“A disruptor is a person who shakes up or breaks up existing paradigms and offers an alternative to how things are being done. It is often one of the first steps toward making a change within a system; showing where it hasn’t been working and offering an alternative.
What comes next is the staying power to implement the shifts, not just another bright idea for how things can be done differently, not a theory, but an action plan. The challenge is that many ideas of disruption in the corporate arena are based in models of greed over goodness – more of a competitive tactic than a real innovation that brings about a much needed evolution.
I am speaking of disruptor at the level of consciousness, how you think, instead of what products you make. More of a headset than an industry innovation. I know it has so many different meanings in the ‘business industry’, what it is and what it isn’t, but let’s look at it as an archetype that someone is called to that allows for them to be more and more who they are. In my opinion, a disruptor is a much needed archetype for the coming days of 2020 – yet the ones we need now, are those who have something besides profit on their minds. The disruptors I know rarely think about whether or not what they are called to do makes economic sense – we move from the gut fueled by the heart because we KNOW change needs to happen.
Sure we need to finance the revolution, but in my experience, the revolution finances itself if the disruptor is bringing the truth others so badly long to be a part of. My call is for each of us to think about what in our lives needs to be disrupted, and be willing to do the work to make it happen. My entire life has been based on this idea of shaking up what no longer serves me and my kin and offering new approaches. Of course, that brings us right into conscious co-creation. I am also reticent to spend my time breaking apart old systems, preferring instead to provide a parallel path, an alternate possibility…
When we go to the United Nations each year to offer Intentional Creativity, people often ask, Who pays for our trip? Did we do a fund-raiser or get government funding? I say something like, ‘While we do have a 501c3, we are self-funded through actual offerings that benefit the community.’ Then they want to know HOW we do that. That is why this year at UNCSW we will be teaching our innovative approach to business to empower the women who serve to see their work in a new way.”
~ Shiloh Sophia
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”― Buckminster Fuller
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep!”
~ Rumi
Dear One,
I love getting up before the morning light. Waking in the darkness. Today waking to the sound of rain on the roof. Sounds like a herd of tiny horses racing towards home. I too am racing towards home. Trying to find my place and space in the world as it feels as if everything is shape-shifting. What I think is one thing, becomes another. For those of us in the United Kingdom and the United States, the ground beneath our feet feels as if it is moving, or so it feels to many of us – no matter what your political affiliation may be. Nations that feel divided against themselves create such turbulence in the field – but then it has been this way for a long time.
So finding one’s own place in the world feels essential for being grounded, when everything else is moving around you. That is why I get up before the light. To sit in my own space, and find my place before the day rises in full color. I find my own color first within myself which helps me to prepare to greet the world.
My teacher, Sue Hoya Sellars used to talk about our body being, our ‘cosmic address’. So this morning as I connect with my own cosmic address, I think of you. The global community, people along my red thread….and I send you love. Pure and simple and true. Wherever you are, love is coming to you.
One of the other ways I stay oriented to the the happenings around me in the world is my understanding of myself as essentially, a rebel and disruptor of systems. My mother Caron told me that my desire for Freedom and Justice has been with me since I was a little girl. I rebelled against systems early, one of my very first poems was about identifying the false systems I was seeing. Calling them out.
When I stepped out of feeing like I needed to belong to places and people that felt foreign to me, I moved into being a dissenter. So this goes way back for me. I started changing things in my high school through being on the student body as president, joining the debate team, challenging norms and formed my first club, The Rage Club calling the outcasts to gather. I refused to wear the short shorts for volleyball and had to ‘fight’ for my right for different shorts where our ass wasn’t hanging out. Little efforts which lead to bigger efforts at freedom.
Ya. This goes way back. I am pretty sure the Cosmic Cowgirls course Legend is the continuation of the Rage Club. A place where those who don’t fit anywhere else can come together and laugh our asses off about it.
According to The Economist, “the idea of disruptive innovation is the most influential business idea of the 21st century. Coined in 1995 by American academic and business consultant Clayton M Christensen, the idea of disruptive innovation has been applied to a diverse set of industries both in modern society and historically.
To be a disrupter is to create a product, service, or way of doing things which displaces the existing market leaders and eventually replaces them at the helm of the sector. Disruptors are generally entrepreneurs, outsiders, and idealists rather than industry insiders or market specialists. Disruptors are often linked to the fast moving technology industry but can be found in almost any area of business.” https://www.businessleader.co.uk/what-is-a-disruptor/52464/
This poem and Red Thread Letter is an invitation to consider being a disruptor in your own life. It isn’t really that much of a battle cry, it is a call, I think, gentle but true – to those of us who aren’t happy with how things are going to show up and change how something works. To allow that feeling in our bones to rise up and direct us. For you, what does being a disruptor look like? Feel like? What systems do you want to disrupt? Or what stories in your own life that are in need of shaking up?
When I searched the word on the web, most of the information was connected to corporate ideas – but I know better. I feel disruptor in my bones. I pour it with my daily cup of tea in the red thread cafe. I may not be able to change everything in the world, but I can certainly change my own framework and share that shift with others in my circle. And run my businesses in a way that is divergent from the norm. And, I do. When traditional business support systems look at how we work, it makes no sense to them…you mean…you don’t have set hours? You mean the staff chooses what they work on? You mean, people can request what they need to get paid and pick their own titles? Ya. That is what I mean.
Here are a few ways I have been disruptive and rebellious in my own life….there is more but here are a few cherished ideas….
instead of trying to be accepted in high school, I formed a club of outcasts, artists and nerds, we made art and practiced walking without apology through the halls.
instead of being ashamed of my ‘outlaw’ family, lesbians, drug dealers and tarot readers, I made a legend about them and included it as part of my own legend.
I quit art school and opened my own gallery down the street and they came to my gallery on a field trip – take that establishment!
when I got my first big book deal, I turned it down because they 1. wanted all future books. 2. wanted me to remove nipples from my drawings of women. I have been self publishing since my twenties
I don’t run my business based on traditional models or structures, I run it right form my heart, then discover the logic based on beauty instead of profit first.
I use art, poetry, and painting to heal physical, emotional and spiritual challenges, and invite others to do the same as a path before traditional or western models of healing
my educational curriculum is rooted in the idea we all have our own content – many curriculums don’t teach people to think and source for themselves, yet that is what mine is all about. I am not hooking you into my ideas as the way – but inviting you to your own.
Your disruptor’s creed will different than mine – and I hope it does – what does yours sound like? Today mine is a call to those who are other disruptors.
I dare you to taken 15 whole minutes to make contact with that part of you and see what arises…You could begin with a list like what I created above about ways you have been disruptive, and then see what comes through…
Sending love on a raindrop from my home to yours,
The term “disruptor” has developed a unicorn status – Forbes Magazine
Here we are at Musette in Tiburon last weekend, painting roses, sipping rose’ and having a fabulous time! Dates for 2020 Musette events to be announced soon!
