and how you could skip the jungle trip
Look, we need to talk about one of the most toxic mind viruses infecting our culture. It’s the “someday I’ll be famous” disease, and I’m pretty sure it’s messed up more lives than we care to admit.
I caught this virus early. It snuck into my developing brain when I was too young to have mental antibodies against it. For me, it was this 90s TV show called “Fan de” that showcased the glamorous lives of singers and celebrities, touring the world, living the “cool” life, being exceptional…
And just like that, before I could form my own values, these external ideas became the standard I measured my existence against. The worst part is, I didn’t even realize it was happening.
The Subtle Poison of Borrowed Dreams
Here’s the insidious part: when you absorb someone else’s definition of success as a kid, it operates like malware in your operating system for decades. You think you’re making choices based on your authentic desires, but you’re actually following programming installed by MTV, movies, and magazine covers.
The result? Constant dissatisfaction. Perpetual feelings of inadequacy. The nagging sensation that your actual life, the one you’re living right now, is somehow inappropriate or insufficient.
Instead of enjoying what was right in front of me, I was mentally somewhere else. Always.
You might think, “Well, isn’t that just ambition?” Sure, if those values were actually mine. But they weren’t. They were fed to me before I had the cognitive ability to examine them critically.
Breaking the Spell
You’d be shocked by how many ideals we never reconsider once we become adults. Maybe I don’t actually care about being a rockstar, touring or owning a club. I honestly don’t know! Because I never questioned the programming.
Until I did. And for me, it took nearly dying.
Three months before my son was born, I participated in an ayahuasca ceremony.
I had a laundry list of existential questions: Will I be a good father? A good lover? How much of a failure am I, really? Is energy healing nonsense? Are there dimensions beyond what we can see? Who are we? What is all this?
When you genuinely believe you’re about to die, the masks drop away. You get honest about the end so you can be honest about the beginning. And that’s exactly what happened.
It was a complete reboot of my values system. It helped me establish a process for distinguishing between my authentic values and the ones that were planted in my psyche.
This allowed me to release so many fears, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy. Now, I’m sometimes grateful just to breathe each day. This human body we inhabit is a magnificent machine we’re privileged to partner with.
The Courage to Change Course
So what does this have to do with career development?
Most of us know what we need to do. We just don’t do it.
We keep chasing the ghost of fame, or wealth, or whatever external validation metric was programmed into us. We keep trying to fulfill dreams our parents designed for us that don’t match who we actually are.
We avoid change until something big happens—until life becomes painful enough that we’re motivated to move.
That’s why monExpansion.com exists. To support those who’ve decided to change. Those brave enough to laugh at themselves, to realign with who they truly are beneath the programming.
The Invitation
If you know what to do but aren’t doing it for “a lot of good reasons,” my invitation is simple: do it anyway.
And if you can’t yet… no worries. Life guarantees that eventually, you will. Things will become painful enough that you’ll be motivated to change. That’s the beauty and brutality of existence.
But if you want to be proactive and purposely step out of your comfort zone before life forces you to, I’m here to help guide that process.
I hope you’ll let go your induced fake desire and replace it with the appetite to know yourself radically. That’s the path to joy I’ve found, and I wish it for you too.
My bold promise to you is that our coaching conversations will give you the same perspective shifts as an ayahuasca trip, just with less nausea and existential terror.
What programming are you ready to question?
PS : If you have no idea what an Ayahuasca ceremony is, here is Martin’s vlog of it (my former Compositing Supervisor) :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NMgVXP9nHo
