Welcome to Shhpeak Up 🚀 Mission 1—RETURN! Inspirational guide to prompts? Watch the video above. Quick text summary? Click the button below.
Each of our 30 days together will unlock a new prompt below with these 3 parts:
1️⃣ Questions
2️⃣ Share Your Voice
3️⃣ My Voice on This
“Questions” contains the prompt’s title, questions and video. The title’s format is ☀️ day # 🙊 prompt # 🌱 seed topic. The video dives deeper into what the prompt is actually asking.
Click “Share Your Voice” to visit our open conversation on today’s prompt and upload your video reply.
Click “My Voice on This” for my answer to this prompt and the reason why I’m asking it in the first place! I intentionally share this with you last in case you’d rather not be biased by my thoughts before answering with yours. There’s no “right” way to do this. Some of us prefer to answer questions before hearing others’ answers. Some like extra insight upfront. Personally, I like to BOTH bias myself and not bias myself, depending on the question and the reason it’s being asked. Decision’s yours—enjoy the empowerment either way!
Ready to give voice to your dream for an hour, a bit, or stay silent—for now?
REASON: to empower ⚡️ you with a difficult decision that you make and whose consequences you own—entirely.
Difficult decisions are the building blocks of every dream come true.
Whether or not to speak on day 30 for a whole hour is not an easy decision. There are many good reasons both for and against doing this that are wholly dependent on your unique and current set of circumstances. The last sentence is not an excuse for an easy copout nor is it an ultimatum for a forced victory. It is simply a neutral observation that we each need to make our own decisions or the world will make them for us. When the world makes our decisions, these tend to be general blankets intended to cover the largest groups of people possible.
GENERAL decisions are NOT optimized for SPECIFIC dreams.
What’s your specific dream? Will giving it voice right now help or hinder?
Make that decision, own it. Now share that with us regardless of what some may think. Whether you silence or speak your dream right now, your decision just made you that much more powerful ⚡️
Did ShhpeakUp help you clarify your “why”?
REASON: to compare our before-and-after growth so we can find connections and insights between these moments.
Capturing our introspections verbally (out loud) further accelerates growth in things we actually care about. I have found this to be true many times in my life, often in profound ways I don’t realize until someone later shares how what I said impacted them.
Improving our ability to articulate our “WHY?” makes it easier to find others that share our answer.
Does sharing something personal end in betrayal or belonging?
REASON: to find the fulcrum between TMI and DIY so I can balance ⚖️ accordingly.
Vulnerability can lead us to oversharing—TMI (Too Much Information).
Getting hurt can lead us to overdoing—DIY (Do It Yourself).
DIY is a powerful ally until it becomes your default mentality. Isolation sets in shortly after, distorts your reality and leaves you a powerless loner. So when to do which? As the cliche goes: everything in moderation. But how is that helpful? How do you know what moderation looks like without first knowing what the extremes look like? Do you ask someone about their extreme experiences? Do you experience these extremes yourself? Depending on the potential severity of outcome, you might want to learn from others’ extreme experiences before you engage. But since we all experience things slightly differently than each other, you never know if it’d be better to just drop off the cliff yourself and see what the view is like without a parachute.
🪂
Questions have the potential for pain and failure when we answer them. There’s no escaping that. Luckily, TMI-wounds hurt way less than parchuteless-cliff-droppings and are quite survivable. So here’s my specific non-cliche “rule of thumb” that I have found helpful:
Be vulnerable until the pain consistently outweighs the gain. Then throttle. – Rene
Once I found that fulcrum, it was easy to balance on.
TMI ⚖️ DIY
I risk and encourage vulnerability so I can resonate, relate and create cool things with cool people. It can be a charming and disarming agent that leads to amazing collaboration. Use vulnerability to find and collab with those who share your “why”. Silence your TMI and use more DIY around those who don’t share your “why”. If after sharing, you see that some don’t share your “why” or start to misconstrue and/or use it against you, that’s when maybe it’s time to go silent until you reconnect with your peeps.
Teeter on that.
Do you ever sing or hum, and if not, what stops you?
REASON: to remember the powerful communities that can form when you risk vulnerability.
Music (of any kind) is powerful. Singing (of any kind) is vulnerable. Depending on a lot of things (including the words) these can be an attractive or repellent force. Communities are brought together and pulled apart because of music.
Singing can be more vulnerable than speaking alone because doing so exposes the soul. You can more easily hide behind words spoken than those sung. In my limited experience on this rock, I have found that to be true. Does this mean we should all sing? Not unless at least part of you has wanted to but has been stopped for some reason.
❌ UNNECESSARY NOISES
✅ NECESSARY SOUNDS
There are a lot of reasons why I stopped. These include the stigma of my “unnecessary noises” label during childhood that became “very necessary sounds” in adulthood, when, after much fear and shame, I reframed my past. Trusting in these sounds again amplified my voice from mere speaking to speaking up for other people and important causes. Powerfully collaborative communities were formed around these sounds and their people. We replaced fear and shame with love and excitement. Nightmarish accusations became dream defenders. I don’t ever want to forget that.
I believe dreams are best defended through song.
When are you silent?
REASON: to know when I’m using silence intentionally as a tool and unintentionally out of fear.
Silence can be a fearful self-preservation default under certain situations. After battling 26 years of mental health medications … when I finally became sober, I wanted to become sober about everything else—especially fear-based decisions.
Strangely enough, silence can also be an effective tool when used in these same situations but for a positive reason—achieving our dream (our calling)!
Don’t Silence Your Dream. Use Silence to Build It (and Intrigue) – Rene
You create intrigue by being quiet. It’s way easier to be silent when you’re comfortable in your own skin. I’ve had extreme insecurities and confidences at different times in my life. During confident times, I’ve been able to stay quiet longer and be OK with it. If I’m building something I believe in, I don’t need to talk about it until it’s ready. These often require an initial investment of much silence anyways.
Being quiet also builds anticipation. When you finally do speak, people are more curious to hear every word. So if you have something that’s truly impactful for the world that you want to do with your life, silence is a really huge tool for helping you achieve that dream.
Do you talk to yourself internally or externally?
REASON: to capitalize on the communication strengths of both my inner and outer worlds.
I often see cool ideas in my head that make me laugh but then I say them out loud and I’m like “meh” …
Ever hear this?
that sounded cool until it left my head
Exactly.
Unless I verbalize them, I won’t hear how they actually sound so that I can then match the cool visuals with cool sounding words to describe those visuals. Also, saying things out loud helps me remember, understand and synthesize them better.
The reverse is true as well. I often sing/say cool sounding lyrics but don’t “see” what those sounds look like unless I stop talking and close my eyes. Closing my eyes was a trick I learned sometime during my 26 years of mental health drugs. I used it as a coping mechanism to block out all the competing stimuli that was preventing me from being able to focus on a single train of thought.
Do you speak for something you DO believe in?
REASON: to see where I’m using my voice positively.
Ensure the topic I speak most about synchronizes with and maximizes both my knowledge AND passion for it.
This almost always happens when the topic improves my art/craft in some impactful way. When this is true, I usually get pretty excited talking about it, especially when using this topic to collaborate with someone on a shared “why”. When something magnifies my art, I often become that something’s PME (Passion Matter Expert). Once you’re the PME, it’s a natural next step to become the SME too because you actually want to learn more about it. The other direction is not true.
The fear of speaking becomes much less to nonexistent as a PME. I can say that has been absolutely NOT TRUE about things for which I was merely the SME.
So much unnecessary fear arises when you’re forced to fake interest in something you’re knowledgeable but apathetic about.
How are you investing your speaking power or influence?
REASON: to survey all my speaking opportunities to date.
I wanted to become extremely conscious of which were an investment or waste of my voice and time.
Speaking opportunities were investments ONLY if I could strategically leverage these to improve my art/craft. For the purpose of this very extreme exercise, I considered everything else a 100% waste 🤐
Review prompts on: “Passion Intersection” & “Mission Statement”
Do you speak for something you DO NOT believe in?
REASON: to see where I’m using my voice negatively.
When answering this question, I also had to think about these questions:
Passion Matter Expert (PME)
For which topics am I the Subject Matter Expert? The SME? Are these the same topics for which I’m also the Passion Matter Expert? The PME? (recall the “Passion Intersection” prompt) Am I both the PME and SME on this topic? What do I feel when I speak on behalf of it? Which topics make me feel angry or anxious to talk about? Which ones make me super excited when I talk about them? Which ones make me feel like a phony when I talk about them? Is it because I think it’s a bunch of BS but they’re paying me a lot of money to spout this BS?
Am I the PME or just another Phony Parrot SME? (or Penguin)
Smile and wave boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZRb2aTlj4
What’s your all-time favorite song or movie?
REASON: to see how much more freely your mouth moves when you’re excited or inspired by something!
I’m including links below to the “Down In It” references I made in my answer to this prompt. They’re definitely not necessary for your answer. I’m just providing them in case you got curious 😜
200mi Farmer FBI Balloon Scandal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gV8yQc0m7g
Music Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrrEo3hZABU
What’s your “Concrete Forest”?
REASON: to recalibrate and remember who and why you are, apart from any group, so that when you rejoin it, we’re all the better for your return!
If you don’t give yourself enough “alone time”, “group think” can take over and sometimes devolve into “group isolation”, where people share time and space but not purpose or dreams.
We can become isolated together when the inter-connections we share become superficial.
If we spend too much time in these group dynamics, we can easily lose our unique personal value and offering to the world. This deeply affects not only our health but the health of the groups we’re in too!
In retrospect, I’ve recognized “Shut-up Parties” as the most obvious and egregious symptom of these unhealthy groups 😎
https://ReneRafael.com/why-own-your-story#ShutUp
Both isolation AND collaboration are needed to keep dreams and their people alive and vibrant.
Are you an introvert or extrovert?
REASON: to identify scenarios that optimize my personal work+communication preferences.
My intention behind this question is to identify scenarios NOT ourselves. To identify ourselves as being either introvert or extrovert, to me, is just plain stupid because of all the unnecessary pain and limitations I’ve seen those 2 labels (like many) cause. I’ve seen people (including me) live severely limited lives once we’re “diagnosed” as being an introvert or extrovert.
I took the Myers & Briggs “Introvert Or Extrovert” Test twice in 2 years.
My employer at the time had demanded we all do so to “improve collaboration and morale”. The first year, I scored introvert. The second year, extreme extrovert. What the hell changed? I wasn’t confused about the results but my employer sure was and demanded an explanation.
The explanation was simple. In year 1, I mostly engaged in activities that muted my craft and personality. I barely spoke. I often didn’t believe in what we were doing and felt extremely uncomfortable with our forced collaboration. In year 2, I mostly engaged in activities that amplified my craft and personality. This included being frontman to a grunge band. I spoke a lot. I believed in what we were doing and felt energized by our organic collaboration. All of us shared the same “why” and wanted to be there. After band practices, I often had a 💩-eating grin when I went back to work the next morning.
I believe the scenarios have more to say about whether we behave as an introvert or extrovert. And scenarios change. So identifying these, not ourselves is way more profitable for optimizing our personal work and communication preferences.
In my grunge band example, I exercised both extrovert and introvert muscles often. When we created original music—extrovert! When it was time to create the music visualizations—introvert! I prefer collaborating on music. I prefer solo-development of software.
Is there anything noble, true and beautiful to fight for in this world?
REASON: to keep adventure alive and avoid growing up into a selfish/jaded “adult”, living a zero-sum game life.
As I got older, my reason for asking this question became less self-centered. I kept asking it because I wanted to heal enough to have compassion for those I also hurt.
It’s too easy to hate on parents. Everyone does at some point to some degree. I did for 26 years to a major degree. No one wins. No one won (in my case).
Mommy-daddy issues are real but not really the issue. The issue is not knowing and loving ourselves enough. We can’t know or love ourselves before we’re known and loved by someone else. Parents are flawed in this regard but so are we. So who is the answer?
When you find him, you will know 😎
Where do you sit each day—closer to hope or fear?
REASON: to find others that share your “whys”, both positive and negative too!
Ya might just find a shared hope you can partner on to fight and vanquish a shared fear together.
Have short-term hobbies hijacked your long-term dream?
REASON: to see why, how often and how easily we’re controlled by everything else when our dream doesn’t drive.
Man! If we had an easy way to remember our dream every time a new choice popped up, we could easily view it through the lens of our dream to see if that choice gets us closer or further from it!
Luckily there is a way 😎
It’s our “why”, now codified in that “Mission Statement” thingy you created earlier—remember that prompt?! That’s our measuring stick to help us consciously decide whether each choice distracts or destines.
If your mission statement is short enough but punch-full of meaning, you won’t just find it easy to remember, but exciting to ponder. You’ll find yourself thinking on it a lot. You won’t need to remember it. It’ll be burnt into your brain at a permanent mental address.
Instant Gratification or Long-term Impact? Mickey Mouse 💥 explosions or Mission Statement 💥 explosions? I know which I want, and I might love him like a brother but—I’m done with Mickey!
Mickey Mouse ☠️ POST MORTEM
Because we all need creative outlets, if we don’t take our calling seriously, we’ll answer everything else that calls us, like Mickey! He called me, I answered—immediately. I had to get him out of my system! I was in the middle of another meaningless meeting, stressing over volumes of work I didn’t believe in, and I just had to explode out of there as soon as Mickey hit me. He was my pressure release valve to deal with stress. Instead of dealing with the stress head on, I’d let Mickey explode things for me with this stress-relieving idea. But I had no idea how or when or if I would ever use this idea until now: as an example in this “NOT Class” of what NOT to do with your creativity, which is to treat it as just a hobby.
How can you use your craft to create creators?
REASON: to invest your craft in healthy longterm relationships.
I want healthy longterm relationships, not shallow short-term users that a consumption-only world creates.
Too many people I know have become tight on time, low on cash and poor on dreams. That last one sucks the most because dreams are what have created the healthiest longterm relationships in my life, especially the shared dreams.
“Create Creators”
What does that actually mean?
Not to create consumers-duh!
When I was more immature (not too long ago 🤪), I hated all things consumption-related. I had an unhealthy relationship with capitalism and viewed it as a greedy monster instead of zeroing in on the root of that word, “capital”, the most important part of something. And then there’s the word “capitalize”.
Capitalize (verb) – take the chance to gain advantage from.
Now if you take advantage of a human, that’s not cool. But what if you gain advantage from your core strength—your craft? What if you capitalize on that? Suddenly capitalism loses its negativity and becomes positive.
The decision to use it positively or negatively becomes yours alone.
My more mature understanding now sees that word as a tool to amplify creativity. Whose creativity?
To create anything sustainable, someone else has to consume it! But that doesn’t mean we need to do it in a way that merely creates consumers. Too many do that and that’s actually not very creative.
It takes more initial energy, creativity—capital—to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, discover what they need and what you have to offer that makes BOTH of you smile (“Passion Intersection” anybody?) and then create something that will truly enrich their lives so that they themselves can also create something freakin awesome!
So… creating consumer products and services is fine as long as you’re thinking about their needs in a way that will create the ability for them to also create.
What’s your “Mission Statement”?
REASON: to protect the craft that energizes you the most so that you can become its masterful artist.
Writing a mission statement can initially feel very difficult because it forces you to pay attention to every single activity you’re currently engaging in … and then choose just 1.
Choose 1,
Decide against the rest.
Choose the single thing that you couldn’t live without if everything else in your life had to fail.
To some degree, this is an artificial limitation you’re imposing on yourself to answer this question. However, the irony is that if you don’t limit your activities, the world will limit your impact—through unlimited options.
Collect them All
And fail them all because you focused on none.
Remember this?
Jack of all trades, Master of … ?”
After you create your mission statement, you’ll see it as a measuring stick to decide when and when not to pursue an activity. It’ll begin to help you craft a life that removes as many unrelated activities as you can.
Any that take you away from your now-stated mission—you don’t do!
What’s your “Passion Intersection”?
REASON: to be aware of your UNIQUE personal value so you don’t monetized your dream for everybody but you.
I didn’t trust my own voice and creative abilities for most of my life. RESULT: I rudely awoke 18 jobs later to see that those had been taken advantage of by all 18 of my employers.
1️⃣ How many jobs have you had so far, paid or unpaid?
Look back across all the times where you have given people value. Your time and your talents are valuable.
2️⃣ Which efforts at these jobs brought others the most smiles?
3️⃣ Which ones brought you the most smiles?
4️⃣ Where do those two worlds intersect?
… where your efforts give you AND others the most smiles
5️⃣ What can you start doing today to spend more time at this intersection?
6️⃣ Which activities take you away from this intersection?
7️⃣ How many of these can you safely stop doing?
Full video @
https://ReneRafael.com/MUD
What’s your earliest memory of parental wounds AND warmths?
REASON: to recognize that parents, like intense experiences, have a similar cementing power on our identities in early childhood.
If you’re able to when answering this prompt, it’s best to acknowledge both the wounds AND the encouragements. Focusing on just the wounds will continue harming you and others well into your future. I know. I remember. That version of me lasted 26 years. I was quite an asshole. Good reasons for being one (I thought) but nonetheless, an asshole.
Giving both equal attention will build your sobriety and compassion muscles.
What’s your earliest memory of what you wanted to be when you “grew up”?
REASON: to remember your answers before the world happened to you.
How strong are (were) your dreams? Your convictions? What stories did the world tell you to limit your dreams? When did they first say “no”? How did you and your dream respond to your first “no”? To subsequent “no”s? Did they survive, strengthen or die? Did you become a short-term reactionary or long-term visionary? How about a purposeful revisionary? 😎
What do you remember about your first intense experiences?
REASON: to make conscious decisions about subconsciously informed experiences.
Intense experiences, especially in early childhood, have the power to completely cement the trajectory of the rest of your life. Depending on the experience, this can be a good or bad thing.
Knowing “where we came from” can amplify the intentionality behind each of our decisions. Recognizing which experiences we subconsciously allowed to “build” us, affords us the conscious opportunity to either continue building upon or dismantle these experiences. Do we keep pouring the cement or do we shatter the flawed foundation so we can start over?
Neither direction is easy, but we at least can now see the fork in the road and make a deliberate decision.
How old were you when you first learned about death?
REASON: to identify and remove the meaningless busy-work we subconsciously use as death-distractions so we can reclaim this lost time and live a life of impact instead.
No one likes to talk about death. That’s why I do 😎 Jokes aside, the moment we’re first told that we’re not going to live forever, whether or not we’re willing to admit it, something breaks deep within each of us.
Childhood’s over the moment you know you’re gonna die
-The Crow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CacJjvbT-UA
Facing this truth head-on doesn’t remove the sting but can help us recognize how much we fill our time with meaningless crap as coping mechanisms to avoid thinking about death because we’re just too darn busy and distracted to notice that we’re aging.
Doing this robs us of our calling. Do you want that? I don’t. So I intentionally face death.
If you had to divide your life into a trilogy, what would the 3 episodes be?
REASON: to get us to first take a 30K view of our entire life timeline before we (and so that we can) dive deeper in upcoming prompts.
If you had to give voice to something for a whole hour 🙀 what would that be?
REASON: to get us thinking early so our subconscious can “sleep on it”.
See the “Subcasts” book yet? 🙂
If you’re in our current ShhpeakUp, you should have received an email to a limited edition 1st draft of this upcoming crazy book. It’s my 🎁 to you for joining us on this epic adventure. Ask me if you didn’t get it and you’re interested.
Below is the title to peak your curiosity:
👻 SUBCASTS ▶️
The Art of Finding Your Own Subliminal Messages in Their Shadows And Using Them in Your Art
Where are you when you lose track of time doing your craft?
REASON: to take advantage of life patterns and avoid life patterns that take advantage of you.
The software developer in me loves patterns for many reasons. One very big reason is saving time by not “reinventing the wheel” when I don’t have to. I like building more beautiful things on top of other things—when and where I can rely on them. If they possess a consistent pattern, they tend to gain my trust.
The artist in me loves patterns too, and for similar reasons. However, here I also use patterns defensively to protect my artistic endeavors. Here’s what I mean: art is subjective until proven profitable. The moment money starts pouring in, now everyone wants to objectively claim how useful whatever your “art thing” is. Hint: if they’re calling it “art thing” they still don’t get it but like the money part 😎
Yep, before profits, too many people feel uncomfortable with art. This leads to many social situations that discourage progress in artistic pursuits, whose wisdom can often be heard in the form:
WISDOM: You should be doing X instead!
ME: Yep, already doing X. It’s just different than your X 😎
What’s your X? I hunt for advantageous patterns to protect my X. Usually these are optimal time and location patterns. I want to become hyper aware of what moments and locations are most conducive to doing my X. That way, I can do more with less, maximize my impact at the center of current patterns, and better gauge when future patterns are amplifiers or attenuators of my craft.
Stay tuned for an upcoming pattern we’ll use as a “life choices measuring stick” in a future prompt—pst!—“mission statement” 😎
When have you done, do you do, and will you do your craft?
REASON: to live in the moment of your artistry, while iterating on beneficial elements of the past and excitedly dreaming up future plans.
This “When?” and the next “Where?” prompt both share an important reason in common—pattern recognition. See the “Where?” prompt for a deeper dive.
How do you do your craft?
REASON: to excitedly remember how much effort a single craft already demands of me and use these memories as the fuel to stay laser focused on becoming that craft’s artist.
Everything we do takes more time and detail than we originally think. The more we do, the less time we can spend on each thing. The less time spent, the less detailed each thing we do gets. The less detailed, the less inspiring, the more unfulfilled life. This leads to an unsatisfying sense of constant busyness despite the many todo items now checked off our lists.
I lived that unfulfilled life for far too long.
One way I combat that now is by taking time to reflect on all the details and time that were required to turn crazy impossible collaborations into (still crazy, but now) possible ones. When I’m feeling low in energy, these reveries not only recharge but serve as hints: maybe I’m so darn tired because I’m not as laser focused as I thought. No matter how disciplined you are, life always has a way of reintroducing distractions in disguise as “opportunities”, “must haves” and “urgent matters”.
“Stop and smell the roses” 🌹 is good until you’re stopping for every flower …
If you let every “flower” into your beautiful rose garden, it becomes a weed garden. So be on-guard and a gardener of your craft. Remind yourself of how much time and detail your craft garden already needs to stay beautiful. Do you really need to add that weirdo wild flower you ripped off the side of the highway if your specialized roses are already the sweetest smelling ones around?
What is your artistry, your craft?
REASON: to accept artistry as an intentional personal decision, not a careless social designation.
Being an artist is not random. My definition below:
Artist (noun) – anyone who knows their intended design and chooses to craft their entire life around it, excel at it, and become the master of it!
If the above statement sounds reasonable, then it should also be reasonable to conclude that artists aren’t born—they’re forged.
We are forged through many fires, each involving 1 simple question: choose or decide? Choose more than we decide, be forged into disposable copy-cats of everything else. Decide more than we choose, be forged into irreplaceable masters of our unique crafts.
Look up the definition of “choice” and “decision”. Knowing the difference and putting that difference into practice changes the outcome of the fires in our lives: forged or forgery? Which do you want?
Given the above, what is your “craft”? What is the singular item that you want to excel at if everything else HAD TO FAIL? In a world bombarded by distractions it’s unfortunately become very difficult to answer that question with any sense of conviction. But convict, we must, if we want to excel at something.
Remember the “10,000 hours” idea? Not sure who first calculated that number but it’s been generally accepted for some time that it takes about 10,000 hours before you can master anything. If that is true, go ahead now and list all the things you know you’ve spent at least 10K hours on 😎 I’m being facetious because I can’t think of even one thing myself (maybe sleeping) but I’m actively trying to change that. I invite you to join me on that quest.
If we could focus on just 1 thing for 10,000 hours, what would that be? And are you prepared to decide against most other choices so that the 1 thing you have left, is your craft? Do you want to be an artist? Again, an artist is ANYONE who decides to focus on 1 thing and become its master.
Why are you?
REASON: to gauge introspection and intentionality for you and us.
Who are you?
REASON: to discover your story so far and mine all its golden life lessons.
When we recognize how all of our past experiences have built our present character, we can intentionally use both towards a more beautiful future. But we don’t need to wait until some far-off future to use these experiences. Being conscious of and leveraging our history always improves today.
This is not a static question. We are always changing so we need to give ourselves permission to do so and … continue updating the answer to this question 😎
Because nobody gives us permission to change—we need to.
https://shop.renerafael.com/products/successful-storyteller-presequel
https://shop.renerafael.com/products/storyteller-shirt-purposeful-revisionary