As the release of my new book, Divine Blogging, gets ever-closer I thought it would be fun to help you get to know the archetypes a little better. There’s so much to be learned from the archetypes at work in our psyche, and not only when it comes to understanding and attracting our ideal clients. That’s what Divine Blogging is all about – helping you create content perfectly tailored to your ideal client, using their archetypal profile – but the archetypes are present in all of us.
Including you.
So understanding your own archetypal profile, and how the 12 archetypes are working within yourself, can help you tweak and improve aspects of your business. I’ll be devoting a blog post to each of the archetypes and how they can help you over the coming weeks, and we’re starting today with The Mystic.
Why start here?
Honestly, because the Mystic is my favourite archetype and I had to start somewhere.
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Archetypes 101
If you’re unfamiliar with archetypes the concept goes back to psychologist Carl Jung, who identified key aspects of the human psyche that could be identified as recurring ‘templates’ seen over and again in all cultures and all times of human history.
An archetype can be the framework of a story, where the pattern of the tale is easily recognised and brings instant clarity and meaning to a story, or it can be a character, whose motives, needs and desires are easily recognised, allowing us to immediately connect with them and understand them.
In the business world, and particularly corporate storytelling, archetypes are absolutely invaluable tools that can help you instantly connect with the specific people you want to work with on a deep and truly meaningful level.
Brand archetypes are one example, where the story of your brand and your brand identity are carefully built around either a story archetype, or a character archetype, to help the specific people you want to work with connect with your brand.
Two super easy examples to understand are Cinderella’s ‘Rags to Riches’ narrative, which repeats over and again in so many stories, and makes each and every one extremely powerful, and characters like the ‘everyman’, the girl-next-door/boy-next-door type who manage to become the hero of a piece despite being thoroughly ordinary.
To give you a little context first, here’s a reminder of the 12 archetypes:
| Mystic | Nurturer | Dreamer | Warrior |
| Rebel | Seeker | Sage | Everygirl / Everyman |
| Ruler | Creator | Enchanter | Jester |
Understanding the archetypal profile of your ideal client, and which of the archetypes dominates their personality, needs, desires, and motivations, is essential to creating a truly balanced content marketing schedule that has been created for exactly who you’re trying to attract, and will naturally build a tribe of the perfect people to work with you.
Meet The Mystic Archetype
The mystic archetypes represents the aspect of ourselves that’s capable of great insight and change. The rules of ordinary reality tend to crumble around the mystic, as their ability to see to the heart of situations often enables them to cut through the areas of life other people take for granted, accept as inevitable, and view as unavoidable. As a result, mystics are often perceived by others as being on a slightly different (often higher) plane than everyone else in the world. They’re the catalyst for significant change and frequently produce unexpected or seemingly impossible outcomes.
The mystic is a little bit magic.
Given that so much of entrepreneurship hinges on creating something from nothing, transforming thoughts into reality, and achieving the seemingly impossible, embracing your inner mystic is the secret to creating a truly successful business in a lot of ways. Here are five…
#1 The Quest For Understanding
At their core, the mystic has a deep desire to understand nature’s fundamental rules, and universal laws. By tapping into this part of yourself you can decode your niche, really dig around in it and find the answers to all those questions your ideal clients are asking, and even more that other people haven’t even thought to answer yet.
Your mystic can help you understand how you do what you do, as well as how to improve what you do. This not only allows you to develop superior products and services, that genuinely meet the needs of your niche and solve real problems, it will also help you communicate to people exactly why what you do is so valuable.
It’s difficult to explain why people should invest in you until you fully understand it yourself. And because the mystic aspect of us is perpetually curious, this isn’t a desire you fulfill once and never look at again.
If you let it, the mystic in you will lead to a continued search for ever-greater understanding, allowing you to truly become the master of your niche.. The curiosity driven by your mystic will constantly improve your understanding of your Zone of Genius, allowing you to become the absolute best at what you do.
#2 The Desire For Change
While the desire for understanding is shared by some of the other archetypes (the Sage, for example, is all about knowledge and understanding), the mystic differs in that their quest for understanding is driven by the desire to instigate change, rather than the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of understanding and achievement.
This is incredibly powerful in business as the capacity to not only embrace change when it comes, but actively seek it out, is something a lot of business owners really struggle with. We crave stability in our work, at least on some level, and change is frightening.
If you’ve ever struggled with upper limit issues it’s because of a deeply rooted fear of change and moving outside your comfort zone. Your inner mystic can help you move onwards and upwards to new and greater levels of success. Better still, the mystic aspect of yourself can help you create change in the lives of your ideal clients.
#3 The Transmogrification
The mystic is a transformational archetype, capable of affecting change in themselves, and the world around them, as well as helping others to affect change.
They make things happen.
When it comes right down to it everything we buy in life is motivated by the desire to change something. It might be as simple as changing the fact we’re hungry by buying food, or as complex as changing our world-view by working with a coach so we can overcome monumental challenges. But the desire for change is what drives people to buy. If you can become an agent of change, both in yourself and others, you will naturally attract people seeking that exact form of transformation.
#4 The Visionary
If you’re struggling to get a grip on the part of yourself that is the mystic, look at it this way. The mystic is this element of a person’s personality that allows them to achieve their dreams, and create in reality the vision they have for themselves, their lives, their future, and the world as a whole.
Mystics are visionaries, dreamers and seers.
In classical storytelling, they are associated with the occult, the gifts of prophecy, and psychic abilities. These elements of the archetype most often manifest as an uncanny ability to see the world clearly, perceive that which others cannot, and solve problems.
In business, clarity of vision is essential to creating success. If you don’t know where you’re heading or what you want to achieve, it’s really tough to get there. Likewise, if you can’t see a better way for your ideal clients to be, a way they can reach by using your products or services, you don’t have a viable business model.
You certainly don’t have anything you can pitch to people on a truly successful level.
It’s often really difficult to see a way around your problems and issues, and the things in life that are making you unhappy. Sometimes, these things are really small and seem so insignificant that we can’t fathom the huge change that would occur if we fixed them. Other times, they’re so immense we can’t even see they are an issue, because the thought of a life in which that particular problem didn’t exist is inconceivable. And then there are the times we know we have a problem, and we know we need to fix it, but the issue feels too overwhelming to deal with.
We can’t envision ever successfully overcoming it.
These are the things you need to address in your marketing if your prospects are to gain the confidence in you to buy from you.
You need to paint a picture of the future they could have by working with you, and it needs to be a vivid, visceral, beautiful picture.
Your inner mystic is the gateway to showing your ideal clients their future, and forging the path ahead for your own business so you create a future that fulfills your own desires and needs.
#5 The Leader
Mystics are so dedicated to their vision that they are frequently leaders in various forms. They can be incredibly charismatic and very empathetic to the needs and desires of others. They’re also fully capable of inventing new and innovative ways of thinking and doing if it’s required to achieve their dreams.
This is exactly what is needed to attract a dedicated tribe of followers – leadership.
Whether it’s positioning yourself as a thought-leader in your niche (this is where all that wonderful understanding and desire for change comes in), or establishing yourself as the head of a community that helps people transform their lives and achieve their visions for the future, the mystic can help you get there.
How To Embrace Your Inner Mystic
There are a lot of ways to embrace the mystic within yourself, which works best will largely depend on how ‘woo woo’ you are, because the somewhat supernatural nature of this archetype does lend itself to a lot of places where rational thought has taken a holiday.
Essentially it’s all about tapping into your subconscious and listening to your intuitive self. That might mean paying more attention to your dreams, or it might simply mean taking the time to think deep thoughts on a regular basis.
I mentioned before the mystic is my favourite archetype, here are a few ways I get in touch with my own inner visionary:
- Journal your daily thoughts and experiences to help you pay more attention to yourself.
- Keep a dream diary – I have one I use to jot down my actual dreams (which are weird AF, I have to tell you, and frequently end up becoming fictional stories) as well as my waking day dreams.
- Spend 10 minutes a day on a ‘stream of consciousness’ exercise – you literally take a piece of blank paper and write down anything and everything that pops into your head. Don’t worry about putting it in order or making sense out of it, if you think it write it down.
- Get your tarot read, or learn to read tarot yourself (if you’re looking for a tarot expert I recommend Sarah Comforth at The Magical Creatrix!).
- Banish all the negative juju from your workspace by smudging with a nice stick of sage.
- Carve your hopes, desires and intentions into a candle (you can do this with a biro, it’s really easy) and light it to burn through your wishes and hopes, releasing them into the world as you work.
Archetype Hint:
To get the most out of your inner mystic do at least one of these things (or a version you’re comfortable with) on a daily basis. If you can find one really powerful habit that works for you and do it regularly you’ll find it a lot easier to get in touch with the transformational aspect of yourself.
The Mystic is one of the twelve archetypes I use in Divine Blogging, my signature content marketing method which teaches you how to create a perfectly balanced content schedule, tailored to the specific psychological profile of your ideal clients. It’s also packed with practical advice to help you rock the socks off your content. You can read more by downloading chapter one now – it’s totally free!
