Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Do you put more in to get the job than you put in once you have it?
Do you work harder on a big bang launch of a product than growing it once it’s out there?
Do you try harder to grow your relationship after a milestone than planning for that milestone?
It’s not a matter of picking only one side of the scale, but it is a important to pick a side to be the most important.
Stay Positive & Then Gut Check Your Efforts Scales On The Side That Matters More
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There is really no better creative exercise one can enroll in than that of writing words through the lens of another.
Write the perfect testimonial you want someone to leave your business.
Write the narrative you want your interviewee to say.
Write the feedback letter from the bank you’re pitching your idea to for a business loan.
Write the love letter you’d want to get from someone special in your life.
Write your work review you hope your future boss would write about you.
There’s so much power behind this. Empathy. Accountability. Vision and imagination. Goals. Drive. And a hundred other buzzwords of productivity and meaning.
But it starts with being vulnerable and actually writing it.
Stay Positive & Your Notebook Is Waiting
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The hard side of a network is the side worth putting your effort into growing. (Think, drivers, not riders for Uber.) Without doing so, you won’t scale the network or product.
The hard project at work is worth working on more than the easy stuff. The hard project is what gets you noticed, and by extension, likely more compensated, more appreciated and will leave you feeling more fulfilled.
The hard part of a relationship is being more generous than what you get out of it.
The hard stuff is the stuff worth doing if you want any noticeable or meaningful impact.
If all that matters is momentary satisfaction of a small box that gets checked, by all means, continue with the easy stuff.
Stay Positive & More Feeling Of Risk, More Actual Reward
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It’s pretty easy for someone else to pick you.
The employer sees your resume and they pick it from the pile for an interview. A magazine Google’s a topic and finds your blog and sees you’re passionate about their topic so they pick you to guest a column.
The thing about getting picked is that it starts with picking yourself.
Picking yourself as a qualified candidate that applies to the job. Picking yourself to start a blog and not wait for a columnist position to open up.
You can imagine what it takes to get picked then.
You can also imagine that maybe you don’t need to get picked at all if you do it for yourself enough.
Stay Positive & Pick Early, Pick Often
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Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find satisfaction.
You might otherwise interpret it as something that fills you with joy or makes you feel fulfilled at the end of the day.
Do this and the rest follows.
Which when you put it that way, it’s really easy to detect the things that don’t beget satisfaction, joy or fulfillment.
Once you see them (perhaps the scripts) you can change them.
Stay Positive & It’s More Like Making Satisfaction Than Finding It
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It’s obvious that your website, ad copy or newsletter is about how great you are. Every reader or consumer expects and anticipates you to think that. You wouldn’t be in the business you are if you didn’t think it.
This begs a pretty important question: if someone can already assume that you have a dozen reasons why you, your product or your service is great, then what’s there to really say?
Perhaps it’s more important to say all the things you’re not and then explain why you’re not for everyone.
It’s crazy how validating that kind of messaging can be for someone–it’s easier to feel a part of a tribe when you know who isn’t in it.
It’s crazier still how effective it can be in converting someone who falls into one of the categories of who your brand is not for–namely because a brand that is clear about who they serve is a more inviting brand to be part of than the one that says they are for everyone and their grandmother.
Rather than riffing on how great you are, try riffing on what you’re not here for.
Stay Positive & Introduce The Tension, Don’t Wait For Someone Else To
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It’s a magical moment when a person (perhaps you’ve experienced this?) resolves that they have nothing to lose, so they leap, they try something different, maybe they make a drastic decision.
Normally the threshold is hit once there’s enough of a safety net or reassurance, but here’s the thing: there is always something to lose.
Which begs the question: What’s the real story we’re telling ourselves that leads us to leap?
Maybe we can tell ourselves that story more often.
Stay Positive & There Will Always Be Something To Lose, So Might As Well Leap Again And Again
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