LLI 54 The Grand Specialization: Mastering the Art of an Ordinary Life

00:00:00: Iteration 54 of the Love Louder podcast, Iteration's Unbecoming Human.

00:00:07: The name is telling and so is the podcast.

00:00:10: It is a process and right now we're in a bit of a tender space where we just sit with

00:00:17: what there is.

00:00:19: So I think I got something wrong with specialization.

00:00:25: And I want to elaborate on that.

00:00:31: What we usually think about specialization is that we pick a certain niche, a certain

00:00:38: subject and then we study it until we cannot anymore.

00:00:45: This is usually the character of choosing a career, choosing a profession.

00:00:52: You choose one path and you stick with it and you do not look left.

00:00:57: All right.

00:00:59: Now this is only one aspect of specialization and let's call it the small specialization.

00:01:09: Now what is the big one?

00:01:12: What is it that just came to me after recording the last episode?

00:01:16: So it's really iterative here.

00:01:18: It's really become from episode 50 on there's something else emerging.

00:01:23: Let's find that out.

00:01:26: Specialization in itself, it implies that we have to pick something and it is special.

00:01:34: And this is a notion that we can find very often in especially Western culture that we

00:01:41: have to be special, that we have to stand out, that we have to do something to stand

00:01:48: out, that it is not sufficient for us to be us ourselves, that we have to pick a career,

00:01:59: that we have to pick Elaine, that we have to become the expert, that we have to become

00:02:08: the number one in the field of competition, that we have to be better than the others.

00:02:17: Now first of all, it uses as a baseline comparison, which is very often just a very painful place

00:02:27: to be.

00:02:30: And we know that very well from our private life and from our business life.

00:02:36: When we start to compare, everything goes downhill.

00:02:41: When we start to compare that source of inspiration that we found, for example, a person that

00:02:53: has created something and we look at it and inspires us to do something, when we add comparison

00:03:01: and we cling onto it, it soon becomes a curse, the curse of imitation.

00:03:08: And that's where the specialization meets a dead end, because ultimately we can choose

00:03:17: a field, but we have to add our own essence.

00:03:22: Now this is just part of what I call the grand specialization.

00:03:29: The grand specialization does not make you special in itself.

00:03:36: Yet, it is very special to witness when you meet somebody who's leaned into that.

00:03:47: The grand specialization is the specialization in the ordinary, in the mundane, that is life.

00:03:59: What does it mean?

00:04:06: We bring it down to earth and this is the specialization already, to bring it into the

00:04:17: concrete and you know how delicate the process is of bringing an idea into tangible material

00:04:26: life, making it visible for someone else, for yourself, to be touched, to be heard, to

00:04:36: be felt by our bodies.

00:04:46: If you have ever started a project with an idea that sparked at the beginning and then

00:04:52: you went down and said, "Okay, what needs to be done to achieve that?"

00:04:56: And then in the brainstorming phase you would just find other related ideas and you have

00:05:03: to cut it down and you have to choose a path and then there will obstacles be emerging.

00:05:09: It's a very delicate process of bringing the abstract into this concrete world into life.

00:05:17: This is a specialization that is not very commonly seen yet it is the grand specialization

00:05:26: of diving deeper into humanness of becoming more human, of embracing the pain, of embracing

00:05:39: the pleasure while knowing that it is not what your essence is about yet what you're

00:05:52: ready with it just comes through these how you transform, transcend notions that are

00:06:00: painful.

00:06:01: It's how you go about life.

00:06:05: It's really, really simple.

00:06:09: Now when we talk about relationships, when we talk about business, it always means that

00:06:15: you are as an individual embedded in the collective, in the community.

00:06:22: There is a community around you.

00:06:24: There are people that bug you, that belong to the community too.

00:06:27: There are people that, "Shay, you love, that you love, they are your community too.

00:06:33: Your community is the people that not only you surround yourself consciously with, but

00:06:41: that are connected to you, that popped up around you in this life, in this moment.

00:06:51: The annoying person that just is your neighbor or your colleague belongs to that community

00:07:01: too.

00:07:05: If you want it or not, this makes sense.

00:07:11: That's why it's so crucial to study that ordinariness of our life, not in a sense of, "Hey, who belongs

00:07:22: to that life or not?"

00:07:24: But in a sense of mastering your mind, mastering the mundane.

00:07:37: That's the relationship that you have with yourself and that radiates out into your community,

00:07:48: into every relationship that you are in that you lead.

00:07:52: Be it a client, be a romantic partner, be it your spouse, be it your children, be it

00:07:58: your pet.

00:08:00: How you lead yourself through it.

00:08:07: Having chosen that specialization of the ordinary of life, it has a huge impact on the life

00:08:21: you lead and it is like a paradox because that's the thing how we lead ourselves is

00:08:31: always reflected back to us by our community.

00:08:40: And our community reflects back to us how we lead ourselves.

00:08:47: And then there's this huge realm that we cannot control.

00:08:51: But what we're focusing when we step into our own self-leadership, it is practicing

00:09:01: love.

00:09:03: It is practicing love, making way, removing the friction in our bodies for it to flow

00:09:11: through.

00:09:12: That is self-leadership.

00:09:16: And we focus on what we can change and we focus on the decisions that we can make.

00:09:23: And we do forget for a while that every decision was already made that it's not us, the doer,

00:09:33: yet at the same time it's us.

00:09:44: Can you specialize on living a life well lived?

00:09:51: Can you specialize on living a life well lived?

00:10:03: Where you expand your capacity for love, for joy, for laughter, for tears, for the whole

00:10:17: bandwidth of humanity and being able to move freely in that bandwidth to expand it, not

00:10:30: your capacity, but to removing your friction, the friction you impose unconsciously because

00:10:39: you do not want to feel, because you want to avoid that humaneness, you want to avoid

00:10:50: feeling feelings.

00:10:56: And that's just our nature because we choose, we choose, sometimes we choose pain, sometimes

00:11:06: we choose pleasure, sometimes we choose suffering and sometimes we choose devotion.

00:11:23: And here it is, that tug of war, pain of pleasure, of humanness and that what makes us alive

00:11:34: if it wasn't there, we would be dead, wouldn't we?

00:11:47: So I want to encourage you today to find that spark to open,

00:12:04: be open to that peace that pardon you, that really wants to feel that humanness, that wants

00:12:19: to choose this specialization of a life well lived that includes it all, that encompasses

00:12:30: it all, that little part that is sometimes overlooked.

00:12:45: And my invitation for you is to just sit with it, just let it be there when you go about

00:12:57: it this day.

00:13:01: Sometimes you will forget completely and sometimes it's gonna pop up, let it infuse

00:13:07: what you're doing in the current moment when it comes popping up and it doesn't matter

00:13:12: if you're working on your business, if you're writing emails, it doesn't matter if you're

00:13:18: washing the dishes or talking to your spouse.

00:13:26: Be open to the grand specialization of living a life well lived.

00:13:38: Lots of love, Shang.

00:13:40: [BIRDS CHIRPING]