How do you feel about destroying what must be destroyed in your life?

A question posed by Danielle LaPorte.

Before I jump into my answer to this question, I want to take a moment to savor the brilliance of the way she asked it.

Danielle has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, people who love her bold spiritual stance and her poetic perspectives.

In addition to all of this, I am in awe of how she asked her audience a burning question, and invited them to respond with her hashtag #DesireMap.

This is the first official post of our new DESIRE MAP for Life column. Every Friday, I’m going to give you a prompt — a thought, a provocation, or an easy assignment to get your soul flexing. The practices will vary. One week might be a question, like, say this one: How do you feel about destroying what must be destroyed in your life?, another week may be a one-photo Instagram idea, or some Fridays we may ask for your reaction to an image or an opinion.

You can silently consider your response — Ommmmm. Or you can actually answer the question on your own blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Use hashtag #DesireMap across all platforms so your words & images are shared with our global DesireMapper community (10,000+ and growing!)

As a loyal member of her following, I step up, and accept the call.

A call not only for my own introspection and advancement, but also to contribute to the movement she has created.

And this, I believe, is the secret to building a successful audience, career, and body of work:

Invite your audience to project themselves through the channels you create.

More on this later; I’ve got a manifesto cooking along this same topic, which is why I digress. Back to the question at hand:

I feel great about it.

Over the years, I have destroyed my identity and remade it from scratch. There was a time when I didn’t like who I was, so I scrapped that whole project and started fresh.

Starting over is a blessing only given to those willing to destroy what they have loved.

Just yesterday, I was working on the third draft of a website for a client, and I realized it wasn’t working. It wasn’t going to work. Continuing with the momentum I had built in the wrong direction would not result in good art. So I started over from scratch, and in three hours I made a website that was better than the last thirty hours worth of work I had put into it.

Sometimes we go down the wrong path for perspective. It lets us know what does not work, what we do not want, and who we should not be.

This perspective is useless unless we change our path.

Destroying what should be destroyed in our lives – it is what unshackles us from everything that does not serve us.

(I have a lot to say on this topic.)

Last year, I tried to say it in a big way, when I launched my first big information product. Parts of it were awesome. Parts of it were full of the best techniques I have used to produce massive change in my life.

But I grew to hate the title. And after a couple months, I realized it wasn’t ready to be published, and I did not have an audience that was waiting for this kind of material.

It was a shot in the dark.

So I pulled it down, stopped promoting it, and asked myself: what is this project really about? What am I trying to say? Who am I trying to serve?

It was thoughtless of me to overlook, but I needed to brainstorm with myself.

When I did, I came out with a new title, a new brand, and a new logo. Appropriately, the rebirth came from the ashes of the old.

After a couple rewrites, I shelved the project, so I could focus on making money and traveling for this year. Now, just as I am beginning to hunger for my own projects again, Danielle asks this very pointed question: can I destroy what must be destroyed?

Can I make room for the incredible life the Universe has waiting for me, by letting go of the life I thought I should lead?

I take this challenge wholeheartedly. After all, one flame spreads to make many.

Danielle LaPorte lights me up.

If you’ve never heard of The Desire Map, you should check it  out. If you have, tell me your answer to Danielle’s questions in the comments.