Blue Pill or Red Pill? It’s Actually the Choice of Waking Up to Your True Purpose in Life
INTRODUCTION
Blue pill or red pill? What does this refer to? One of the most iconic movie scenes of all time is the blue pill or red pill scene from the legendary film The Matrix. Morpheus, a freedom fighter, gives Neo, a programmer on the hunt for the true nature of the universe, two pills: a blue pill and a red pill.
If Neo takes the blue pill, he returns to his previous life and forgets everything that happened to bring him to this point. If Neo swallows the red pill, the true nature of the world is revealed to him, and his life is forever changed. But could there be more to this?
The truth: It’s about finding your true purpose in life
Happiness in life is all about having direction. In this day and age of lost minds, having a purpose is crucial. You can better navigate the storms at sea when you have that internal compass to guide you.
In the end, discovering the truth of who you are within is so important so that you can devote yourself to something that brings you a deep sense of fulfilment. If you are simply after making more and more money as your primary goal in life you will never cultivate your true purpose. You become alienated from your self, fractured, dis-integrated, and you will feel unfulfilled. Trust me, I know. I have written a blog about this: “The Wrong Tower Phenomenon”: Workaholism, Burnout, Resilience & Rebirth with Coaching.
“Friedrich Nietzsche wrote “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Let’s find your truth, let’s find your why!
More than just finding your purpose, it’s about recovery
Recovery means finding your true self. Lying is the language of addiction, but honesty is the language of recovery. Openness graces you with the courage to tell your truth. The choice is: Speak your truth and live in the sunlight, or hide your truth and live a lie. That is why not finding your true purpose in life leaves you feeling joyless, unfulfilled and empty. This emptiness, or existential angst, is filled with addiction. Viktor Frankl said “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” Addiction is an epidemic. As Dr. Gabor Maté says “90 percent of people are addicts. 10 percent are lying to themselves. It is not why the addiction it is why the pain? The more egotistic and successful we become the less happy we become.”
Shannon Mullen, anthropologist, wrote “In a way, we’re all addicts by nature.” Addiction may be behavioural (for example work, food, gambling, internet use, shopping, extreme sports, sex, and love) or to substances. Dennis Prager, author said “People can become addicted to fame, money, and attention as deeply as they become addicted to drugs.” Perhaps all addiction is an addiction to validation. Work successes have the same neurological effects as a shot of heroin — they envelop you in an ill perceived ‘blanket of love’. Everyone needs love. But you need to love your self first. What if you didn’t receive love unconditionally as a child? The causes, consequences, and recovery processes of the various types of addiction are all the same. Addiction is rooted in childhood trauma, often from an unvalidated childhood without unconditional love, resulting in unbearable emotions such as toxic shame. Yung Pueblo wrote “I was never addicted to one thing, I was addicted to filling a void within myself with things other than my own self love.”
Finding meaning in your life means finding your path
Trinity says to Neo “The answer is out there Neo. It will find you if you want it to.” You know that road. You know where it ends if you don’t take it.
Our current culture fuels your workaholism, until you crash, get sacked, and they employ someone else. There is a dearth of compassionate leadership. 77 percent of people experience burnout in our society. It’s time for a change.
Morpheus asks “Do you want to know what it is?.. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
Neo replies“What truth?”
Morpheus replies “That you are a slave Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for your self.” Morpheus then offers Neo two options: “You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill — you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: All I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.”
The journey of awakening won’t be easy, but it will be so worth it: Cipher says to Neo “Buckle your seat belt Dorothy ‘cause Kansas is going bye bye”.
Morpheus says to Neo “I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.”
There are so many Transformative Life Coaching (TLC) quotes in The Matrix. here is my complete guide to TLC or you can download my free eBook about TLC and enlightenment.
Neo says “I can’t go back can I?”
“No but if you could would you want to?” replies Morpheus. “Get some rest. Why? Because you are going to need it.”
Morpheus says to Neo in their famous fight scene. “I know what you’re trying to do. I’ll try to free your mind though.”
Later in the film Morpheus reminds Neo “I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.” This is classical coaching philosophy — the coachee (you) is unbroken and whole. The answers come from within. I can only be your guide. Aristotle, polymath and philosopher said “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Robin Sharma, lawyer, leadership consultant, and writer said “Self-knowledge is the DNA of self-enlightenment. Life has bigger plans for you than you can possibly know.” His book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is a story about discovering your actual calling in life. Voltaire said “I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.” Henry David Thoreau, philosopher, poet, and author, wrote “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” If you don’t get lost, there is a chance you may never be found. So fear not times of great bewilderment! Those are the times when a guide can help you remember that this is a necessary journey if one is to truly live. Waking up is not always an easy journey, though the rewards are great! Going through life asleep is like sitting in the back of an unlicensed taxi, not knowing if , when and where you will end up, or if you will arrive safely. It could be a bumpy ride. Becoming fully awakened turns you into a fully charged Tesla Roadster — safe, intuitive, self-driving, energised and arriving exactly where you want to be. Benjamin Franklin, polymath, writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, and political philosopher, wrote “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” Mooji, spiritual teacher, said “Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.” “One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better” (Blaise Pascal, philosopher, Theologian, writer, inventor, mathematician and physicist). James Thurber, author and journalist, wrote “All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.” It will be quite a journey! Julien Green, author, wrote “The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.” There is no need to travel far. St Augustine, philosopher, theologian, and author said “Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.” “The journey is within, as Rumi said “You have no need to travel anywhere. Journey within yourself, enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendour of your own light.” Lao Tzu said “At the centre of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” DH Lawrence, author and poet, wrote “You’ve got to know yourself so you can at last be yourself.” William Shakespeare wrote “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Jean-Paul Sartre, key figure in Existenialism, playwright, author, and political activist wrote “We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.”
In Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, the 1922 book that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery during the time of the Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha said to Buddha “Enlightenment has not come to you by means of teaching! And-thus is my thought, oh exalted one, nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings!”
“Books simply help you to see what is already within your self. That’s what enlightenment is all about” (Sharma). “You can’t teach anybody anything, only make them realise the answers are already inside them”(Galileo Galilei). The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
Look no further than within. I create a safe space so that you can drop out of your mind and into your heart to give clarity to your most important core values. Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist, psychologist and philosopher, said poignantly “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.” My purpose in life is to guide you to personal transformation. Carl Jung stated “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
The implications are vast. Beyond your own life, the whole world is shifting right now, becoming off-keel. The Hindu Sage Ramana Maharshi said “Your own Self-Realisation is the greatest service you can render the world.” How do we change the world? Khalil Gibran, philosopher, poet and author asks in The Prophet “Is not civilisation, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?”
Morpheus to Neo: “You have to let it all go Neo. Doubt, fear, and disbelief. Free your mind.” This is the basis of coaching — to let go of your limiting beliefs so that you can achieve your goals.
Morpheus says to Neo: “Try not to think of it as right or wrong. She (the Oracle) is a guide, Neo. She can help you to find the path.” The path is your true purpose in life. Pablo Picasso said “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” Find your Dharma. Dharma is the Sanskrit word for ‘life’s purpose’ Don’t compare your self to others. Comparison is the thief of joy. Brené Brown writes “Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be; embrace who you are.” We each have a unique talent. When we find our talent by looking inside we feel it physically like when we are totally present or in nature. Transformation is like fitting the pieces of the jigsaw together. When we first meet in the context of TLC we open your ‘box’ and find a bag of jumbled up jigsaw pieces. After TLC when we open the box we find that all the pieces are where they are meant to be — you have become aligned to your purpose and core values. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony” (Mahatma Gandhi). Viktor Frankl said “The meaning of life is to give meaning.”
Morpheus uses classic coaching methods as he says to Neo “I told you I can only show you the door. You have to walk on through.” It’s up to you to take the path — the path of your unique purpose, that you are uniquely talented at. Morpheus says “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” This is why your coach must have been where you are — this can’t be read in books. Ask your coach what personal transformation journey they have been on? You walk the path when your paradigm shifts — that deep change in perception is palpable to others and to your self.
Trinity asks in the final scene as Neo becomes invincible and comes alive “What is he doing?” Morpheus replies “He’s beginning to believe.” Is it time for your factory reset, where you rewrite your internal operating system?
On a final note, the word matrix comes originally from the word mater, or mother, or later from the Latin matrix which means womb or uterus. Thus, finding your self, awakening to your truth, and your true purpose in life signifies rebirth. Are you ready to take the red pill?
Transformative Life Coaching:
- Is a subset of coaching
- Is BEing-focussed not DO-ing focussed although doing comes from being
- Unlocks the potential within to transform you and therefore your organisation
- Dives deeply below the surface to view the whole ‘iceberg’ that drives your behaviour
- Takes the whole of you into account, not just what is visible on the surface as with traditional executive coaching
- Gets to the essence of you
- Is space of shadow and light
- Underpins the powerful creation of outcomes and may be used for your executive goals
- Illuminates and reprograms your ‘inner operating system’
- Involves the intent: To explore new ways of being and what it takes to embody them
- Involves the premise: An expanded way of being generates the desired outcome and results
- Is therefore absolutely appropriate in the context of life, personal, and business coaching
- Is experienced by you in a different way to how it is experienced by someone else
- Creates change that is deeper, wider, and longer lasting than any other form of coaching
“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of being, which will transform how you intuitively create your world. My purpose is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.” Olly Alexander MA PhD
I have a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and am a Member (MRCS) and Fellow (FRCS) of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles and am the author of several scientific books. I am completing my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has full International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I attended the Ultimate Coach conference with Steve Hardison, the world number one life coach, in London in April 2022.
I believe so strongly in the transformative potential of coaching that I have had, and continue to have, a number of Transformative Life Coaches. I would like everyone to be able to experience enlightenment. This is my purpose — to have maximal impact on the world by sharing this with one person at a time. This will enthuse you to do the same, so the results will be exponential. Therefore, I do not do ‘discovery calls’, hard sell or use any sales tactics at all. I simply offer you a free one hour coaching session without expectation so that you can get a sense of the internal shift that can be achieved. We will not even discuss booking future sessions. I am offering an experience of coaching at no charge rather than selling the concept through a discovery call.
Click here to book a free no obligation one hour coaching session with me.
