Journey to ‘The Nomadic Mindset’ …

After having a most incredible time over the past 8 months of doing research on my next leadership book, The Nomadic Mindset – The Mindset of the Future, I have begun Phase 2 of the Journey – ‘Culling, Choosing, Confirming Content’.

If you have followed or not, you can still follow the images and videos of the locations that I have been visiting for my field research as well as work at the Nomadic Mindset website. This will continue and this will eventually become the online course.

This time has given me a profoundly different sense of being, not only because of the intense and marvelous travel, or of the subject matter, but it has changed my viewpoint of this world on multiple levels of entry.

The Internal Shift to find Purpose

The first stop to ‘Culling, Choosing, Confirming Content’ is a purpose. It is very vogue today to constantly talk about ‘finding your purpose’ whether it be in the corporate environment as an organization or the people inside or your personal environments. What is your purpose? Are you still on the road to find it?

From my experience, the nomads I have spent time with, have their purpose. It comes down to ‘survival’ which means many things and they include – clans or tribes, families, culture, their livestock/animals, nature, food, just being. They are also changing as the world is and as you are personally, I suspect.

I think the greatest part of this journey so far is the internal shift of finding a new authentic purpose or perhaps direction or reason for being, to lead my life from and to. It is kind of like growing the roots of the acacia tree which holds this magical tree and stands out independently watching over the desert or grasslands of Africa in a truly majestic and calm way.

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Running away from? Or to!

Have you ever thought beyond and realized your real purpose? For some years now, I have had this inner struggle between where am I going and what am I doing and how can I contribute more profoundly to this world.

I felt I was running away from something and there was this inner instability that was not aligning all my thoughts when the whole time it was sitting there waiting for me to awaken to it. In fact, I am now running to it and that is accepting and allowing that the nomad within accepts my nomadic mindset. I was trying to ‘fit in’ to what others feel and say ‘I should do or be’ and that somewhere down inside never really landed – for too long! I could not settle for too long with these ways of being. Have you ever had that feeling?

Sharing my Reflections on my Purpose

With all of this journey business, please let me share with you what I can sense so far is happening within me and perhaps that can assist you on your journey. Also, bare with me as I attempt to put them into words. They are in no specific order. I do feel this may sound very personal, however, in a leadership position, it is the same for you personally as well as your organization. The caveat to this is that it is an ongoing process. Yeah, the Journey continues.

What I have learned and continue to learn,

  1. A deeper understanding of humanity from looking at the world from the point of view of the nomads in the great expansiveness we call nature as well as the settlers and nesters who are existing in concrete urbanized jungles.
  2. A clearer realization that I sense humanity has lost the plot on many things in life, especially when it comes to being human in its full capacity.
  3. Why do we do what we do and why we think the way we do.
  4. The belief that we all have three typologies of a nomad, settler, and nester living within us and that we have a dominance for one more than the other. For me, I am definitely a nomad at heart and I am now owning this from the heart as a brand which is transforming my conversations, language, relationships, views of the world and more. Before, I was always running from it and often I would think what am I running from and to where, for what? Well, this calling became so great that I finally accepted it and allowed it to happen and wow this is like a new awakening of feeling great from inside out. It is a brave new world for me. What about you?
  5. I want to dedicate my life now to the understanding how we can more deeply understand the nomadic mindset as well as the other settle and nester mindsets so that we can get back the plot of where we are headed on this earth.
  6. There is a clear need to educate the nomads in this world as they struggle to have their children go to school. It is my goal to support financially, spend time with the nomads in different regions of the world and help make a difference of connecting the real urbanized world with the nomad within us all.
  7. To continue to travel every year to a nomadic culture somewhere in the world and learn from them and their ways of life and then how can we use them as a metaphor for seeing our world and live it more purposefully and responsibly.
  8. Get very clear about life, my possessions, the clients I want, my relationships I want to have, finances, even the emails addresses that I want to have. It is a complete cleansing and clarity which will happen over time. As the nomads told me,    
‘You can’t put the whole camel in the pot at the same time, only piece by piece.’

 

As I begin this ‘Culling, Choosing, Confirming Content’ journey of Phase 2, I invite you to follow along this journey no matter what roles you play in life because for me we are all leaders, it just depends on your viewpoint of the world and this is your mindset which leads to your beliefs and behaviours. I trust along the way you will also allow your purpose to unfold and accept this as who you are and why do you want you or your organization to be.

Kevin Cottam, the Global Nomad

If you are rather a visual person, here is my latest video on the Nomadic Mindset YouTube channel. And if you like it, you can subscribe at the end of the video so that you don’t miss any new one. Happy Chinese New Year!