If you want to make an impact in the world, you have to express yourself. And the way you’ve expressed yourself so far has been good, in that it has gotten you to where you are now. But if you want to go beyond where you’ve come, you need to make a shift. And making a shift in how you express yourself is one of the toughest things to do. (Spinning plates, juggling knives, doing a back handspring? Child’s play.)
Expression isn’t about words, and it isn’t about style… even though these factor into it heavily. It’s easy to get into ruts with your language, your catch-phrases, your metaphors. Expression is about viewpoints. It’s about perspective. It’s tied fundamentally to the eyes through which you see the world around you, and all the filters between your brain and the world it’s trying to make sense of.
Try this: think about your business. Think about who you serve, and what you do for them. Write it down. Keep it simple. Got it?
Now, come at it from a completely different angle, and do it again. Try seeing it as you’ve never seen it before. (Go ahead, take a minute and do it. I’ll wait.)
See how frickin’ hard that is?
You might have come up with some different phrases, or maybe a different way of languaging your process. Good for you. But did you notice how easy it was to slip back into your old way of seeing things? Did you feel how hard it was not to trudge down the same road as usual?
What does any of this matter?
It matters because it’s necessary. It matters because, in order to stay on top of the wave of a world that’s in constant flux, you have to constantly be reinventing your view on yourself. Why? Because people are constantly re-evaluating you each and every time they come in contact with you, and if you keep on spouting the same old tired platitudes, you’ll slip gently into the good night of obsoleteness.
As Hugh McLeod wrote in his HughTrain Manifesto,
It’s no longer just enough for people to believe that your product does what it says on the label. They want to believe in you and what you do. And they’ll go elsewhere if they don’t.
It’s not enough for the customer to love your product. They have to love your process as well.
Now this isn’t some isolated business-speak, devoid of deeper implications or the need for actual human intimacy, here. Hugh goes on to say, “It’s not about merit. It’s about faith. Belief. Conviction. Courage. It?s about why you?re on this planet. To make a dent in the universe.” In other words, if you want to reach people, you have to dig deep. You have to extract the essence of what you’re about, and offer it up on a platter to anyone and everyone who reads you, gets in contact with you, or even remotely thinks about hiring you. And if you hope for being referred to others, be prepared to share your soul.
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And, my friends, none of this can be done without some open-hearted introspection, dogged determination to strike to the core of who you are and what you do, and the genuine desire to connect with your fellow (wo)man. If you insist on mamby-pamby’ing around with superficialities, you’ll marginalize yourself. There’s too much ambient noise these days to just whimper, and expect to be heard. If you want to be heard, you’ve gotta yawp.
I know, I know…
This is tough stuff. This is bare-naked, raw-to-the-bone stuff. But it doesn’t have to be ugly. It can be a glorious sharing of your innermost desires, an arms-wide-open invitation to the world to glimpse the essence of who you are. And sharing of that magnitude rarely goes unrewarded.
Some may not like what they see. Some may object, driven by their own fears and doubts, and blame you for their pain. Others may counsel you to take a safer road, or keep hidden, or “appear professional (i.e. do ‘the ostrich routine’).” I say, let them have their way. You forge yours. Let them leave. You stay. And shine.
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Some people—the right people, the people who matter—will love you for it. Why? Because you’ve given them something to love, something to wrap their hands around and hug. Those who stay hidden can’t touch, or be touched, like this.
It takes courage to step outside of your comfort zone. But that’s okay. I know you can do it. I believe in you.
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