I didn’t know what was going on 10 years ago. I didn’t experience it. I only know what work, employment, the successful were all like because I’ve studied them. What I do know from experience is how difficult it is to grow up knowing that society is dysfunctional. That everything that my parents grew up with worked for them, but not for me. I felt pulled into an abyss because I knew that the world needed, not just someone, but some type of people. I grew up understanding factories and what it took to work there. Until I realized everything turned into a factory, that 2/3 of the jobs I ask friends what they want to do say “factory worker” without actually saying it. In the middle of everything that is no longer working but was being forced, I couldn’t become what I wanted to be until I decided to fight the world back and join the Tribe of Linchpins.
The job market got personal by giving stagnant wages, health insurance and a false illusion of job security. Job security is what everyone fights for, or rather procrastinates for. Every job began as a job where people didn’t have to think until their job was on the line. Then, instead of becoming a linchpin, an artist, a creator, they chose to make the tasks of the job last longer. Job security became self-controlled. This is what I grew up noticing. I say it in past tense because job security isn’t a result of always having stuff on your to-do list anymore. No. Job security has become something else, something better, something beneficial.
Job security is only available to linchpins. The ones who do the jobs and all the other tasks that aren’t getting done. It may not be their job, but to a linchpin, that’s no reason not to do it. This is what job security means. Instead of being told what to do -which is repetitive and produces the same exact dull results over and over- linchpins figure out what to do. Figuring something out taps potential on the shoulder and tells her to get to work. It produces greater, more important, more human results and 95% of the time more profit than dictated results.
Linchpins produce emotional labor, not the kind of work you’re doing now where you come home frustrated and exhausted from doing what you’re told (always more exhausting than doing art). See, cogs are people who have been manipulated and brainwashed not to stop to think if what they are doing is different, human and actually productive above the average standards. Linchpins not only stop themselves, pause and find out how to be more creative, but they have the ability to stop other cogs, redirect then, and turn them into creative linchpins because being a linchpin means being leader and being a leader is about making other people leaders. Leaders are indispensable which means job security is universal. This job security doens’t mean you will stay at one job forever, it means that you will always have a job, a place where it will be your responsiblity to do what linchpins do best.
Stay Positive & This Job Security Is Sooo Much Better
It’s been over a month and a half since I attended Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event in Tribeca (NY). There’s a specific reason I waited so long to reflect on the event. I wanted to prove a point, not just about Seth Godin, but what any business must produce, whether in product or experience.
Simply put, it must be astonishingly remarkable, something so memorable it is still thought of and excites a person’s senses a month, five months or a year after the product is purchased or the service is used. Essentially, that is what Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event manifested, so it is with easy honor that I will hit some points from it again along with my own curves and twists of ideas.
I had no inclination to write this so soon. I decided to after I created a new motto the other day, tweeted it and it got retweeted by a few people. It was just another tweet, another 140 characters that my mind spit out and that I needed to share.
My motto: Give yourself authority.
It was only after I expressed the motto on twitter that I was tapped by the memory of Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event, which it’s theme was to not wait for someone to pick you, not wait for an authority to notice you, to get lucky; but to pick yourself, solve the problems yourself, find the opportunity yourself, to lead yourself and quite plainly, as my motto states, give yourself authority.
72 Steps To Starbucks Coffee
While in New York City every 72 steps, either if I turned left or right, I would be facing a Starbucks. In Manhattan alone, there are approximately 300 Starbucks stores. That means that out of all the registered Coffee Shops in New York, Starbucks consists of about 60% of them. In a city dominated by the outlier of the Coffee Industry, how can any other coffee shops even make it?
That’s a simple answer that you can come up with. The better question is how Starbucks was able to take a symbol from Moby Dick, use it as it’s logo, and create a brand – an understanding of when you see the symbol, you are going to smell the richest Coffee in town and get free Wi-Fi along with the absolute best customer service.
It’s A Revolution
The dictionary says that a revolution is a single turn of event. Our revolution, the one we don’t quite understand, the one we thought could be easily understood, the one that is making us question nearly everything, is not a single turn of event, it’s a million turns. This revolution is something that is a collective change in one sense, but deep down to it, it’s about the turn each one of us makes, a turn that may be different than the person next to us. While putting it in the most simple form, the revolution is about giving yourself authority, ridding yourself of the chains of tradition and following your passion to create art. Yet, to do each of these things is not something that we can do collectively, being collective is what got us in this grave. No. This must be done individually; each person must make the choice, must give themselves authority and use it. In its entirety, this revolution will turn Perfect into impossible
Instead Of Giving It Our All
Seth gave a long description about the industrial age and this new age of connection. The one take I want to share with you from the event is this.
“So one quick example, just to show you how deeply ingrained this is. If you don’t mind, raise your right hand just as high as you can. Okay, now raise it just a little higher.”
Instead of giving it our all the first time, we give enough and then a bit more when told to. Some people raised their hands 20% higher, others 5% higher when told to raise it a bit higher. In a room of about 200 people there was about 4,000% of potential not being used until told to. The way I see it, even if you gave 100% and raised your hand as high as possible the first time, you would still find a way to raise it higher.
I No Longer Market To You
I had no clue what real type of marketing I was doing on my website until I heard Seth Godin say this, “Because marketing has shifted from me marketing at you, to you marketing to each other.” So, when creating a product, running a business or writing a blog, you can provide all the strong content you would like, but unless you know what you want to do with your audience, your tribe, unless you know how to give them strategies to market to each other and other people that will join your tribe, you have nothing.
Juggling
Seth Godin also inspired me to write this post: The Juggler’s Perfection. On the note of Juggling, of doing what you love, of taking that risk…
“Is it worth getting arrested for?” – Seth Godin
Bluffs, Excuses and The Promise
You think you have a hundred reasons not do something, not to take leap, not to go out on your own or start your business or take a risk to achieve what you really want. Actually, you probably only have 15 to 20 excuses, or rather, they are bluffs. When you sit down, write the list of the 15 to 20 bluffs, and work through it, you will find that either you don’t have anything holding you back, or you just need to work out a way to get around one or two excuses (a lot easier than working around 20). What it comes down to, what it really comes down to is that you want a promise it will work. You want the paper to say, after you have crossed all your bluffs out, that it will work indefinitely.
There will never be a promise that it’s going to work. Once you realize that, you realize there’s no point in making a list, not because there’s no point in achieving your goal anymore, but because you realize that you are going to have to take a risk and that there isn’t a promise, you will say “something is better than nothing” and get on with it, ship the product or start the business. As humans, if we are not promised lobster (perfection), we would rather have crawfish (anything) than nothing at all. Once you realize there is no promise of perfection, no lobster, it makes doing the thing you made a list of bluffs for, all the more easy. You may even find that you like crawfish more than lobster.
A couple of sayings to use/share
Money is a weight you can run much faster without
You will be wrong a lot, but you will be right a lot too
All you need to care about is being human
The Two Achievements I Made After The Event
Seth made a simple, yet such an extremely interesting point about entrepreneurship and freelance. A freelancer gets paid when she ships, delivers the product, finishes. The entrepreneur gets paid while she sleeps. I am happy to say that, while I still do freelance writing, I have crafted a segment of it into a businesses in which I have hired two employees already! I now sleep easier (because I know I’m getting paid for it) and I have more time to do $100 an hour work that makes a much larger impact on the world – which leads me to…
The second achievement is nearly ready to be shipped. My 30,000 word manifest on what school is for: a view from an 18-year-old graduate who received his associates degree and plans to go back for a master’s degree. Not for the diploma, but for the information and experience being within the system will produce, in order to write a 90,000 word sequel upon graduation. The eBook, Start Schooling Dreams will be released at the beginning of August, 2012, completely free. More background information to come soon.
Stay Positive & Take The Authority, Make A Badge Even
It’s a common saying, a statement that gets the average worker to not bring home frustrations and sobs from mistakes that took place during the day. It’s a motivator to those who think that since the world still moves on, that they better move on too. (You caught the post earlier about what happens when you stand still.) But what you may not know, is that the saying is used by the dispensable cog, the mediocre, the “average” Joe, the common worker.
See, a Linchpin, someone who brings the best to their work, brings passion, motivation, self-determination and so much more; when they stop working, when they take a break or leave for the day, the world doesn’t move on. Linchpins make the world stop when they stop being creative. The world can’t function without them doing what they do best.
Sure, the mediocre can move on, but the Linchpin moves up.
Nor are opportunities or priceless moments to demonstrate your talents or your art.
If a rock is left in a strong stream of water unmoving, naturally the stream will grind down the rock into a pebble. Ultimately defeated it will either be piled on with more rocks meeting the same fate or get taken by the stream and tossed out.
Like the pebble, standing still in life will lead you to be grinded down to non-existence, except it occurs much quicker. When a person creates a stream of their own success, by starting to move, starting to push, starting to lean forward, their stream continues to gain momentum and power. They (their stream) strong with creativity, toils anything standing still. (you?)
A person just following orders, just trying to reach the finish line, just trying to complete something, with no intention of creating inexorable value, does a two-step forward, one step back process.
They make progress, with some setbacks and eventually reach the destination but there’s not much value in that.
Every person running a five-mile race gets to the finish line but only a few significant people are the first to reach that destination with even more passion and vigor than when they started. They are the ones to get the audience standing, whistling and applauding until their hands sting. That is value.
To make anything remarkable, creative and irreplaceable, it’s still a two-step forward, one step back process, there is nothing special to it, there is no natural born talent, they merely have more passion. That’s it. That’s how to create value.
Notice, those who finish last in the race get the same type of applause as the winner because the audience can see the passion burning, the determination to complete the race, the relentless effort that the last place person is putting in. That is value.
Also notice that the audience is going just as crazy over a few runners that are in the middle. The ones clapping for them know how passionate they are about running the five miles. The runners made sure to express their passion, whether they win or lose. That is value.
See, whether you finish first, fiftieth or last, you have the ability to create value. All you need is to declare, bespeak and manifest your passion.
Ground yourself so you can learn to be alone, inquisitive, have time to think, to use your imagination and to add to the flame of creativity.
Being alone is vitally important. It gives you the time to shut everything down, let your mind be free and for you to produce ideas and solutions that you would have never thought of before because you are constantly enabling an overload of information to transition into your mind. Day by day, the mind is twitchy, hyper and working too fast for too long. It is in this action that much of life, of creativity, of a purpose is lost.
I remember the couple of times I was grounded as a kid and the multiple times I grounded myself as an adult. I locked the door, laid on the floor and sometimes listened to light music, read a magazine or just sat there contemplating the world outside my room. I would also write. Other times, I would destroy things and try to put them back together. There were plenty of times I sat on top of my dresser, looked out the window and watched birds fly, watched clouds in the sky and questioned life. The more special times were when I thought of incredible life changing ideas – something that is guaranteed to happen once the mind is quiet. The most important lessons in life are the ones which are learned when alone, when one has a relaxed mind and can work out an understanding without any predescending variables.
It was during these periods of grounding that I would meditate. Not on purpose. Not based off of a video or internet advice on how to meditate. Meditation simply is, it’s not something that can be forced because in that very purpose, in that very goal, there is a working mind and a sense of strife to achieve. That is not meditation. The meditation I am speaking of is the one that does not seek calmness, relaxation or solitude. The one I speak of is that which will revitalize your energy, your motivation and resilience. The one which unlocks the treasure chest of creativity in your brain and releases it into all of you which then transfers to all that you touch. The one that makes art, art.
Stay Positive & Getting Grounded Doesn’t Seem Like A Threat Now Does It
I have written a substantial amount of papers and reports throughout my educational career. The majority of which were written the night before or the day it was due. My reasoning is explained here. Besides implementing the Pareto principle, doing things near the last-minute is one of my talents. I work very well under stress.
As a result for producing A+ papers right before they were due, I was labeled the King of Bullshitting Papers.
The title is far from accurate so it’s time people understand the different types of smart people that school churns out. I am one of three types of scholars. Can you pick which one you are most like?
1. The Valedictorian: Reads the entire book, takes notes, reviews the book again and then writes the report.
2. The Bullshitter: Reads a review of the book online and adds unrelated information into the report as a filler.
3.The Unnoticed Genius: Scans the entire book and takes the most important parts and writes a report based on the important factors, previously learned content and personal experience.
If you are a Valedictorian, you are the best at following orders, listening to directions, and having zero creativity. The Bullshitter of course, may not even read a review of the book. It’s likely that the bullshitter just reads the back of the book or only the introduction. The last type of smart person is the one most wrongly assumed as being the Bullshitter. The Unnoticed Genius takes the core of both the Valedictorian and the Bullshitter, squishes them together and with a bit of creativity, forms art.
Understand that knowing an idea and elaborating on it quickly, based off of both research and experience, is not bullshitting. Trying to act like you know the idea and pretending you are expert enough to elaborate on it – that is bullshitting.
Stay Positive & Remember Who You Mistakenly Call King Of Bullshitting, They’re The Ones Who Are Going Far In Life
