AriKoinuma.com

at my current job.

I worked as a web developer at a very well-respected non-profit organization for the past year. It’s been a terrific job and I learned a lot. I had a nice cushy office and work was fun and rewarding.

But in other ways, it was the last straw. It was particularly fun the first 3 months or so when I was learning the job and its new tools, but after a while I felt disillusioned. If a job this good can’t satisfy me, I thought, I am never going to be happy being an employee anywhere.  I am so much more than this job, and on some occasions I tried to make that known to my company, yet they had no way of taking advantage of everything I had to offer.  So I stayed in my box and focused on fulfilling the expected role, and no more.

In some ways, I can’t believe I’m leaving it all behind (well, even if I wanted to hang on to it, I can’t — the choice to leave wasn’t really mine, as they didn’t find money to extend my initial 1-year contract). I’m leaving the predictable comfort of a square office, diving head first into the wide open arms of uncertainty. It’s just a hunch but I just feel something very final about this, that this is going to be an end of an era in my life.

I am 35 years old, and I have done much growing. Though I can’t explain why or how, I feel that “my time” has come. It’s not that I’m finished growing and changing, but this is going to be the time where the full extent of my potential is going to start materializing.  Self actualization is in progress — and it’s about time.

Last night I was telling my homeopath Kate Birch about this and she mentioned the quote below. Nelson Mandela really touches on the heart of the matter here. I am going to stop shrinking myself to make me fittable to my surroundings. I am going to stretch my wings out fully, and remove the restraint.

I’m still so cautious and hesitant about unleashing myself, but somewhere deep, deep inside, I feel a current of joy. I never knew that I possessed such beautiful wings, nor did I have any idea how big and mighty they are.  I’m shivering with excitement to finally set them free and find out what they can really  do.

I still don’t know how to fly, but I will learn. Quickly.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
–Nelson Mandela

I’ve been under much stress this week. Over the weekend I decided to live true to my intuition and since then I’ve been dealing with the full-on terror (that’s what it feels like to me!) of what it’s like to make decisions without knowing the reasons why.

I tell you, I never knew that I relied so much on knowing how my actions are justified.

On Monday, I got a very strong sense that I needed to buy a new digital camera for my business.  Not just a point-and-shoot, but a digital SLR.

What?

I’m going to be in MUSIC business, you know.

So I kept questioning myself.  I began looking on eBay but what I saw didn’t comfort me — they cost more than what I feel comfortable to pay for a piece of equipment I don’t know why I need it.

But the voice inside my head was telling me not to delay, to act now.  I said, no, I don’t wanna.

By last night, I was starting to feel a knot in my stomach.  I felt a sickness coming on. Only after 2 days of resiting my intuition.

So I finally gave in.  Last night I placed an order on an older Canon.

As soon as I hit the order button — my deed was done, I can’t take it back any more — I immediately felt a tremendous sense of relief.  I may not be able to tell you the reason why, but I know I made the right decision. It’s possible that in 3 months I’m going to sell it, but buying it now was something I needed to do.

I also know that had I continued resisting my intuition, I would be home sick today.

I firmly believe that an illness is an indication of a deeper inbalance in your system — not just physical, but mental and spiritual as well.  A person who’s self-actualized, having the time of his/her life, doesn’t get sick.  But a person who’s suppressing deeper problems also doesn’t get sick — well, they do, but not sick enough to make them stop and reflect.  And the latter is very dangerous.  I have seen people who were known to be healthy go-getters all the sudden develop major illnesses like cancer and die young.

Bob Proctor says in the movie the Secret that disease is dis-ease, your body not at ease.

I may have increased my family’s financial risk last night, but my body is more at ease today. That’s gotta be an indication of something.

was to marry my wife.

Last night I was telling her about how afraid I was about moving forward with my decision to pursue my own business. I told her that I was afraid of spending money to buy the things I “need” for my business. I am afraid of losing money, and I hate spending money in general because of it.

She looked at me and said “you’re saying that to hold yourself back.”

Just like that, with a single sentence she cut through to the heart of the issue. I was letting my fear get in my way again, but that one line cleared up so much — I immediately felt freed and empowered to continue following my intuitions and make bold choices to pursue my (and my family’s) success.

My wife is one of the smartest and most able people I’ve ever seen. She seems to have the midas touch — there’s nothing she can’t do, from cooking to teaching to singing to writing. Plus, she’s deeply intuitive and has an amazing ability to cut through BS and get to the very core of the matter.

She was really my first-ever girlfriend, when we started dating at the ripe old age of 19 (me) and 18 (her). But it felt so good that immediately I started wondering if this was the person I was going to marry.

The first 10 years of marriage was rocky and I spent a lot of the times questioning that decision. But it seems that with time, I wonder less and less and realize how right I was to marry her. I’d like to think that it’s a sign of good marriage when it keeps getting better.

I guess I was hearing my intuition when I wondered if this was the person I was going to marry shortly after we started dating. I’m glad I listened.

Ever since I decided to follow my intuition, each day brings a new revelation.  Here’s the run down:

Friday night – Saturday morning: I’m not going to get a job, instead rent a studio and make music.

Saturday: I need to tell my wife about my decision. (I did, and I secured the studio rental that night.)

Sunday: First, I’m going to make children’s music. (I planned on making the second album for my modern rock project first)

Monday: And I need to buy a used digital SLR camera.  (What?  WHAAAT?)

I’ve been through changes before, and often they occur fast and intensely, but each time it’s a deeply unsettling experience.  Somewhere inside me, way down in the stomach area, I feel my core shaking, trembling with fear.  With each instruction from the voice in my head, I’m being steered into an uncharted course, one contradictory from my previous plan.  And if you asked me why — I can’t explain it to you.

I never realized the foundation of logic and reason meant so much to me.  I always knew that I was an intuitive person but never knew that my adherence to reason was the cause of my wrestling with myself.

But through it all, somewhere even deeper than my fear, I also have this sense that this is exactly how I knew it would go, and that I am doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.  As long as I don’t panic, as long as I don’t give in to my voice of fear — I can steer ourselves through this transition, and everything is going to turn out OK. I’ve done it before.

When my wife was pregnant with our second child, her midwife realized that her blood pressure was too high about four weeks before the due date.  Not life-threateningly high, but high enough to endanger the plan to give birth at home — something my wife felt very strongly about.   We had the fear that somehow going to the hospital to give birth would be a tremendous disappointment, ruining the special event we looked forward to.

We were shaking with fear of what might happen then, but again, deep down I felt that it was going to turn out OK, and that the situation was not as bad as our fear told us so.  So I stayed calm and optimistic, and did my best not to act out of my fear.  My wife stayed in bed for four weeks, I juggled work and all the household chores.  And in the end — everything went just fine, and we had a smooth and beautiful home birth.  We were so proud and relieved.

So, my current situation is new yet familiar.  I know that I am having to face my fear of losing money through this.  There will be a handful of things I have to buy in order to start making music — and most of them un-glamorous tools and supplies, not the fancy equipment and toys I daydreamed about purchasing once I’m in music business.  I’d rather not spend money, I hate shopping.  I fear losing money.  And that’s precisely why I’m going on this seemingly impossible mission.  Start making music, and somehow keep us afloat.

I’m particularly scratching my head about the camera.  It’s like being given a tool — like a pair of pliers — and being told that it’s going to be useful soon, except I don’t know what I’m going to use it for, what’s going to be broken.  But the other sense I have is that I need to be quick and decisive.  If I postpone my actions too long, fear would build up and cloud up my vision.

I’m going on an intuitive entrepreneurship.  Let’s see where I’m going to lead me.

For the last 4-5 months, I’ve been working on developing my business plan.  I finished it, presented it to a family member to see if he’ll invest some money into it.  He said the amount was not a problem, but he thought I was making a mistake — the move to start my business was too risky, given my financial resource, the current economic climate, and the unproven nature of my proposition.  He thought that while the money I was asking for was not a problem to him, by withdrawing his financial support, he wanted to discourage me from moving forward with this erroneous decision.  He said that I can come to him when the business ideas are a little more tested and the economy is a little better, and then he’ll be happy to support me.

I thanked him for his opinion, and thought about what he said.

I’ve been working as a web developer for the past year.  I was hired with a one-year contract with the intention to make me a permanent employee.  But that plan was scrapped because of the current recession.

While I was working, I was testing the waters on professional blogging, and developing my business plan.  This job, in a lot of ways, was the last straw for me.  It’s a terrific job at a terrific company.  I have a fabulous private office and respect of all my colleagues.  For the first 3 months or so, I was so happy here that I thought perhaps I was to just pursue a career here.  Then things went sour — nothing really major happened, but after the initial learning and discovery period of the new job ended, I was back to the same old doldrums.  I felt disillusioned.  If a job this good cannot satisfy me, then I really have no choice but go off on my own.

Not that my entrepreneurial ambition was something new.  I’ve wanted to make music for a living ever since I was 17.  I’ve spent the last 18 years trying to figure out in what form I could do that.  It’s been a lot of dead ends and beating my head on walls, and each time I’d question myself — maybe I’m not meant to do this — only to come back to that same desire after a while and trying a different angle, a new approach at it.

Then this weekend, my wife and I were talking.  She’s been reading books on intuition, and she shared with me that her body experiences conflict and stress when she has an intuition about what to do but not strong enough to go with it.

Then we went on to discuss the truth of who we are.  She and I do a lot of hiding and telling different, partial versions of the truth.  We’re both trying to protect the truth when we’re with people with whom we feel vulnerable.  I know, for example, that I don’t discuss my music with most people at my employer.  It’s not that I think everybody else is malicious and cynical.  But when I’m at a day job, I feel that it’s more appropriate to pretend that my job is my real career, and that if I mention music at all, I make it sound as if it’s a casual pursuit, a mere hobby.  Even on my own personal growth blog, I didn’t really mention my music a whole lot in the beginning.

Why?  Because I was afraid — I was protecting my truth of who I am from being challenged, because fundamentally, there’s no rhyme or reason for who I am.  There is no logic and no justification for wanting to do what I want. I can’t explain to you why I love making music so much. I can’t explain to you why I want to make it my livelihood, when so many other people desire to but fail to do so.   I have no justification — no proof that I am exceptionally talented or that people desire what I do enough to pay me.  And logically speaking, the chance of me failing or not being able to make it my livelihood is so high.  So I hid the truth.  I’ve never given myself full permission to go for it.

The truth is that I want to make music. All the business plans and trying to borrow money and everything else, I was doing to justify my truth. And so far all attempts to do so have failed.

I’ve always been an intuitive person.  There are times when my fear and other strong emotions cloud and confuse my “gut” feeling, but they are more of exceptions than norm.  I always know what I’m supposed to do.  I consider my intuition my hotline to God.  But despite believing that, I used to ignore it most of the time.  Why? Because I cannot justify it with reason.  If I make an intuitive decision, and if someone asks me why I did it, I wouldn’t be able to explain why.  My intuition never made any sense to me. I’ve made efforts to be better in the last 2-3 years, but my batting average is still like 50%.

I don’t know about you, but I feel that we live in a deeply left-brained world.  We’re supposed to plan, analyze, prove, and maximize based on mathematical logic.  It’s not efficient otherwise, it’s not predictable, it’s not explicable.

The next morning, I woke up very early and pondered our discussion.  It felt like sky was opening up, but I also felt deeply unsettled and scared.  Over the years, I’ve diligently purged a lot of my fears.  I have felt that I was getting close to a major break through, and I knew this was it.  But it was terrifying.

Then I had a hunch to go check my Google Reader.  I did, and I ran into this post.

There was no doubt in my mind.  I knew what I needed to do.

I’m going to make music.

I don’t have the financial support I sought with my business plan.  And according to my own plan, there’s no way I can start making enough profit to stay afloat within 3-4 months, when our savings will run out.  I don’t know how this is going to work out.  I don’t know how it can.

But I’m going to stop looking for a new job, rent a studio and start making music.  Because my intuition tells me to do so.  And for no other reason.

I told my decision to my wife.  She said, “OK.  Good luck.” 

I am an intuitive person, always have been.  And that day, I decided to surrender to my intuition.  I will no longer argue with it or resist it.  I will stop looking for justification, or reasons why.   I’m just going to do it.

I’m going to be me, because this is who I am. No other reason.