This post first appeared in the Warrior. Every Day. LinkedIn Newsletter on June 27, 2022.
Over the last few weeks, I covered the Seven Warrior Principles. A curious individual popped in my DMs and asked how I developed these. Well, my friend, some of my biggest aha moments have come from complete strangers.
Storytime 📖
I wandered into a Clubhouse room about building your personal brand about a year or so ago. The coach was pretty insightful. In a moment of courage, I raised my virtual hand to ask a question. The struggle I was having with my Warrior Unleashed brand was connecting the dots between my performance coaching and my other content on business education. A mindset shift is great, but it becomes internalized when we take action.
Essentially, my challenge was drawing the line from mindset to action. He asked me one simple question. Do you have an acronym for warrior? All the alarms went off. In three seconds, this stranger brought me awesome clarity. Then he told me that’s all I get for free. If I need help with the rest, I would have to pay him. I 💯 respected that.
When the room ended, I immedatiately grabbed a pack of post-its and poster paper to craft the seven warrior principles. I weaved together what I learned about warriors, humans, life, different philosophies, success, etc. It’s like the answers had been waiting for the question. Within six weeks, I had the words and defintions.
Here is a summary of the Seven Warrior Principles.
Wealth
#Wealth means different things to everyone. Financially it means you have more than you owe. It can also include health, friends, happiness, or whatever is important to you. To the warrior, wealth is having the resources you need to create the life you want.
Regardless of how you define wealth, as a warrior you marshal the resources in the right way to help you create a full life experience that brings you joy and harmony. Take a moment to consider what is most important to you and what are the things you’re doing to incorporate them into your life. To be of service doesn’t mean you have to be broke. You can get paid for your gift (just like the man from storytime).
The best asset to creating the life you want is between your ears. If you’re wondering how to capitalize on your expertise, take my FREE mini-masterclass, the Freelance + Consulting Quick Start. I share my biggest mistakes so you can avoid them.
Awake
Warriors inhabit all the rooms of their life, even the ugly ones. You choose to view your life as something to create, continue to explore, and make your own. In the same way a homeowner maintains, repairs, and upgrades their house, you are constantly on a quest to improve life for yourself and others on your terms and according to your purpose and gifts.
We are meant to become awake in our lives and to always be #learning. The mid-life crisis is a myth. The chakra system originated between 1500 and 500 BC when human life expectancy was between 30 and 45 years. The seventh chakra develops around that time. It is ‘I know’ or the crown chakra representing wisdom. It is a natural life reflection point. But some random guy proclaimed the natural progression of human awareness is a midlife crisis and gave generations of people a complex. 🤦🏽
Raison d’Etre
Reason for being. Yes, they both start with ‘R’, and I could’ve used English. But I have a flair for the dramatic and I love French. 🗼
If you’re feeling like you’re not sure what is next for you, but you know you are meant to be going somewhere, I have good news for you. That tug you feel is your #purpose calling you to it. The not-so-good news is it may not be clear to you today what that is or how to get there. So you may feel stuck. I think we sometimes think our purpose is solely about what we do for a living rather than what we do to live. To be stuck means that you are being held in place by an immovable external force. The truth is you’re being kept in place by a movable internal force, your mindset.
The radical and inconvenient truth is you’re not stuck, you’re still. A step in any direction is a step in the right direction.
Replenish
One of the oddest rituals in America is to compete with one another on the basis of being busy and not sleeping. As a warrior, you are committed to your complete well-being. Your take time to restore physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. You don’t view a lack of sleep or rest as a badge of honor, you see it as an impedance to success.
Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and all-around media mogul, passed out at her desk in 2017 from exhaustion. She committed to getting more rest and her business began to flourish. She details her journey and the importance of #sleephealth in her book, The Sleep Revolution. When we’re well-rested we can be more creative and problem-solve better. We are more available for collaboration and building relationships. It gives our brains an opportunity to process information to learn and grow.
You can keep making excuses for why you can’t unplug and enjoy the weekends, take a vacation, or not answer emails after a certain time. You can continue to burn your candle at both ends and run on fumes. But a warrior understands that wars are won in the space between battles when they can rest, celebrate, and calibrate. And it is a key to success.
Invictus
This one is my favorite 😄. Invictus is Latin for unconquered. I don’t know if you know this, but I am a University of Michigan alumna, and I love the Wolverines 💛💙 #goblue. They are a storied football program that has been chronicled in documentaries and is an exceptional academic institution. One Saturday after a particularly rough loss, I was being trolled by fans of the other school who shall not be named. My post read ‘we lost, but we are not defeated’. The person missed the point completely and said ‘aren’t those the same things’?
No, I don’t believe they are. One battle lost battle does not a war make. This is embedded in the Michigan culture and we are reminded of it in our fight song, Hail to the Victors, and in a single sentence emblazoned in the Big House locker room – Those Who Stay Will Be Champions. #iykyk
Invictus helps the warrior overcome the fear of loss. The brain is set up with a negativity bias. Its primary role is to keep us alive, so it’s constantly scanning for danger (loss) and discouraging change. The brain doesn’t care if the change serves you. It doesn’t like change. And we go through the day having that fear intentionally triggered resulting in us shrinking away from the moment.
On November 27, 2021, we beat our rivals after eight straight years of losing because coach Jim Harbough, released his fear of what he could lose, so he could focus on what he could win. And win he did, Coach of the Year.
Are you playing to win or not to lose? It takes #grit and #perseverance.
Original
We all have gifts. There is nothing like that feeling when you align to your gift, and the world opens up. Warriors embrace themselves in all of their splendor. They aren’t content to merely fit in. They want to come out! Ditch the imposter syndrome and #beyourself.
A warrior understands that their uniqueness is their contribution to humanity. Using their gifts to serve others is the rent we pay for taking up space on Earth. And as I said in the first warrior principle, wealth, sharing your gift doesn’t mean going broke. Not only is humanity meant to benefit from your gift, but so are you.
Don’t be shy about using your superpower to create a #personalbrand to power your personal economy. As Diana Ross said, there’s a new me coming out and I’ve just got to shout.
Reverent
Reverence encompasses a broad swath, I focused primarily on the value of respect to give you an understanding of how our values weave into our everyday lives. The other six warrior principles must pass through the gate of the seventh. The seventh chakra that we discussed as part of the Awake principle represents wisdom. Through life experiences, we reach the third-eye chakra, where we view the world with a different sense. The same is true for the Warrior Principles. As you grow and experience the outer world, it will shape your inner world.
I encourage you to write down your critical values, these will become your warrior ethos. It can be more than three. These will become your warrior ethos. The top three values are your heart virtues. You may feel the angriest or triggered when one of these is violated.
My virtues are #justice, #courage, #loyalty, and all are based on #respect. What are your virtues and values?
