Power

It’s Not The Answer You Want

It’s Not The Answer You Want

Garth Beyer

2941559903_484dcd49ee_b

How do you tell someone who feels like you’ve done them wrong, that you can’t do anything about it? How do you get people to talk about politics when they don’t want to? How do you get a hardcore punk-rocker to buy your classical music? How do you get a math major to write a fiction novel that’s not sci-fi?

The answer is you don’t. Not only do you spend their time and energy on something they don’t care about or are uncomfortable talking about or working on, you also waste your own hour and effort appealing to someone who doesn’t want to hear the message you have to offer.

As much as the world seems like it’s a discourse in manipulation and persuasion, it’s not. The game isn’t the game you think it is. It’s not who can please the most, who can convert the most, who can get the others out of their bubble into their own. The game is finding and connecting those with the same bubble as you; color, shape, goal and all.

Campaigns don’t move forward logically, that’s why so many people are frustrated with politics. Campaigns move forward emotionally, through connections of people who trust one another. The lesson here is not to preach to those who don’t trust you and you don’t earn trust with those who don’t agree with you.

Run social media for business’s who believe in it. Talk politics with those who enjoy talking about politics. Please those willing to be please. Don’t aim for the masses, the market that’s not listening or anyone who you haven’t fist earned the trust of.

 

Stay Positive & Your Message Is Only As Strong As The Peoples’ Trust In Hearing It

(not how convinced you are that you’re right)

Photo credit

Being A Leader Is Fricken Hard

Garth Beyer

Allow me to be personal, blatant and a bit motivational.

If there’s one thing I work the most hard at, it’s being a leader. I subject myself to more trials and obstacles than many others my age because I have a dream of being a real leader. I start by biting off more than I can chew. I continue by making promises that keep me busy day in and day out. I manage all this by believing that I don’t have a choice but to manage it all. Today I’ve experienced the famous quote that you will likely recall from Spider-Man,

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

My superpower is leadership and with it comes a lot of responsibility. The beautiful thing about leadership is that 90 percent of the responsibility is pleasurable. (Part of me would argue this same ratio goes for any superpower. It’s what makes it super!) Most leaders enjoy stress, take pleasure in daily deadlines and play with the difficulty of leading 10, 50, 10,000 people. Leadership is fun, but there are times – like Peter Parker – I wish it wasn’t my superpower. When I’m coughing, aching and chasing my running nose all day, I don’t want to be a leader. When I miss the friends closest to me, I wish I could drop everything and go see them immediately.

There is, however, one thing that helps counter this sorrow. When someone thanks me for my leadership commitment, when someone reminds me that the group won’t function as well without me, that, like Peter Parker, people need me, well, the unfortunate 10 percent of the superpower disappears. Sick and weary, I lead a group today because someone reminded me my leadership was needed, that it did not go unnoticed. Without that someone, I would have let the group down.

So I’ve got a task for you. Go remind someone that their superpower is needed, that it doesn’t go unnoticed. There are people all around us who make sacrifices because their great power makes them responsible to do so. There are people who need the recognition. Let’s work on bringing the superhero out in everyone.

1 person, 1 message, 1 compliment or reminder of their superpower

Everyone’s got a superpower. Your compliment might just remind someone of what theirs is.

Stay Positive & Perhaps You’ll Rediscover Yours Along The Way Too

Waiting For Your Hero

Garth Beyer

Whenever you watch a Superhero film, or nearly any film for that matter, you are always waiting for the hero’s success or failure, survival or death. This hero’s journey that keeps the audience waiting for one event to take place after another is called the monomyth.

To the hero though, they never feel like they are waiting, they are always involved in the rising action that leads to the point the audience is waiting for. While you are waiting, the hero is not. If the hero were to wait with you, nothing would ever happen.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say we are all Superheros. We all have a special superpower if we think hard enough about what we are truly great at, whether it’s a natural talent or not. If we are Superhero’s, then why do we do so much of the waiting ourselves?

It needs to be realized that you are not your own audience. It’s not your responsibility to do the waiting. It’s your responsibility to create the rising action, to give the audience something worth waiting around for, someone to root for, something to be excited about.

Let’s not be confused about who the Superhero and who the audience is in our lives.

 

Stay Positive & With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

(You know this post would have been incomplete without ^ )

Garth E. Beyer

Train Wrecks, Finding Yourself & Life

Garth Beyer

Life can be really freaking incredible.

Life is made up of a trillion train tracks and it’s all about finding your train, or the one that best suits you – after all, most people don’t find themselves, they find something safe to settle with – and then they just go right along. It’s a ride and they certainly don’t conduct it.

Then people wait, they wait for a train wreck that forces them to go back out and search for their train. Some try and repair the one they were on, others take the closest one to the wreckage, a few never get on a train again, and -what I have never believed until recently- rarely, very rarely a train actually comes to you.

Bare with me as I carry on the analogy…

It’s as if the train already had you on it, and it was searching for your body. Your body never knew because it was riding a train, a safe train, with little fear and a lot of false security. (Clearly it was false security because you just got in a train wreck!)

So. Very rarely in life, a train finds you and you forget about the train wreck because it never really happened. It may be a memory but that memory is not part of who you were because you were never there [remember, your “self” has always been on another train]

The most fascinating part about when you find yourself, or rather, when your self finds you, you don’t just get aboard.

You climb, you jump, you cuddle atop it, you make an imprint on it, you slip but don’t fall, it’s not a memory, it’s life.

And at that moment, when you reconnect with life -whether it’s alone or with someone else- you forget about your train wreck. As a reader, you forgot that this was all based on a train wreck, you were simply rolling with it. (Pardon the pun)

Having just been through one, I know you forgot it was based on a train wreck for two reasons.

1. (Obviously) Train wrecks suck. They crunch, they hurt, they burn, they crumble, they are painful. Who wants to focus on that? Who wants to invite a train wreck into their life for the possibility of finding themselves when they are already so comfortable, so safe.

2. (Not at all obvious and hard to agree with) What I just described that happens after a train wreck is exciting, it’s wonderful, it’s life. For most, it’s a dream and who doesn’t love a dream, especially one this great? So great that you keep it a dream, you ignore the fact I told you exactly how you can have it. That’s how you have gotten through all of your other troubles, you focused on dreams and they took your mind off it.

Your life is good, it’s average, it’s mediocre, it’s safe, and you’re okay with that. The dreams you have while on the train you are on now, are great. They are stimulating, an adventure, amazing and you’re okay with them staying so because they make you forget about your troubles, the dreams give you enough power to bear with the troubles.

But you can’t be okay with that, no one deserves to live like that. You have to wonder what sort of dreams you can have once you develop your own train wreck and find your self or at least lose the illusion you have long believed to be your self. The dreams you are having now are little, weak, and I will even say they are unworthy because you can dream so much larger.

Because you took that train wreck, made the most of it, and found your self, you are able to dream bigger, stronger, more powerful dreams. But you don’t need another train wreck to get those either. The train you found your self on takes you there because you’re finally the conductor, you are yourself, uncaring about safety, mediocrity, security or having things just be okay.

 

Stay Positive & To Find Your Self, Wreck A Thousand Times If You Have To

(you’ll likely end up loving trains a lot more than you do now. I sure do.)

Garth E. Beyer