1. He lives as one who already has it

Jack’s a man with a crystal clear goal, and an unyielding desire to get it.

But how often do you see Jack despondent after a setback? How often does he seem desparate and unable to relax until he’s got what he’s after?

Pretty much never, right?

It’s because Jack lives in the vibration of one who already has what he desires. He sees the journey as just that: the journey to an inevitable consequence.

Why would you care in which direction the meandering path takes you if you already know where it ends?

So then the question arises:

How does he know that it’s inevitable?

Because Jack knows one of the great truths of life:

That which you are, must be expressed (in physical form).

Jack feels to his bones that he’s the captain of a great ship, and that he lives a life of freedom.

Why do you think he gets a little vexed whenever someone doesn’t say “Captain” before his name?

Because he knows who he is, and he knows he doesn’t need to have a ship or crew at that particular moment to be a Captain.

Even when years pass without him actually being in possession of a ship, he still knows, to his bones, that he is Captain Jack Sparrow.

He likewise knows his own freedom, and knows it cannot be constrained or altered by any outer world circumstance.

Look at when he’s imprisoned in Port Royal in the first Pirates movie. The other inmates in prison are wretched, pleading, with outstretched arms, desperately trying to get the keys from the dog.

Jack, though? Jack tells them they’re wasting their time, smiles and turns back to his rest, utterly sanguine and at peace.

Jack knows he’s already free, even if his current circumstances don’t reflect that.

How can you emulate Jack, and start to feel that your desires are inevitable? And how to identify what is your true heart’s desire?

Gaining freedom from your thoughts is the starting point (and, ultimately, the end point as well). Once you start that journey, you’ll start to gain a greater sense of who, at the level of your heart, you truly are.

Then, over time, when you gain ever greater freedom from your thoughts, that initial sense, that feeling will turn into a knowingness of who you are.

As this knowingness rises in strength, your susceptibility to lack and fearful thoughts starts to get weaker and weaker.

This knowingness is so powerful that the expression of who you are in your circumstances will start to feel inevitable. Then you’ll see things happen, you’ll see changes in your reality.

Then your knowingness becomes even more resolute and unyielding.

With this change in your vibration, the type of random, scattered thoughts that waylays most of us when it comes to living happy and fulfilled no longer appears.

Then its expression in your reality is inevitable and you’ll live as one who already has it. Just like Captain Jack Sparrow.

2. He acts with divine adaptation

Jack employs divine adaptation.

Divine adaptation could also be quite simply expressed as:

Meandering from the path *is* the path.

He has a crystal clear goal, always.

But the journey, the path to get there, is written in pencil, always ready to be rubbed out and re-sketched, and with unwavering passion.

What others would call setbacks, Jack knows to be opportunities.

This is not trying, with your mind, to reframe a “negative” outcome as being a positive one. It’s the knowingness that the “setback” was not a setback in the first place. It’s just a sign to re-draw the path.

This absolutely doesn’t mean don’t have a plan. There are often key steps which must be achieved to reach a goal.

But you must be willing to change the order, re-think, move things around, and adapt, adapt, adapt.

And not just adapt, in retrospect. Not “oh shit, now I have to go this other way I didn’t want to go”.

Rather, it’s go into your whole journey expecting to adapt.

Of course, you’ll have preferences for how something will go, but don’t be too attached to those preferences.

If you start your journey expecting to adapt, ready to adapt, and knowing that you’ll probably have to adapt at some point, it’ll come easier when you do have to do it.

Jack’s goal is (metaphorically) written in majestic gold pen, and double-laminated.

The path, though, is sketched in pencil.

The steps to get there are, from the get-go, treated lightly, knowing that they can and very likely will be changed as life takes shape.

His focus on that goal is absolute, and for all that he may enjoy life’s earthier pursuits, like women and drink, his singular goal remains resolute through all that.

In fact, the little pleasures are just as much a part of the journey as the “important” steps that are more ostensibly contributing to achieving the goal.

3. He’s free from what other people think

It’s very easy to see that Jack doesn’t care what other people think of him.

That means he can really, truly be himself in a way that few can.

Say whatever else you like about him, but noone could deny that Captain Jack Sparrow is authentically himself.

He’s a man with gifts for shaping people, events and circumstances in the way that he wants them to be.

He couldn’t do this if he was trying to manage others’ opinions of him; if he was trying to pretend he’s something other than he is.

He can sway the world around him because he’s authentic; even though his authentic self is a “dishonest” rogue.

In fact, Jack uses others people’s expectations of him to his advantage, rather than to his detriment.

He trusts in his ability to show people the path to their desire.

He has a genius-level ability to make a particular path appear to other people to be the only path towards their fondest desire (which just so happens to coincide with exactly what Jack needs to happen next!).

So he trusts in the passion of their desire, and in his ability to present the clear logic of taking that action to achieve it, rather than simply expecting them to trust him, and what he says.

Because he’s so clearly authentic, people find themselves doing what he suggests, even though they know him to be dishonest. That’s the power of authenticity to influence.

Authenticity is something you can feel from a person. It’s what gives Jack his unique charisma, and is the grounds for his impressive ability to influence people. It’s far more powerful than could be achieved by a more honest, but less authentic person.

Jack also seems to understand something about human nature (and the way people respond to him reflects this same aspect of human nature).

And that aspect is:

People think they value honesty but deep down they value authenticity more. Deep down, they respect Jack authentically being who he is, and opnenly declaring his moral weakness.

Show people a man who freely and openly declares himself a dishonest and self-serving man, and they’ll want to see him redeemed, they’ll instinctively root for his salvation. Especially if they suspect he has a good heart, deep down.

But show them a man who portrays himself as the perfect font of pure honesty, and moral fortitude, and they’ll pounce like hyenas on any minor transgression from the ostensible character he created for himself.

Jack openly flaunts his more dastardly, self-serving actions, while downplaying, and even rejecting as mere misconception, his moments of apparent kindness.

We see another loveable rogue, of sorts, in Rick in Casablanca do the same thing.

He helps a young Belgian couple get their exit visas, artificing their roulette win so that the young wife doesn’t have to give sexual favours to the head of police. He shrugs off, and is indeed, royally pissed off when his employees show their love for his exceptional kindness.

He mentions several times that he has no sympathy with any party, on any side of the war. And he’s keen to make it clear to everyone that he only ever acts in purely his own self-interest. He declares: “I stick my neck out for nobody”.

Does this mean you need to try and make people think you’re as dastardly as Jack, or as self-interested as Rick?

Of course not!

The lesson is to be authentic to who you really are, regardless of what other people may think about it.

How can you, too, be free from what other people think?

By becoming more of your authentic self, by removing the layers of thought that have covered it up, most likely for years or even decades.

4. He knows what he wants (and more importantly why he wants it)

Well, almost all of the time.

We do see the occasional time when his trusty compass (which points at the thing you want most) betrays his indecision.

But the vast majority of the time, Captain Jack has a crystal clear signal of what he wants.

It’s also why I said above that knowing why you want it is even more important than knowing what you want.

And signal is the operative word.

Because Jack is a man who knows that what you want is never the thing itself, it’s what the thing represents to you.

So Jack wants his Black Pearl (his ship, for the uninitiated) back with his whole heart.

But he knows why he wants it.

He wants it because that ship, to him, *is* freedom itself.

5. He lives in the moment

The key quote is:

“Better to not know which moment may be your last. Every morsel of your entire being alive to the infinite mystery of it all.”.

Jack is talking to his trusty first mate, Gibbs, about death, and whether it’d be a good thing to know when you’ll die.

Regardless that the topic is death, this quote still reveals a lot about how Captain Jack Sparrow sees life.

This is the true sign of someone who loves life. Who gets what life is.

It’s not a particular thing that he’s attached to, and loves.

It’s life itself.

He marvels at life itself, he knows that life is an eternal mystery, never truly to be solved.

How does one become a person who marvels at life, and lives in the moment – if you’re not one of those lucky coves who just naturally does so, as Jack may or may not be?

Well, you’ll have noticed the theme by now.

You automatically, naturally become that type of person when you become more authentic to who you really are.

And this can be achieved by no longer being ruled by your thoughts, and getting in touch with your heart.

I, for one, look up to Captain Jack Sparrow for showing us how to live a life of genuine freedom.