Distillery No. 13. 
This is the thirteenth of 365 interviews I’m going to share here over time. I’m reaching out to the people who inspire me all over the world, asking each of them the same four questions.
According to her site bio, Robin Cangie is “a writer, thinker, digital marketer and craft beer connoisseur in the San Francisco Bay Area.” She’s proposed ways to make TED talks more relevant, to make marketing more meaningful, to make products and services more valuable, and spent considerable time living in a teepee. I suspect I liked one of her comments elsewhere on the web, but it’s entirely possible Umair Haque re-tweeted something she said, leading me to discover her site.
I really enjoy reading Robin’s work because she advocates humanity’s escape from mass produced, disposable mediocrity. We’re exposed to so much blame-placing and content tailored to the lowest common denominator these days. It’s refreshing (and necessary) to think more about how to solve our problems than complain about (or ignore) them.
If you could distill everything you’ve learned so far into a single word of advice to yourself, what would that one word be?
Love.
Why does this one word mean so much to you?
When I think about everything in this world that’s important to me – people, things, places, ideas – it all boils down to love. When you fill your heart with unconditional love for all that is in existence, you free yourself from the negative emotions, expectations and desires that stem from wishing reality were somehow different than it is. You are free to accept that you have no idea what’s going to happen, that you haven’t got it all figured out, and therefore you are free become what you are and to explore the richness of your own potential, whatever form it may take.
How does this one word impact what you do (or want to do) with your life?
There’s no one thing I can point to, really. Simply put, I try to just allow love to underpin the way that I live, and let this inform the actions I take and the paths that I choose. It’s very hard and usually I fail, but it does help to allow for the possibility of a more compassionate and lighter way of being in this world, which I hope can positively influence others’ ways of being, too, and maybe help them to think about things in a way that’s more productive and useful than getting caught up inside of egos, wants and drives (I’m just as guilty of this as anyone).
What has this word done for you so far?
Mostly, it has helped me open to life and the full, rich spectrum of experience it has to offer. I’m certainly far from perfect at this, but when I remember to approach all things from a place of love, even the hard and ugly things, it helps remind me why I’m here on this earth, why I do what I do and where the truly important work is. In short, it gives me a place from which to begin living better. Approaching life from a place of love is very humbling – before we can begin to love ourselves fully, we must acknowledge, accept and indeed befriend all of our flaws and neuroses. But recognizing our own flaws helps us to have compassion and tolerance for others, and even to feel less alone on our journey through life. And when we are able to love ourselves fully, it’s so very empowering, too, because things that used to cause us a lot of suffering no longer have the same power over our actions and our lives. As I said above, living from a place of love makes us free to simply be as we are, and from there, to become all that we can.
You can connect with Robin on her site Robin Cangie or on Twitter.
(I would encourage you to do so.)
You can browse all published Distillery posts here.
Distilled Thoughts:
- How comfortable are you with not knowing what will happen?
- Where is the truly important work?
In the glovebox:
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Working Credo
