Are you a sheep or a ship? (Are you in danger of turning into an online marketer?

Once, more or less in a previous lifetime, I worked  a few months on a scuba yacht in the Caribbean. This was long before the internet was even a twinkle in an online marketer’s eye. But what I saw there helps me make sense of what I see happening online.

My “boss” was an aging ex-alcoholic who had been abandoned “at sea” by her hubby and grown up kids.  Either because of this, or this was what precipitated the abandonment, Kitty (not her real name) joined forces with a massive pillar of a woman.  A gun-crazy survivalist with piercing blue eyes, a deep gravely voice, and 5pm shadow on her face.

I never did find out which came first for Kitty – the abandonment or joining the “armed forces” – anyway it was fascinating to watch.  They would spend all their free time polishing weapons, firing crossbows and learning how to make bullets in case the shops ran out.  They each owned a boat and were business partners.  Megan (not her real name) ran the weekly SCUBA charter operation and Kitty the day tours.

Megan’s vessel was well oiled and maintained, run with military-like precision. Kitty’s was a barely floating wreck.  I worked briefly on both after sailing across the Atlantic.

Kitty’s yacht was filled to the hilt with tinned food, in case the American economy “collapsed”. (This was US Virgin islands in the 80s!)

Much of what was onboard hadn’t been prepared for a life at sea, so when you reached in to grab a can of mushrooms your thumb would go right through the rusty tin before you had even lifted it out of the hold.

Kitty’s boat was pretty much in the same condition as her cargo. It was a huge steel boat, way too large for what she could manage. Everything was falling apart around her ears. The sails were tattered and the sheets worn through. And each time we took passengers out to sea I was surprised when we made it back to the safe waters of the harbour without being stranded or beached or sunk or blown away or (more likely) sued by angry or nervous passengers.

Our job was to take people off the cruise ships for a few hours of scuba diving. We’d load them aboard and start motoring out of the harbour before they could change their minds.

As we motored off, Kitty would be at the helm with a cup of coffee in one hand and then she’d say cheerfully, “Hello, I’m Kitty, I’m an alcoholic!….” and I’d creep behind the scuba tanks and pretend to be invisible.

I’ll tell you more about Kitty and life aboard her vessel another day. What I’d really like to focus on today are the people who get herded onto vessels like hers and onto cruise ships in general.

This was (and still is) a part of America I find both fascinating and totally horrifying. It was as if the large majority of the population were used to being treated like cattle or sheep and herded wherever marketers liked.

Perhaps they were even bred and schooled for this sole purpose. To be milked and fleeced.

The cruise ships had this down to a fine art. For example, they would leave port at an hour which made it impossible for passengers to enjoy dinner ashore. And they had open buses to ferry their “livestock” into town. The routes were carefully laid out to include only the shops that gave the tour guides the greatest cut. There were all sorts of gimmicks and cheap tricks to get people to buy stuff that they really didn’t need.

The “sheep” were generally docile and used to being abused. Overweight, laden with cameras and wearing souvenirs (baseball caps, brightly coloured Caribbean shirts) and too much suncream.

I wondered what it felt like to be one of these sheep. To have perhaps only 10 days holiday a year and then to spend it being fleeced.

It seemed to me, the economy was designed for only 2 types of people. Those who owned the ships and shops and then of course the sheep who passed through them.

I wondered why more sheep didn’t rebel.

I see the same thing happening on the internet. It’s a circus and people are being fleeced left, right and centre.

The question you need to ask yourself is, do you wish to be a ship or a sheep? Or just a free bird? Able to think for yourself, to step beyond group think and group slaughter?

The key is to connect with what you love and then find a way to share your talents with others by adding value to their lives instead of herding them down profit funnels.

There are so many people out there, selling expensive courses, claiming to be experts in their fields when really what they are selling is just yet another a ride around the bay in a half sinking vessel.

Is this you? Is this really your excellence?

What is it that you love to do more than anything in the world but are too terrified to carry out for one reason or another? Do you know you can use EFT to free yourself of your inner critic and develop the courage to serve by doing what you really love.

Who is Jena?

Jena Griffiths is a writer and professional hand analyst, certified master hand analyst. Her mission is to help as many people as possible figure out their life purpose and what’s blocking them from information encoded in fingerprints. Jena’s other mission is to share cutting edge hand analysis data freely with other schools of thought regarding how to read a palm, such as palmistry, hand reading, chirology, handanalysis, handanalyse, and palm reading.