Everyone has a villain. I got acquainted with mine five years ago in a meeting room.
It was a hot summer day, and I was presenting a quarter update about a company we recently acquired. We couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I was showing a PowerPoint filled with data and insights. Suddenly, Mr. Bowser started giving his own vision of the world, not caring about the information I provided. It was like all the job I did with my team was not real, while it was succumbing under a machine gun that fires repeated shots full of convictions taken from who knows what life experience.
Well, this is normal. I mean, critics are the fertilizer for growth. But, believe me, I don’t know if it was for the meeting room hotter than a jalapeño in a taqueria de chiles, but I felt completely blown up. Like a complete idiot, I started ranting about the motivations that made me reach certain conclusions.
I can’t recall too much about the reaction at the table, and I remember people looking at me like you look at a touchy person ranting absurd words to justify his beliefs.
For the first time in my life, my lungs were struggling to pump in and out breaths to make me stay alive, a sensation I was just starting to know.
It is common for people to hold opposing opinions of one another.
Have you ever noticed those people who enter a conversation like they are on a mission to find any speck of diversity, only to react with utter conformity to it? They’re like those picky eaters who claim to love trying new food, but they end up sticking to their plain old cheeseburger every time. And it’s because diverse opinions and perspectives make them uncomfortable.
This is how Mr. Bowser was acting, but I didn’t realize that I vibrated more and more often when I encountered similar reactions from people.
It took me time, but finally, years later, I saw the deep ruts that Mr. Bowser dug in my soul. At the time, I counter-react in the same way: I was on a mission to save my Princess Peach (this is the moment when gaming people must have understood that Mr. Bowser is just a pseudonym) and defeat my villain. My actions were motivated by destruction, not creativity.
Something clicked when I saw the pattern.
Whether you believe it or not, we are the expressions of others’ missed expectations, the strange faces they make. It is always our reaction to events that shapes our way of doing things.
We are continuously stimulated by the faces, reactions and comments that are the feedback we get. But while the thinking process is hidden behind the neocortex, often also to us, the action we take at the moment after is the public image we create for ourselves. Then an action becomes a habit,- while in a vicious circle, people react to our ways. And we are done.
And here is the revelation: what brings us a sense of mission is not what we would like to do but the reaction to how the environment has molded us.
Teaching moment: What is a mission? A mission is a purpose or cause that deeply motivates people to take meaningful actions based on their values and interests. >
My mission is to empower other talents to focus more on creativity and less on destruction. I define this state as Beautyvision—a state in which creativity is freed from the chains of conformity, and people are empowered with a vision of building instead of destroying.
I coined my mission back in 2019, a few months after the event took place. But at the time I was not capable of understanding the connection.
My reaction to Mr. Bowser’s criticism shaped me as a touchy person who desired to destroy whatever he was saying. At the same time, I split up into halves, and it became my mission.
It took five years. That day I was conversing with my psychotherapist about the causes behind my burnout, and she realized a dualism between my reactions to Mr. Bowser and my happiness while speaking about my mission. Simply as it is, she pulled the trigger: “So you want to do the contrary of the deactivation you received for your diversity, you want to elevate others’ talent rather than sink them down to a useless, easy level.”I giggled.
She was right.
At the end of the day, this made me question whether I was simply a product of that moment or if I was more than that.
After delving deeper into introspection, I understood that while external influences shape us, they do not solely define who we are. Imagine our souls being like cymbals that clang not only when struck by the mallets that activate their resonance but also when surrounded by the negative reverberations of challenging experiences.
Here’s another example: imagine people facing repeated setbacks in their careers. While these troubles influence their outlook, they do not mold who they are. Instead, their resilience and core values come into play, shaping how they navigate and ultimately transcend these challenges.
Basically, even though external factors have a big say in our lives, they do not have the power to entirely sculpt the essence of who we are. Our souls resonate with a unique vibration that encompasses both external influences and intrinsic qualities, shaping the bronze that we present to the world.
In conclusion, my personal observation about how to find your mission:
To learn your mission, find your villain first.
We often think that our mission is something we must discover by digging deep into our souls, but the truth is: that it’s right in front of us, disguised as our villain. And this leads us to see that the villain is not only something to fear but to embrace. It hurts, but it’s the first step to using the lessons you learn to fuel your missions.
It is faster, easier, and utterly more effective than looking into yourself.
It helped me to see and to take action, to build on the bad moments. Your mission creates a positive impact: find your villain, discover the purpose and dedicate your life to forge the best possible world where it is worth to live in, for you and for who cames next.