A lesson in becoming who you are, what others see and where you fit in the middle.
It's not about me, it's about you
Sounds like most breakups right? Well, in this case, it was breaking up with parts of myself. For a while now I'd been more or less writing an online diary to the world but there was one issue, the world was not reading what I had to say nor did the world know I had things to tell it.
It started out as a casual conversation about what I was up to with my good friend Ben Angel at lunch, which then turned into coffee, which then turned into dinner and a day on a laptop. I sat there listening to what I felt were my dreams being ripped apart, only to later realize that whilst I had dreams of becoming a writing sensation and the go to man for everything in this genre, I was not practicing what I was preaching.
I was merely venting to the world about my distaste of many things, sure, I was getting comments from people and many were following me but I wasn't breaking any new ground. I was essentially the definition of insanity; I was doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. I had not identified who I was talking to, I wasn't really offering anyone anything of any value, I was all about me and not about my audience and I had to make some changes.
If you don't know where you're going, then why would anyone follow you?
I'd prided myself on being an 'enigma wrapped in mystery' as someone had once described me and I was clinging onto this phrase like there was no tomorrow, I had made this my identity. I was so entrenched in this character and so sure of it that I had not stopped to get out of my own way to realize that. Sure, my friends and a few strangers were praising me on my content and the stories I was telling but that was simply it, I was telling a story but not offering anything for my readers to return to. How could I expect anyone to come along for the long haul if I was not offering him or her an end goal of where he or she and I were heading?
Patience is a virtue
I realized that I was the type of person who was taking on a lot of responsibility. The second someone was coming to me for a salutation to their problem, or an issue they wanted to get out there, I made it my life mission to write about it then and there and post it online for the world to see. But as we learnt earlier, they world was not aware I was talking to it.
Sitting there that day, dissecting every word, deleting my hard work and re-writing and re-writing and then re-writing again. Answering many questions, sitting and thinking about what my mission was with my idea and my work, it seemingly took days was a struggle. I'd laugh when I would say to people that I am the most patient but yet impatient person they would ever meet. Yes this got people laughing but perhaps those laughs were coming at my expense because I'd been saying this for quite some time and once again, had claimed this as part of my identity and had become too stubborn to realize and make a change.
If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
Yet another line that most of us have probably heard time and time again in our lives as we grow up. If you fall of the horse, get back on it. I'd allowed myself to put myself under an enormous amount of pressure to get everything right the first time and left no room for error, when all the while I was making the biggest error of them in all in doing so. Once again, I'd gotten in my own way and could not see forward for only seeing me, not who I was aiming to reach with my words and my message.
Drafting text, articles and rewording bits and pieces here and there was a foreign concept to me. I had claimed that I never delete anything, once I've said it, it's said, and it's there forever. How ignorant and pig headed I was being, yes I was confident in my abilities but perhaps my delivery was a little to strong. I was bellowing out these opinions like there was no tomorrow with little thought as to how I was attracting and engaging my readers.
There's reality, and then there's your reality.
Two very different things indeed. Whilst I have a deep awareness of my personality and how I operate on a day-to-day basis, stepping outside of this and reviewing things from an external point of view can be a challenge. All be it a very worthwhile one. Whilst the spiritual gurus will have us questioning what reality even is, in my mind there is often two versions. That which we have going on inside out minds, and that which is going outside of our minds. Learning to distinguish between the two is an important skill when wanting to influence others.
All in all
Slow down, take stock and ask for help if you have any shadow of doubt in the direction that you are heading is a definite take home for me from my day with a marketing guru. I suppose at this point I could say that we should always be expecting the unexpected as I know that day, I had only intended on having lunch, but ended up getting much more.