Embrace Your Inner Shaman

Recently, I was catching up with an arts podcast on the BBC (called "Strong Message Here"), which took a summer break and filled the time with a few episodes that had suggestions on how we should fill our summer culturally, with book recommendations, plays, and such.

One of which talked about Dr Manvir Singh's book Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. Now, let's be clear, I haven’t read this book, but in the recommendation, they discussed how, through the ages, a shaman has been someone who differentiates themselves from the tribe.

They take the mind-altering substance, behave eccentrically (although of course, not so differently that they get rejected by the tribe), live on the edge of the village, wear a big hat, decorate their bodies, and you know, generally cultivate that image of a shaman you have in your mind.

While being a shaman has a lot of upside, in terms of respect and influence, you can imagine that being a shaman is not doing the comfortable thing. I’m assuming that the morning after an evening of visions from getting fucked up on ayahuasca has its downsides, as does living in a hole in the ground on the edge of the village.

Yes, I am demonstrating I have done no research into shamanism, and I have definitely not read this book, and I hope this doesn’t offend anyone who is into shamanism.

This idea has conflated in my mind with the notion that people, companies, and specifically sales and marketing teams succeed, differentiate themselves, and gain respect and trust by doing, like the shaman, the difficult or uncomfortable things that their competitors won’t do.

How many times have the modern shamans here on this platform, like your Gary Vees, and countless others, stated something that you think is bleedin’ obvious, and you wonder why they got the attention? Or maybe it’s that person who got that job. Or perhaps you cast envious eyes toward a competitor’s quirky marketing campaign.

The difference is, of course, that they did the uncomfortable thing, with no regard for whether someone like you would think they are a bit of a cock, they shared that idea, put their hand up, and took a punt. While you (or, OK, we, me, whatever) sat back comfortably on the bleachers, someone took to the plate and swung, risking a miss.

Yes, a baseball reference there, for cricket, swap “bleachers” for “beer tent” and “plate” for “crease”. I don’t know much about cricket watching either, but since it takes place on an English field, I assume there is a beer tent.

You could have done that.

I've found that Ann Handley, the guru of business writing, often refers to the discomfort of her craft. In researching this, I found this article by her that concludes with:

“Because quite often, when something scares you, it’s the very thing worth doing”.

Which is, of course, true; you don’t learn anything, stand out, appear distinct, get that job, have a successful marketing campaign, a memorable brand, win a client, make any progress, or even post a half-arsed thought every Tuesday without a frisson of fear.

There is also an AI aspect to this, as we are increasingly reaching for the AI easy button to do the uncomfortable things, from sales prospecting to the “creative”, which comes across as inauthentic to the audience, and we avoid actually growing or learning anything from doing the thing that scares us.

People value the human friction, the fact that you did the thing while feeling uncomfortable; they understand what it took to be, to use the Julia Roberts line from Notting Hill, “just a girl standing in front of a boy asking you to love her”.

So, I think going forward, to be trusted, we will need to prove that there is a human in this interaction, and quite possibly an uncomfortable one, who's feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Maybe I’ve digressed into a rabbit hole of AI (haven't we all?), but AI or not, unless you put yourself, your brand, or your work out there, how will people know you are a bit shaman?