Unfolding your deep soul strengths
with a love letter
My friend Troy Schubert is a man of many talents. He’s a footwear engineer extraordinaire by day, as well as an illustrator, yoga master, talented facilitator, and engaged dad.
At one point during his graduate studies, he applied his art and facilitation talents to help me visually represent the purpose of my book, A Love Letter to Deep Souls.
We agreed that deep soul strengths are innate in all of us. Yet for most of us, they live crumpled inside, devoid of much use.
A Love Letter to Deep Souls is designed to help you unfold your deep soul strengths. To unbend, uncurl, unfurl, open, stretch, and extend them.
As you do, you will find yourself growing in multiple dimensions. You will find new avenues to attain meaning and satisfaction in your daily life. You will make more impact. Your creative contributions will expand.
I love Troy’s depiction that A Love Letter to Deep Souls begins with the characteristics you already have and simply shows how to unfold them into continuous expansion.
But he was not content to stop there.
He went on to envision and draw 28 more metaphorical images to describe what A Love Letter to Deep Soul might do for people.
The book will help you to launch, like a rocket. It will enable you to sprout or bloom or emerge from a cocoon into all your butterfly glory. The cork will pop, you’ll take flight, you’ll hatch, your universe will expand.
Which of Troy’s 28 images most appeals to you?
However you consider it, A Love Letter to Deep Souls is meant to point out the strengths you already have and inspire you to use them more fully.
My favorite longtime metaphor has been related to light. (My businesses, after all, have been named Ignite and Sparkitivity!) Troy of course did a study around fire and light to get to the heart of it:
Putting all this thinking and exploration together, Troy drew a detailed continuum. It’s possible that someone picking up A Love Letter to Deep Souls for the first time may find himself at any point in the journey, from darkness to light.
Where would you place yourself right now in Troy’s illustration?
Perhaps you are in the gray zone, living to please others or to be who others think you should be. Or, perhaps you are aware of your deep soul strengths and living with warmth and inspiration. Maybe you are in the neutral zone.
The path for a deep soul is usually not linear and may have you moving back and forth through the stages depending on circumstances. A Love Letter for Deep Souls will meet you wherever you are on your journey to live an authentic and meaningful life.
I’ve done my job to write the book, which will roll into your inbox in 4-minute reads starting February 14 Now it’s your turn to read!
About the art in this post: Troy Schubert is a Lead Product Engineer for Nike’s Jordan brand. The first three images in this post are brainstorming sketches and the fourth is the final drawing for the deep souls purpose project. In the artist’s own words: “I draw in the air, in my head, and on paper. We have white board table surfaces at work and I draw on there. If someone at work finds a drawing on a surface that someone failed to erase, I get blamed: ‘It was probably Troy.’ I draw on zoom screens. And I also draw with my iPad using Procreate and Concepts. I don’t draw on my skin. I think that’s gross.”