Do you believe in the Source?
An infinite field of ideas that is accessible to everyone
We ran our second Gatherings Of The Elfs yesterday, a free online event where people get a chance to learn how to create from your inner, honest voice that is 100% you, and how to access the Source, which is often described as an infinite field of ideas that is accessible to everyone.
Do you have to believe in the Source to see it working? No, not really.
But it’s what sooo many musicians, creatives, and artists talk about when they say that what they created felt more like a discovery, or it was channeled through them. And if you’re in the right headspace, you can become an antenna to receive these ideas. And you’ll hear a lot of songwriters, just as an example, saying that the entire idea for the song, including the melody, just appeared in their mind all in one go.
Paul McCartney woke up one morning with the melody of Yesterday already finished in his head, went straight to the piano, and then spent weeks playing it to everyone he knew and asking whether they recognised it, because he was convinced he must have heard it somewhere and accidentally stolen it. He called it Scrambled Eggs until the actual words turned up. Yet, it is important to also mention that Paul McCartney just sat around and waited; quite the contrary, he had already written hundreds of songs before that particular morning, which matters, and I will come back to it.
But this is not limited to songwriting or music.
This applies to any creative expression as a founder, creator, and builder (doesn’t matter what “role” you have; we are all builders, creators, and artists - just different costumes).
BUT you gotta do the work, e.g., from 10 am to 1 pm every day, no matter what, to receive these ideas. It’s like what Rick Rubin said: you are a fisherman, and you’re out at sea, and you’re casting the lines into the water for a chance to catch something. And if you weren’t out there, well, the fish might still be there, but you don’t have any chance to catch anything if you’re not out there in the first place. (Credit to Jonathan Courtney, who wrote about his own creative practice this week and got me thinking about all of this.)
This is also what got Paul McCartney to receive the melody of “Yesterday” - he had written hundreds of songs before, he did the work, he showed up and kept working - he kept casting the lines in the water.
The Source has nothing to do with talent or sheer chance of luck; it is about availability, to be there when the Source is broadcasting an idea to you, and many more.
That’s one part of the work; the other part is to create from your real, honest voice, and you know exactly the difference. It’s when you talk about something where your WHOLE energy shifts and you speak from a place of excitement, playfulness, and pure uplifting energy; this is when your inner Elf is speaking.
And when the Dwarf is speaking, it’s very serious, produced, calculated, cold, disciplined, and talks almost entirely in shoulds and shouldn’ts.
The Tale of Dwarves and Elfs* (no, not a typo)
Once upon a time there were Dwarves, and the Dwarves became masters of building the world, with discipline and precision, so that if a thing needed making then a Dwarf could make it. Look around at almost anything that exists, and a Dwarf built it.
The Dwarf is not the villain of this story, and I want to be careful about that, because the Dwarf is the reason you have a career and a salary and a reputation and the trust of everybody who relies on you.
There is only one problem with the Dwarf, which is that the Dwarf is led entirely by the mind, and the mind can only ever reason forward from what it already knows, which makes it a magnificent instrument for digging deeper and a completely useless one for asking whether you happen to be in the right mine. So the Dwarf digs, and swings a bit harder, and goes a bit deeper, because that is what always worked before. And when the seam finally runs dry, the Dwarf has no way of knowing, because whether this is still worth doing is not a question the mind knows how to ask. So he carries on, in a mine that gave up its gold years ago.
Justin Davis and I were both in Dwarf mode for a very long time. Either value, self-worth, and happiness rose & fell with the success of our companies, and were defined by titles. Or we lost companies to the Dwarf mode, creating from a place that was not the real us, but from a place that was projected, produced, calculated, controlled, and disconnected. Hard working yes; ambitious yes, but from the place that leads you to burning out and leaving you god damn empty inside.
And then there were Elfs.
The Elfs do one thing differently, which is that before they build, they listen. Not to the mind, which can only work forward from what it already has, but to the heart, which already knows. They work through play and connection and curiosity, and the difference in what comes out the other end is this: the mind builds what it can already imagine, and the heart builds what it cannot yet justify.
Nothing here gets abandoned, by the way. Nobody is being asked to quit their job or to fire the Dwarf, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something worse than we are. The greatest work needs both of them. The only question that has ever mattered is which one of them is leading.
And whatever you are doing, if you create from that real, honest self of yours, that’s just pouring out excitement about what you are doing, you will have the BEST chances to succeed with whatever you are doing. Because THIS real you will carry you a looooong way and will allow you to build up the resistance and perseverance to eat any obstacle/”failure” for breakfast with a big hunger for more.
Because the journey is always longer than we expected, we better create from a place of joy, excitement, and honesty, rather than a place of disconnection, calculation, coldness, and shoulds and shouldn’ts.
Finding that voice, that real, honest you, will get you to create not only the impossible, but also maximise your chance of succeeding in your endeavour and making that unreasonable dream become a reality.
Three common limiting beliefs
These are three of the most common things people tell us when it comes to helping them find their voice and learning how to access the Source to create the impossible.
“I don’t need this, I’m already doing the work on my own”: It was true for me for years, and it’s precisely the problem, because doing it alone was the one thing I never thought to change.
Here’s what I missed for far too long: doing it alone makes the work harder. Much harder.
Showing up consistently is hard when nobody notices whether you did. Nobody’s waiting for you, and nobody asks how the thing is going. So on the days when it would be easier not to, you don’t, and nothing happens, and nobody knows.
And then there’s the part I find even more difficult. Catching yourself mid-sentence and realising that was the Dwarf talking, that was the mind and not the heart, is nearly impossible on your own. You need people who know what your real voice sounds like. People who can hear the shift before you can, and tell you: hang on, you sounded completely different two minutes ago, what happened?
You cannot self-diagnose a blind spot; that’s what makes it blind.
“I don’t have time for creativity and play”: Your inner, honest voice isn’t a work thing, nor a creative hobby you schedule on a Sunday afternoon and then put away.
It’s the same voice that shows up everywhere else in your life. In your career, with your family, with your friends, with your partner. Which means the hour you spend finding it isn’t an hour spent on a side project. It’s an hour spent on the thing that decides how you navigate everything, how clearly you make decisions, how deeply you love, and whether what you build comes from excitement or from obligation.
And if you want the maths: one per cent better every day compounds to thirty-eight times over a year. Zero per cent compounds to exactly what you started with.
Small consistent changes over a year get you way further than you might think - and this is GREAT news
“I’m not a creative person”: Picasso answered this better than I ever could: every child is an artist, and the only real problem is how to remain one once you’ve grown up.
We are all born creators and artists, but for many of us, a mind-focused educational system made us forget that.
Become an Elf
We are kicking off a new programme starting on August 17 at Eleven Dunbar - we are a private community of founders, dreamers, builders, and artists, capped at 150 people.
Our mission is to bring people closer to themselves through creativity and play.
That’s what the programme is built for: to help you find your voice, find your people, and create the impossible. Every week there’s a session where we come back to the honest voice, and another where we make things side by side rather than alone.
You’re paired with a 1:1 Elf accountability buddy who knows what you’re working on and helps you realize when you are in Dwarf-mode, and reminds you of your inner Elf. Every season we bring in visiting artists and practitioners who’ve spent their whole lives working this way. And every quarter there’s an art exhibition, where you show what you made to people who genuinely see it.
We opened 10 new spots for the new cycle starting August 17th; you can read more here: elevendunbar.com
I think I am writing all of this because of two things. Yesterday, hearing people describe out loud to strangers what they wanted to build moved me more than I expected it to. And I am beyond excited to start this in August and to watch a group of us make things from the real version of ourselves, because whatever those things turn out to be, they will sound like you, and that is the only foundation I know of that holds up over the long run.
Joy begets joy. Excitement begets excitement.
Peace out ❤️
(This one arrived mostly on its own. Thank you, Source.)
*Elfs is the plural of eleven in German, and we love that it sounds like elves, who are archetypal beings of creativity, serving as living bridges between nature, magic, and boundless imagination.
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