It’s Sunday, 6:17 AM. I’m running my first run in a long time, loving the freshness and quietness of early morning. After 5 minutes of relentless protest, my legs accepted that I’m not going to stop and have started cooperating.

Holding Myself Back

I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging the past few days, and it’s been on my mind for several weeks now. I’m not really satisfied with how thing are going, and that’s not due to circumstances. It’s because of me.

I came to realize that I’m holding myself back. I’ve been trying to define my blog, to define “How to be an Original”. But I kept bumping into a barrier, something that stopped me from being satisfied with whatever definition I came up with. Until it hit me last Sunday (bear with me on this one).

I realize now that I started with the definition process months back already. The topics I blogged about were as the things on my mind, very diverse. And at the same time I was reading blogs about blogging, like ProBlogger, to learn more about blogging. One of the things I learned was that it’s best to choose a (niche) topic or a (niche) demographic and write specifically for them. Especially if you want to earn a buck from them.

I also received some feedback that it wasn’t all that clear what the blog was about. With this and the advice on blogging, I took a good look at my blog. And I limited the subjects somewhat, so it would fit more closely to productivity or self improvement.

Fast forward a little and I’m coming up with all kinds of topics that I’m interested in. I want to write about them and often even draft a post already. Only to decide later on that they don’t fit my blog. And I put them in storage, with a saddened heart.

Personal Blogs…Yuck (No More)

You know, I looked down upon personal blogs before last Sunday. There are a gazillion of them out there, with people writing about their <insert pet here> puking over the carpet, the recent visit a restaurant (and the <insert bad habit here> waitress) and their annoyance over <insert name of retail chain here>’s lack of customer service. B-O-R-I-N-G.

For years I thought about blogs as just that, boring accounts of empty lives. I couldn’t see the point of having one, let alone reading them. Until I discovered some niche blogs, wow! Okay, so blogging is great if you just ignore the personal blogs. Or so I thought.

Click to continue »

To be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight,
and never stop fighting.

~ E.E. Cummings

Photo courtesy of geeknerd99

As the world is buzzing about the keynote speech Steve Jobs gave yesterday at Macworld Expo, I want to draw your attention to another speech he gave: the commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005.

In this speech Steve Jobs tells three stories. They are stories with a message of the lessons life presents and about how your choices define the outcome of those lessons. The underlying message throughout the speech is a message of authenticity, about being true to your own values, needs and wants, about listening to your own inner voice.

Enjoy this 15 minute video:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs

I’ve been thinking about the correlation of the topics I’ve been blogging about. They reflect what I’m thinking about, what I’m reading about, what I’m working on, what I want to achieve and so on. They cover a wide variety of topics, not so much on a horizontal scale, but more so on a vertical one. I see three different levels:

On the highest level I ask questions on the “Why” level:

• Why do I want this?
• Why does this appeal to me?
• Why is this important to me?
• Why do I hesitate making this commitment?

The Why-level is the authenticity check. This is where my core values (fun, freedom, love, authenticity) play the lead roles. This is also the level where you define your mission, or mantra, or main themes in your life. Here you really have to connect to your inner self, and to your feelings.

Don’t linger on this level, visit it regularly but not too often. Once or twice a year will do. Write down what your feelings are, what your ambitions are, what important themes are for you. Never mind if the wording isn’t exactly right, next time you’ll be refining it anyway. It’s important to connect to your feelings, and as such it’s hard to put in words.

The next level is the “What” level:

• What do I want to achieve?
• What do I want to do?
• What do I want to feel?

This level is about making what you want from life conceivable for our minds and as such achievable. Here you define goals. Goals give direction in day to day activities and decisions. You can plan and even make a planning to achieve them. Remember to make them measurable, this in my opinion is the most important characteristic (SMART is best, but measurable is key).

When you skipped the first level (or found it too hard to do), working on goals gives you a hint about what you feel is important. Can you imagine that you’ve defined a SMART goal, you’ve committed to it, and you’re close to achieving success but yet it drains energy from you? These are goals that aren’t connected. They have a mismatch with your core values, or your core ambition. Goals that are connected have a tendency to energize you. They can be very tiring, and time consuming, and laborious, but deep down you enjoy doing it.

I’m a stats junkie, so I visit this level often. Generally every two or three months will do.

Finally the third level is the “How” level:

• How can I do this?
• How do I improve my efficiency?
• How can I achieve my goals?

This is the most practical level. This is where personal productivity comes in, this is the GTD level, this is where I battle with my inbox. I know my goals, and I know what purpose they serve. This is where you achieve your success, this is the level where the work gets done!

All the time you spend on the higher levels, ensures that you are working on the right stuff. Now how the -bleep- can I make the time to effectively work on it!? This is a daily battle, and one that I now love to do, as I know it serves a purpose. It’s no longer getting by, or getting through the day in a Dilbert-like way, it’s working on stuff that matters. But geez, it sure is hard!

Oh…and this level, well you already are there every single day…

I hope you’re better able to place the different blogposts, and appreciate the different aspects I try to address. Sometimes they’re “deep”, and sometimes they’re very straightforward. In the end they’re all about doing what matters most (why-level), in an effective (what-level) and efficient (how-level) way.

This is the last in a series of six sidenotes, the others can be found here:
How hard can it be, to be me (1)
How hard can it be, to be me (2); dissecting the authentic life
How hard can it be, to be me (3); hypothesize
How hard can it be, to be me (4); test for authenticity
How hard can it be, to be me (5); acceptance or rejection

Now that we have found some authentic activities or goals, and we have taken the first step towards achieving them (you have taken the first step, right?). Now we have to maintain our connection to it in our everyday lives. We have to keep the connection within, and deal with the pressures from outside.

We all know what societal pressures are about. We can name examples of things we are supposed to do, or behavior that we are supposed to show, or achievements that are expected of us, careers that we are destined for, and so on. They are all aspects of what others want you to be or think you should be!

If you’re not aware of your authentic needs and wants, you are destined to react directly to this environment. Typical reactions are:

• pleasing (conformist; always complying to expectations)
• opposing (non-conformist; always deliberately not-complying to expectations)
• apathetic (indecisive or not interested in compliance to expectations)

Reacting directly to what happens in your environment, without making a conscious decision, makes you a function of your environment. The environment then, is the most critical defining factor in defining you. Having a connection with your authentic needs and wants, makes it easier to take decisions. There’s more to it, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Being authentic is about what you want to be. If you’ve found activities or purposes that you have found to be authentic to you, you have created a foundation against these pressures. It creates an inner-reference, and creates an attitude of creation.

I’ll be returning to the subject of withstanding societal pressures a lot more. Dealing with it is the ongoing process of remaining authentic, getting there is one, staying in touch with it, is quite another.