafty. There’s an element of craft and refinement and obsession, often at the expense of ‘this is good enough.’ It’s like a quest for a kind of perfection and craftsmanship that is often at odds with just kind of just ship it mentality you know? We're being very sensitive to aesthetics and culture. It’s something that’s important to us. Candour is something else that comes to mind. I'm being honest. I'm being honest with my team. I'm being honest with my community. I'm being honest in what I write. Everything that we do comes with honesty almost to a fault. I would say that because there's maybe too much heart and not enough, like greed. One thing I wish I was being more gentle with myself. So whatever the opposite of that is also how I am being.
Do you mean being Harsh?
Maybe it’s a little too intense and serious, you know? Being intense and being serious, versus just going light. I don't know why but I assume that worrying more means you're doing more when you can be very soft and gentle but things still work out for you. There's an element of intensity, seriousness and obsession that I wonder is like the counterpart to taking things more lightly. It can often be a better way to get results. This intensity of being goes back to the chip on my shoulder.
Pensiveness comes to mind for me. It’s a manner that gets displayed on my face when I get too serious. Many people have said to me I can look pensive and it's normally when I'm dealing with an intense thought, and that thought is worn on my face and carried on my shoulders. It’s a weight that physically expresses itself as a way of being. Almost like a personality.
Yeah, pensive feels like a good word. I often feel like I get tangled in intellectual knots. I often try to remind myself like not to think. It’s the worst part of academia where you think too much instead of just being. You don't have to kind of tie yourself into these twisted knots over something like recording a video to explain how Sublime works to a newcomer. It doesn't have to be this crazy Ivy League thing either. Just like be yourself and go lightly. In some ways, I project that onto my kids now where I was so academic, so type A, so kind of check the box on everything and sometimes I'm like, just go lightly, just carry the world lightly. It might be a better way to get results. But even beyond that, to just love the journey, fall in love with the process and not be obsessed with whatever destination.
So what’s missing from your expression, what would make the ultimate difference?
I would say lightness.
Great. As you said I saw a weight drop-off from your body in real-time which is a good signal. The body doesn't lie. It’s the greatest source of truth. It’s as if the weight of your head lowered and lightened the load from your shoulders.
It's interesting because light is paradoxical. It’s like being gentle and powerful are an oxymoron as well. But it's something I would love to inhabit. I would love to feel like I don't have to give up my power, and my vision with what I'm trying to do, and that I can also carry it more lightly.
⑥ Choice
We’re approaching the climax. We’ve come a long way, but we’re not te quit just yet. We need to draw a line in the sand. Tell me, what is the opposite of a Naive Heart?
I would say a Hard Rationalist. A Ruthless Optimizer, you know? When you're leading with the heart, it's like a gut intuition. The opposite of that is just hyper-optimizer metrics.
Is Ruthless Optimiser going to be the character that's gonna get you what you want in this game that you're playing?
No.
Do you think Naive Heart is going to get what you want? Before you answer that, it may be yes, no or maybe at this moment. Take the opportunity to see if there are two other words that most encapsulate the possibility that you want to step into. You mentioned gentle and power, and the oxymoron of these two words. Paradoxically, we started this simulation with a clash of two worlds as well. You've got VC and Bootstrapper, and you don’t feel settled in either one of these worlds, but you want your path to both embrace parts of each yet have freedom from both. It’s time to choose your world, by choosing your words. In two words, what is the character your intuition says will give you what you want?
I feel like Naive Heart is the critical version of me that's not going to get me where I want to be. I think gentle, powerful, whether it's those exact words or that neighbourhood of words, feels right because it's inhabiting this contradiction that I want to absorb. I see two paths, but there's one that inhabits both, maybe it’s in the centre. There is a line of going too far, but what's that line? Most people try hard and find out too late, that they should have tried softer, you know? And that has stuck with me becauseI want to be softer, but I don't want to give up my power.
I think the line is love. Love is the synthesis of these two seemingly contradictory worlds. Love births new worlds from two opposing parts. In that sense, what you choose now is the ultimate form of creation. If you ask your heart what it wants to be from a place of love, it will give you the answer.
Well, maybe it's like soft power. I don't know. How do you inhabit lightness, softness and presence with an end mission and maintaining agency? I don't want the power and all of that world if it's going to take away from the gentle, you know? I guess it’s aspirational.
Creation is more inspiration than aspiration. The aspirational is more like a fantasy, not grounded in your deepest turth. And a lot of the time it’s comparative or emulative of something that already exists. We started this conversation with aspirational traits that I heard in your speaking like Infinite Gamer or Sacred Preserver. However, if we skipped the process and jumped straight to what you aspired to be, you would have missed out on the inspiration of light, gentleness, and power. Now we are touching on inspiration. Inspiration is the doorway to the divine. Aspiration alone can be a gateway to hell. And by hell, I mean an illusion that is not truly at the heart of what your soul truly yearns. Even the most pretty aspirations can be the ugliest distractions. Now you’re inspired by the lightness of your gentle power, which makes this the best moment to choose your future. What two words will most give you that future? What character is going to lead you to miracles in your world?
I am being called to Gentle Power.
Great. That was very powerful. We are now ready to proceed.
⑦ Simulation
Now then Gentle Power, let’s get you comfortable. Get in a relaxing position and close down your eyes. I'm going to close my eyes down with you. We’re about to go to a special realm. Let’s take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. When ready, go to a time in your life, either the most recent, the most potent or the earliest time in your memory when it was just undeniable that you were being Gentle Power in the world. Take your time. Allow whatever rises to the surface. Let it be natural. As you go to that place, and as that time arises, nod your head to acknowledge that you've arrived or if you feel comfortable, please share aloud where you are and what’s taking place.
It's such a clear moment. I'm happy to share.
Beautiful. Share away.
So when I was 26 weeks pregnant with my third son, my lungs collapsed. I spent a month in the hospital and ended up getting lung surgery. It’s like I had to sign off that I may not survive the surgery. And I just remember being in excruciating pain, being in the moment, surrendering to whatever the world had in store for me, but still feeling just so much power from so many people.
They gave me love, reasserting I was important to them and that I needed to be here. This incredible sense of surrender flowed through me. As if the pain was just in the mind and that I have the resilience. The world wants me here. My friends, my family, my community. My people want me here. And yeah, I think I'm just most proud of how I treated the pain so, so gently.
Okay, beautiful. What are you feeling at this moment?
I'm feeling very distant from that moment in time. I haven’t recalled that memory in a while. I'm feeling like ‘Wow, I am proud of the person that got through that experience.’ I had almost forgotten it. I'm just remembering. I've been through a lot and I've come out on the other side.
Where do you feel this emotion in your body?
In my heart.
Ok great, feel all that emotion. Stay connected to your heart. If you feel called to, you can put your hand on your heart as well. Gentle Power, I'm going to take you to another place now. Let’s go to a time far distant in the future where no time is apparent. It's almost timeless, it's far in the distant future. Maybe it’s five years from now. 10 years from now. Maybe it's even a lifetime from now. Maybe it's when you're grey and old, but go wherever your heart wants to take you.Somewhere in the future where Gentle Power is alive and real in the world. A place that is undeniably the reality and the truth of your existence. Where would your heart lead you?
Yeah, I’m at my happy place. It’s in the mountains of Colorado, like 30 years from now. I just want peace and solitude with a few people. I imagine myself just devouring books and ideas out in the wild.
Awesome. Let's go to another place now. Gentle power, go to a place 12 months from today. A miracle has happened in your world. It may be professional, maybe its personal. But it's undeniably a miracle. It's something that up until this moment you may even deem “impossible.” It's something that's been beyond you. Maybe even beneath you. It’s something that you haven't even thought that you could amount to in the next year. What would be that miracle? If it took place, no one on earth could deny that Gentle Power was alive in the world.
The immediate thought that came to mind is that I've been emailing back and forth with Ev Williams the founder of Twitter. I know he's generally interested in Sublime and what we're doing but my immediate thought is that he is on our board. I don't need to deal with VCs, but rather just one partner who believes in this mission and can be my thought partner through this. Somebody that I respect who also gives this whole life project legitimacy. We've been corresponding but it feels far-fetched, but maybe it’s possible.
⑧ Action
Okay, beautiful. Let's go to one last place now. If there is an action you could take, whether it's in the next day, the next hour, or the next week, what would that action be? It may be an action that you've never thought of before. But by taking the action, you would consecrate Gentle Power into existence and put it in motion.
There's one difficult conversation I need to have with somebody in my team that I would like to approach with both softness and power. So that's my initial instinct. There's somebody in the team that I have to confront, very gently, and very simply. It’s like ‘Do you want to be here?’ I've been delaying that.
We are coming to the end of the simulation. This is an opportunity to thank whoever you need to thank. Whether it's yourself, someone in your life, a loved one, a higher power or maybe it's God himself, herself, or whatever it is that you feel connected to. Thank whoever you need to thank that Gentle Power has been alive and real in your world all along. It was real in the past, it’s real in the present and it’s real in the future you are stepping into. Who do you need to thank for the miracle that’s alive in you right now? You can do so internally or aloud, it’s really up to you.
Yeah, I'll take a moment internally.
⑨ Integration
We're at the final stages of the simulation. Is there anything else that is left on your heart that you want to share?
I feel very powerful. A lot of contradictions and tension I've been feeling have just come from a mindset of needing to find an answer and it’s zero-sum. I've heard the word power so many times in the last couple of minutes. I just feel very powerful inhabiting that tension. I can approach that tension sitting in my power.
If you could describe what this experience was for you, simulations as a practice or process or even a technology, what would it be?
It's just a guided way to more meaningfully engage with yourself. I'll never forget the words Gentle Power. They say books don't change lives, but sentences do and I think conversations don't change lives, but specific lines do. It's nice to have that language. and those few words that you can carry with you. I can always ask myself: am I acting as Gentle Power? I really like the focus on arriving at that.
Well then Gentle Power, we're at the end of it now. Thanks for being so courageous in your simulation.
Thanks so much for this experience. It’s been just a wonderful way to step out of my comfort zone. And yeah, I'm just humbled and grateful.