The Elixir of Delusional Belief
~ how getting what you want becomes inevitable ~
The First Delusion
In 2016, I left Starbucks with three tools tucked under my arm:
$1600/month trickling in from fitness coaching, promised for just two months.
A battered laptop.
A belief so audacious it bordered on lunacy: I’ll make this work.
That belief carried me further than money or machine ever could.
That belief let me move leap from Starbucks to coaching to copywriting.
By 2019 I was gliding, riding the current, momentum enough to keep me going long after my spirit turned to ash. As the ash piled up, my belief dimmed, flickered, died.
Bye-bye, beautiful delusion. Ciao for now, belief in the impossible.
One of my greatest assets, accessible no more.
No wonder I felt stuck, lost, hopeless…
But we’re not here to dig graves. We’re here to drink. To teach you how to brew your own elixir of delusional belief. Not a recipe, but a ritual. Not a formula, but a fire.
#1. Name Your Flame
Every delusion worth drinking begins with confession.
You must name the impossible desire, the one that gnaws at you in the dark. The one you fear because it’s too greedy, too ridiculous, too much, too insane.
If you hedge, if you soften, if you try to spread yourself across too many wants, nothing catches. Delusion demands focus, the raw honesty of this or nothing.
So spill your beans. Scrawl your dream in ink. Sing desire under your breath. Speak to the trees. Look for shame and weak knees. They mean you’re on the right track.
For me: I whispered for years that I wanted to live in music. Not fitness, not copywriting, not something safe. Music. How absurd. Reckless. Impossible. Only when I let this long-buried dream of mine breathe fresh, clean, cedar-scented did the flames begin to lick.
#2. Weave Your Proof
You cannot wait for the world to confirm your dream.
Proof isn’t gifted, but stolen.
You can collect proof in scraps, in gestures, in costume.
Start dressing like the person you’re becoming. Scrawl love notes on your walls and in your mind, reminding you of what you’re chasing. Tell your friends, your family, the barista, the butcher, the baker, the stranger in line for the bathroom with you at a rave.
Each time you give voice to your delusion, each tiny action you take, bends reality a little closer towards what you want. Each proof is a seed where inevitability roots.
When I began claiming “singer,” I sang daily, but that wasn’t identity-building.
Identity-building was telling everyone, hiring a coach, going to more shows, exploring my dream in the psychedelic realm where the body can’t lie.
None of these things guarantee anything, but they prove my delusion is alive.
#3. Suffuse Your Body
Belief dies in the head, but lives in the body.
So lace the delusion into your flesh, weave belief into your bone and breath.
Embodiment is how the delusion stops being fantasy and becomes blood.
Visualize what you want until your nervous system sighs, “Yes, this is home.” Move through your life as though the dream has already come true. Sing your desire into the walls, dance your ache into the floorboards, pour belief down your throat until your cells are intoxicated and your exhale oozes the scent of inevitability.
So I picture myself on stage, even when my audience is only consists my cat and my plants. I weave the siren I want to become into every sound and gesture until the boundary between “someday” and “now” erodes, bleeding together into my present-moment reality. One day…
#4. Love Your Madness
If you don’t feel a little insane, you’re not close enough to the fire.
Delusion should make you nervous, should feel like too much, should taste like Sour Patch Kids laced with sin. You might laugh at yourself, gasp at your own audacity, want to bite your tongue before the words slip out. Perfect. That’s the heat you need.
So invite the madness in, welcome the delusion home. Pour a cup of absinthe, drizzle some honey, lick the rim. Throw a feast for your doubts, dance with your shame, hug your anxieties. Let insecurity crawl into bed with you and leave scratches down your back, your lips a little bloody. Play games with your shadows, laugh with your tears.
If your delusion doesn’t feel like madness, this elixir won’t work.
You need the risk, a little danger.
You ever heard of someone changing their life politely?
#5. Bide Your Time
What you want probably won’t come quickly.
This is where most collapse, parched and cracked. They don’t know what to do when the instant gratification well runs dry. They need proof too soon. They grow restless.
So they strangle the magic.
Delusion matures in silence, is tempered by stillness. Delusion demands patience, insists you keep singing even when nobody’s listening. Super-duper especially then.
You must keep dancing when no one claps. Keep watering even when the garden looks dead. Keep the dream alive for nobody but yourself. Let your doubts wither on the vine and turn to wine. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else?
And when your delusion does bloom, expect a dashing disguise, foreign flavour, or unexpected twist. Delusion rarely arrives as the perfect picture in your mind’s eye.
For me: I know that becoming a good enough singer to be taken seriously will take at least a couple years. I know the path ahead drips with uncertainty and will only offer crumbs at first. But delusion lets me love the walking as much as the stage.
So can you hold the line without reward? Can you temper desire with patience?
That’s the difference between foolish fantasy and inevitable magnetism.
#6. Release Your Desire
This is the final crucible. The hardest part.
Can you live with the possibility that your dream might never bloom…
And still keep showing up, devoted, shameless, alive?
Desperation kills delusion. The moment you need, clutch, strangle, insist, assume, or demand, the oxygen vanishes. Sip from The Wellspring of Devotion, you must.
With singing, I’m dying to live through being in the eye of the rave… but if I only ever sing for friends, family, Yuki, the plants and the trees, that’s fruit aplenty.
The Truth About Delusion
Delusion isn’t about pretending the impossible is possible.
Delusion is about naming what you want to become inevitable, then living so fully, so shamelessly, so dangerously inside it that the world has no choice but to catch up.
So bite the peach, let the juice run down your chin, laugh at the mess.
Take a draught of this holy elixir.
See what happens if you dare yourself to dream… and dare the world not to join you.
With love from the fog,
~ Alexander, Flamebearer of Emberbrook