With all of the bad news that pervades our collective conversation lately, one might wonder if the end of the world really is near. We are running out of money, of oil, of water, of food, of jobs, of health, of hope…

I was listening to the podcast of “Real Time With Bill Maher“, where one of his guests was the renowned astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Dr. Tyson asked the question: “Have we lost the ability to dream?”. Back in the 1950s and 1960s. general-interest magazines were full of articles about “the city of tomorrow” and “the home of tomorrow”. Where is this kind of future projection today? Now we project “peak oil” and “water wars”. It’s like pessimism is the new black, and optimism is out of style, old-fashioned, naive and silly.

Why has optimism taken a back seat? Why do we let the pessimists have all the fun?

The succession of crises and dramas and bad news that surrounds us, even if we don’t live it immediately in our lives, creates a sense of helplessness. The problems we hear about are so much bigger than us, and they dominate every moment of our collective consciousness.

The renowned psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, in his book “Learned Optimism” describes the distinction between optimism and pessimism as how we interpret and react to setbacks:

Optimism – reacting to setbacks from a presumption of personal power:

- Bad events are temporary setbacks
- Isolated to particular circumstances
- Can be overcome by my effort and abilities

Pessimism – reacting to setbacks from a presumption of personal helplessness:

- Bad events will last a long time
- Will undermine everything I do
- Are my fault

Dr Seligman proposes that optimism is a skill that can be learned, and which must be exercised to grow stronger. In the end, overcoming adversity is not about luck or prayer or someone else coming to the rescue. It is about assuming our personal power, seeing the temporary nature of the adversity and choosing to invest the effort to overcome the situation. Optimism is a question of will.

The challenge is that our collective conversation has turned towards the elements of pessimism: that the failures of the past will continue into the future, and that there is nothing we can do to change this bad situation, so it is better to do nothing.

Which is why I believe that the key to recovery is to re-learn how to be an optimist, to make it fashionable again. Not pie-in-the-sky, wishful optimism, but what I call “practical optimism”, an optimism grounded in two fundamental principles: faith and fact.

The first foundation of practical optimism is faith in a mission – a clarity about who we are, our values and our principles, a reason for being – and a faith in a vision, seeing adversity not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to define and prove our worth.

The second foundation of practical optimism is fact: that a solution to the problem set before us can be engineered from science and art. Humanity has overcome major challenges in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. Individuals every day triumph over adversity, it’s just we don’t hear enough about it.

The practical optimist recognizes the challenge, but doesn’t let it become larger than her. The question she asks is not “is there a solution?”, but rather “what is the solution?”. The practical optimist assumes success by becoming bigger than the obstacle.

The dual faith-fact foundation of optimism also makes it fragile. The biggest danger for the practical optimism is not pessimism, but cynicism. The construction of a house takes time, but blowing it up is a spectacular show. In the age of the sound bite, being able to point out a flaw or a hole in a plan is easy, which is why cynics rule the conversation if left unchecked. The practical optimist needs to protect his faith zealously.

The past is past, available for all to study and interpret. The present is the present. Tracing a line from these two points toward the future is simple, and it will usually point to more of the same.

However this reasoning is deeply flawed. If the future could be predicted by a straight line from the past, we would still be living in caves and wearing animal skins.

The natural state of human activity is not excellence, it’s mediocrity. Striving for excellence means exerting effort to break this tendancy towards mediocrity and bend the projection curve upward. To move the projection, we need to push with all our might, give it all we have. Half-measures are not sufficient, because eventually the inertia of the status-quo takes over and nothing changes.

It is the duty of the practical optimist to disrupt the projection towards mediocrity by proposing a vision and taking massive action that disrupts the status quo. The practical optimist’s foundation in faith and fact becomes a leverage point to move the projection, transforming a problem into an opportunity, and an opportunity into a new reality.

The future doesn’t have to be a projection of the past. The past is history. The present is just a temporary condition. It is up to you to imagine the future you really want, and to make it happen. No one else will do it for you.

Any “problem”, whether in our society or in our personal life, does not have to be terminal. You have overcomed adverse situations before, and you will do so in the future.

As Matt Ridley , author of “The Rational Optimist” says:
Am I saying that we should cease worrying about trends that might cause problems? Of course not. I am arguing that we should worry about real problems, including Africa’s plight, but that we should do so in the knowledge that we have solved many such problems before and can do so again. I am certainly not saying, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Rather, I’m saying, “Don’t despair, be ambitious”—though I admit it’s not nearly as snappy a song lyric.

For more information

Inspiration for this line of thought:

Real Time With Bill Maher (podcast): Episode #223 (broadcast 5 Aug 2011)
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/real-time-with-bill-maher/id98746009

Martin Seligman: Learned Optimism (book)
http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-ebook/dp/B005DB6S7K

Dr. Seligman’s site:
http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

Learned Optimism (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_optimism

Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist (blog and book)
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/

Sarah Robinson: Escaping Mediocrity (blog)
http://escaping-mediocrity.com

Drew Westin: What Happened To Obama’s Passion? (NYTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html

I’m currently visiting New York City on business, and decided to arrive a day early to play tourist and orient myself. While wandering around Midtown, I was looking for a place to sit, cool off and catch up with my e-mail when I came across the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. So I decided to enter.

In the lobby of the NYPL there is an exhibit showing draft manuscripts by famous creators. An original sketch from Beethoven caught my eye. As I tried to read the melody through the squiggles and the smudges, I started to understand why historians prize these artifacts: they provide a unique window into the author’s thinking process. Other displays of the original manuscripts of playwrights, poets and authors made me wonder about how historians of the future will be able to piece together the thought processes of current and future thinkers if the edits to their digital documents are lost to time.

We value the neatness of the end-product, but this order is the product of messy trial-and-error evolution. Sometimes the process is as important as the product.

Then I decided to further explore the building. You have probably seen the Rose Main Reading Room in many movies, including Ghostbusters (and others but they don’t come to mind right now). It is a tall, wood-paneled sunlit space with an intricately carved ceiling, long oak tables with brass lamps and shelves of reference books lining the walls.

I was in awe. There is something cathedral-like to the space, a hymn to the knowledge and wisdom passed down through the generations.

Looking around, I feel a twinge of sadness. I am surrounded by books, but at the same time, “books”, the physical kind, are slowly disappearing from my life.

I stopped adding to my personal library about a year ago, when I got my Kindle. The good thing about the e-book revolution is that it makes books and knowledge much more accessible, and especially more convenient. Before I bought my Kindle about a year ago, I occasionally read books, maybe ten or twelve a year. Now my little Kindle currently holds about 400 books on business, finance, philosophy, biographies, politics and science, as well as a healthy percentage of novels, sci-fi and short stories. I now go through at least two or three books a month. I’ve paid for about fifty of them, the rest are Kindle “freebies”. The freebies I select are on average quite good. I no longer have any need for paper books, and will not even consider buying a book unless I can get it in Kindle format.

I wonder if, a hundred or two hundred years from now, when EPUB and PDF and DOC files are all obsolete and impossible to read, will libraries like this magnificent reading room still exist? Will paper books still hold the collective memory of humanity or will we lurch forward, suffering amnesia and forgetting the genesis of our ideas and our knowledge?

I don’t have children of my own to carry on my legacy, but the desire for a passing immortality still inhabits me. Which is the primary motivation driving me to produce a book (and eventually several books) with my name on the cover, to be distributed on the shelves of libraries large and small across the US and Canada and eventually around the world. Just maybe one idea, somewhere in my book, will be the key to unleashning the creativity of someone who changes the world for the better.

Every knowledge professional needs to write a book sooner or later. The experience you develop through your practice is too valuable to be forgotten. The path to being regarded as the authority in your field is by becoming a published author.

I expect that most of my sales to of the e-book kind. But if enough dead tree versions are produced, then just maybe I can achieve a little bit of immortality, just like the passion-driven, dedicated authors and scholars who wrote the volumes which line the shelves of this magnificent temple to knowledge.

For more information

Exhibition: Celebrating 100 Years: http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/celebrating-100-years

New York Public Library Rose Reading Room: http://www.nypl.org/locations/schwarzman/general-research-division/rose-main-reading-room

I’m currently in New York for Book Breakthrough 2011: http://www.bookbreakthrough.com/workshop/

The chorus of the socialerati was unanimous: Facebook was no longer cool. Too many grandmas and cats, too many games and ads and noise, too many gurus pushing programs and businesses hawking stuff.

So when Google+ launched as an invite-only “Field Test”, all of the cool dudes (and they were mainly dudes) rushed to the new platform and proclaimed it as the best thing since sliced bread.

People were fighting each other like Filene’s Running Of The Brides to get a precious invite to join Google+. The service, still in a testing stage, reached something like 10 million accounts in the space of two weeks.

But your humble scribe, not so socialerati but still curious about this stuff, managed to get in at somewhere the four million mark. My first impression?

Meh.

Google+ is not the revolution we’ve been waiting for. And it just might go the same way as Google Wave or Google Buzz.

My main annoyance about Google+ is that it is more of the same. Yes there are things like Circles and Sparks and Whosits and Whatsits but it is still the same people sharing the same stuff as they do on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn.

Here are some of my thoughts why Google+ misses the mark now and will do so for the foreseeable future:

1. Google+ further fragments my attention span.

Attention is the currency of the new economy. There are only 86,400 seconds in a day, and I haven’t succeeded in learning how to walk, chew gum and update at the same time. Recent statistics say that people spend 22 minutes a day on Facebook but only 90 seconds on Google+. Actually, I don’t think that’s quite accurate because of the way the service is used – my Facebook tab on my browser might be open that long each day (and probably even longer) but it is hidden behind other tabs. I use the same window for Google+ as for GMail and other services, so it is more of a get-in-get-out usage pattern.

2. My circle is already connected.

I’m already connected to lots of people on Twitter (around 2500) and Facebook (around 1500) and LinkedIn (around 800). And many of these people I’m connected to on all three platforms, among others. Where am I going to find new people to connect with? By inviting my connections on the the other platforms to join me also on Google+?

3. I only have so much to say.

I’m already using tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to multicast my ideas to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I hope soon Google+ will publish an API so I can use the same tools and not have to cut and paste between services. But it will be the same number of updates, multicast to four services instead of three, because I can only think of so many brilliant things to say per day.

4. I resent Google forcing my work tools to become social.

So much so that I set up a new Google profile only for G+ and Google Reader. I’m concerned about privacy, hacking, and especially of the possibility of Google yanking my account because of the fine print in their terms of service. Not that I will purposely do something bad, but I personally know colleagues on Facebook who saw their outpost there suddenly banned without explanation or appeal. I have no reason to believe that Google won’t be as evil, or more, especially given the “free expression” nature of social.

5. What I really don’t like is that Google+ doesn’t bring significant new value added to social.

For progress to be incremental, innovation must be disruptive. The expectations were high when the rumors about Google+ were circulating pre-launch. But the bottom line, as I see it, is that Google+ is just another social channel in a rapidly fragmenting social universe. I will use it, because as a tribe-builder, I need to be everywhere to connect with people. But I don’t plan on wasting precious heartbeats micro-managing my connections into circles.

Facebook may be going through a dip in its record-setting adoption rate. That is good, and would be happening whether Google+ was on the scene or not. Google may boast of high participation rates, but I think that will be due to the “forced” nature of signup, i.e. if you’re a Google services user, you will have a G+ account by default. But will you use it? When is the last time you posted only on Google Buzz?

Will social still be relevant in 2020? I expect so. I remember back in 1999 I was using my mobile phone to access my e-mail on my Pentium II laptop, just like I use my iPhone today to get e-mail. But the fundamental experience is very different. I believe the contrast in social in 2020 compared to now will be just as different.

Unfortunately, Google+ doesn’t disrupt the experience of social enough to start a new paradigm. I’m not worried, though. There’s still eight years left to go.

For more information

In the meantime, find me on Google+ here:
http://ow.ly/5KVyV

TechCrunch: Google+ At 10 Million Users:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/larry-page-on-google-over-10-million-users-1-billion-items-shared/

Behave On Google Plus Or Your Gmail Gets It (gawker.com)
http://gawker.com/5823121/behave-on-google-plus-or-your-gmail-gets-it

Google+ Growth Since Launch (Experian Hitwise) – stats on page hits and dwell time
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2011/07/google_growth_since_launch.html

Comic from xkcd http://xkcd.com/918/ Used under Creative Commons licence

This is the first post I’ve written and posted using my iPad and the iOS WordPress app. Not bad, eh?

Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes I look back to decisions I’ve made in the past and wonder if I could have done better. If I knew then what I know now, how would things have turned out?

The danger of this game is that you can’t get a do-over on your choices in life. So the only outcome of this thought exercise is regret, and that does not get you anywhere fast.

However, I realize that the decisions I am most proud of, are not necessarily the decisions that made me richer or more successful, but rather those decisions which where crystal-clear to me at that time.

Those decisions felt “right” to me because they resonated with a wisdom at the core of me. When I made those “right” decisions, the clarity first came from the heart, then quickly confirmed with the information I had at that moment. The key characteristic of those decisions was how it felt… there was an optimistic inevitability to them. There was no fear, no doubt.

Did these “right” choices always work out the way I hoped? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I feel no regret from those “right” decisions, and I feel just as “right” about them now as I did then, no matter the eventual outcome.

Other times when I tried to make the “best” choice, analyzing the pros and cons, decisions which were made with the head first…those decisions did not turn out so well. There was always an element of doubt, because of new information coming in, sometimes confirming my decision, other times contradicting it. These decisions felt mushy and uncertain. There was fear, doubt and regret around these choices, especially when they didn’t work out as I hoped.

Which tells me that if I want to live a life without regret, should I follow my head, or my heart?

If I give the authority to my head, I can never make a clear choice. It may be that in the future I learn something about the situation, or about myself, that if I knew now would lead me to make a different decision. Or maybe that piece of information would hold me back from trying something new, from taking a leap, from expanding my zone of possibility.

When man first attempted to fly, it was a process of trial and error, each step made on the information they had at the time. Given the track record of those early attempts, if they looked at what they were doing rationally, they would never have gotten off the ground.

To create the future you really want, you must challenge the status-quo, the way things are right now. Every decision requires taking a leap of faith. And only the heart is able to make that leap with confidence.

Let go of trying to make the “best” decision, and focus on making “right” ones. A “right” decision resonates with your mission, vision and values, using the information you have at hand. Then charge ahead with clarity, commitment, confidence and courage towards making your dream become real.

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/tia-singh

Related posts on this blog:

Today Is Not Yesterday Nor Tomorrow
http://blog.davender.com/2008/10/today-is-not-yesterday-nor-tomorrow/

The Stuff Of Leadership
http://blog.davender.com/2005/12/the-stuff-of-leadership/

Image credit: Fergal Claddaugh on Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feargal/5568944462/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I was making the transition from military life to the civilian world in the mid 90s, and again as I was transitioning from engineering to coaching at the end of that decade, I participated in a personal development program called “The Pursuit Of Excellence“.

Among the several truths I discovered through this program is this: ”How you do one thing is how you do everything“.

There is no dividing line between our public persona and our private life. If you preach one position in public and secretly do the opposite, you will get caught. Arnie, Anthony, Eliot, Mark… The examples are too numerous to be named.

I’ve been getting feedback from the #trust30 series and other blog entries, about how I am sharing my inner thoughts, wishes, fears and dreams with you. The question that I get asked is “do I worry that it will have a negative impact on my reputation?”  I believe it’s quite the contrary. If I’m preaching the gospel of Clarity, Commitment, Confidence and Courage, but secretly I’m hiding behind my fears, then I’m not walking the talk, and people will sense it.

It is too easy for those of us in the coaching and leadership industry to fall into “The Guru Trap“, where we start to believe our own hype and take shortcuts to shore up the image we want to project. It can be a route to quick financial success, but this instant success can be quite hollow. Keeping up a false front takes a lot of energy, while living authentically in our professional and personal life is much simpler and more fulfilling.

Be honest, be transparent, be open, and above all, walk your talk. Business is first and foremost trust. This means developing the courage to be real, in order to create a connection of trust between people.

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/david-spinks

Context Associated: http://www.contextinternational.com
I will always be grateful to Kimberlee Faith Wolfe for encouraging me to get involved in this experience, as well as my first facilitator, Bobby Ng of Edmonton,  who gifted me with a set of life principles which continue to guide me today, as well as the many other leaders and colleagues with whom I shared a transformative experience during the Wall, the Advancement, and the Mastery programs.  Context programs continue in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and elsewhere. If you want to know more, I can put you in touch with the right contacts.

Related article:

Beware The Guru Trap
http://blog.davender.com/2010/01/beware-the-guru-trap/

How Big Is Your Whuffie?
http://blog.davender.com/2010/01/how-big-is-your-whuffie/

Related Book

“The Likeability Factor” by Tim Sanders
http://timsanders.com/books/likeability-factor.html

Image credit: “mikeyexists” on Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/63101308@N00/360108233/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know I. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Thinking Big” is easy. I come across people all the time who have big dreams. I meet far fewer who are actually making them happen.

The difference between talking and doing is Commitment. To me, Commitment is making what I say I want my first priority.

I’m the first to admit that I have a Big Project that I’m not committed to. Actually, several. I want to lose 20 pounds. I want to produce my first book. I want a life partner. These are all big things I want in my life, that I talk about, plan to do, someday.

It’s the distinction between urgent and important: Urgent is what gets other people”s projects moving forward. Important is what gets my projects moving forward. I have “lost” whole years focusing on the urgent while setting aside the important. These years have been productive, just not in ways that are as important to me now as they were important to others back then.

One’s results are a product of one’s priorities. If you find you’re talking a lot about something you want to get done, yet there is no progress happening on that front, then look at your commitment. Is what you’re talking about now creating the future you really want?

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/laura-kimball

Related posts:

Will You Jump Or Wait To Be Pushed
http://blog.davender.com/2010/05/will-you-jump-or-wait-to-be-pushed/

Image credit: Ed Schipul (eschipul) on Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/2371505523/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In today’s Wikipediaed world of instant information, we are conditioned to have all the answers we need at our fingertips. Because, if it’s on the Web, it must be true!

But it makes me wonder why the answer which comes from others is more credible than the answer which comes from within.

To trust your own truth is scary. What if you’re wrong?

Well, what if you’re right?

What if your education, your knowledge, your experience, your failures, your successes, your heritage, your upbringing, your philosophy, your mission, your beliefs, your values, your instinct, your intuition, and your vision all combine to give you a unique perspective on the situation? To see what others don’t see?

You emerge as a leader when your truth allows you to see beyond conventional wisdom, out towards the blue oceans of unexplored possibilities.

Truth is not carved in stone. It is invented each moment as humanity moves forward, assimilating new knowledge and new experiences. No one has a monopoly on the truth.

There comes a point where you must stop looking to be validated by someone else’s truth, and start listening to your own.  You know what is true and what you need to do.

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/jen-louden

Related posts

To Get The Desired Result, Ask The Right Question
http://blog.davender.com/2007/12/to-get-the-desired-result-ask-the-right-question/

A Thought About Intention
http://blog.davender.com/2008/05/a-thought-about-intention/

On The Right Questions
http://blog.davender.com/2007/03/on-the-right-questions/

Image Credit: Jeremy Brooks via Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/2551580036/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

So what if fear is “False Evidence Appearing Real”
It’s real enough to me
It’s the fear of being incompetent that scares me the most

To create a new normal I must learn a new way of being
which means doing what I’ve dreamed of doing
but have not yet done

My worth to others
and especially my worth to me
is based on what I’ve done in the past

But if I try something new,
my fear is
of not measuring up to the expectations of others
and even more terrifying
is facing the reality that what I’m delivering
does not measure up to the magnificence of what I imagined

Will I let them down?
Will I let ME down?

When I look back ten years from now
I will probably smile at how naive I was
how I was afraid of giving life to my vision
for fear of not being worthy of being the one to make it happen

It is very tempting to cling to the known
because, like it or not, at least it is known

The choice I have before me is to be comfortable in my competence
because it justifies being the person I am now
or to celebrate my incompetence
because it frees me to invent the glorious person I am meant to be.

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/lachlan-cotter

Image credit: Loretta Prencipe (LWPrencipe) on Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorettaprencipe/110834144/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence

Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of course I want lots of clients and a big income. I often follow what the big names in my business are doing, and it is very tempting to try to copy them. I heard a colleague of mine say that the fastest way to become a big-name coach is to “apprentice” with a big-name coach.

But when I see these “apprentices” at work, more often than not they tend to promote their mentor’s services and repeat their mentor’s stories. And what they say becomes bland.  Their message is clearly someone else’s, it is not their own. They may be getting more clients, but I’m wondering where does the client’s loyalty lie, towards the coach or to the big-name mentor?

Benchmarking oneself against the industry leaders can become a trap. It’s easy to duplicate style, message and actions, but much more difficult to duplicate mindset. When you are doing what the leaders do, the prospect wonders “why go for a copy when I can have the real thing?”

Like when I was shopping for a new mobile phone. I wanted an iPhone, but my eye turned towards the others on the market, thinking I could save a bit of money. Then I realized if I bought a Motorola or a Samsung, I would always be comparing it to an Apple and regretting I did not get the “real thing”.

To break out of the cacophony of marketing noise, you have to have a unique message, spoken in your own voice. Having a spin that challenges the status-quo helps. Ground your message in stories from your life experience. When you want to change someone’s mind, facts open the door but stories seal the deal. And your life stories are unique to you, which what makes the message authentic. And that’s the “divine idea” – the spark in your message that gives it a life of its own.

I had my share of success in network marketing back in 2003-04. But I did it not by blindly “duplicating” what everyone else was doing. I did it my own way. My business partner and I launched a different way of marketing, one that was much more in alignment with our mission, our vision and our values. And it worked to help propel my network marketing income to the five-figure level for a couple of years, until I abandoned building that business to focus back on coaching.

I don’t want to be like others. I want my brand to be about connection, trust, feet-on-the-ground pragmatism combined with shoot-for-the-moon idealism. I want to stay real as I live my life project.

Many years ago, when I took a course on the “Open Space Technology” method of group facilitation, the trainer said: “Whoever shows up is the right people.”  There was something in that awkward grammar that made the message stick in my head. Business success is not a popularity contest. It is about attracting the people who resonate with your unique message, who believe in who you are and what you’re doing, who value what you offer and who are ready to commit.

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/fabian-kruse

Image credit: “shortie66″ on Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunshine6/339605220/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Eric Handler asks:  ”What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?”

Simple. LISTEN UP!!!

Stop chasing “things” to feel fulfilled. Success is creating an experience of life that allows you to explore your full potential. Pursue your passion. Make a difference. Build a legacy. Turn your vision into a Big, Hairy, Audacious Life Project, and push it to the max.

The benchmark for me is Steve Jobs, who keeps on creating, imagining and executing his vision even though he knows each new day when he wakes up could be his last. He doesn’t need the money, he does it for a higher purpose.

For more information

This post is part of a series inspired by The Domino Project’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Each day during the month of June 2011, we receive a thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, to use as a writing prompt. For more information about the #Trust30 Writing Challenge, see today’s prompt:
http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/eric-handler

Before I read today’s prompt, I was reading an article -
“Foxconn CEO: I Wouldn’t Be Working As Hard As Steve Jobs If I Was As Ill As Him” (Business Insider)
http://www.businessinsider.com/foxconn-ceo-praises-steve-jobs-disses-warren-buffett-2011-6

Image credit: “the justified sinner” via Flickr
Direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_justified_sinner/3685583354/
Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence