A few months ago I was on a date with a guy. Lawyer, very accomplished, nice, attractive. Seemed to have his stuff together. But as the date progressed, it became clear that the internal workings were not as put together as the ‘on paper’ made it seem. At one point as we’re talking about what we do and who we are, he turns to me and goes “You mean you know what makes you special? You know what makes you unique?” I was stunned at the question, because it was such a obvious ‘yes’ for me. I started answering his follow up question, telling him what makes me unique and special and he interrupts me to ask “How did you learn that? How do you know?”
At that point I felt so sad. I know this guy has amazing stuff inside him. He cares deeply for his family, and making the world a better place. He has a huge heart. But he’d never learned how to understand that that is what makes him unique and special. He was trying to make his degree the thing that made him special, but he didn’t love it, or even like it. He was trying to fit himself into the ‘shoulds’ of life, and was clearly suffering because of it. He was walking around without the knowledge of his unique specialness powering his life – and without it he was sad. His internal knowing, confidence and power was absent, and it was not fun for him.
On my way home thinking about our conversation, I realized there was a point in time when I didn’t realize what made me special. I had been disconnected from my uniqueness. This confidence, owning my awesome stuff did not come naturally, and I had to overcome a lot of my internal low-self-esteem to really be able to break through and understand what makes me special. Once that happened, it was still a long road to go until I owned it. This question of ‘do you know what makes you special’ has not always been such a ‘duh, yes’ obvious answer to me. I remember feeling like him. I am so glad I don’t anymore.
This is why you must appreciate your entire life experience, and let your unique life, experiences, passions, professions touch you deeply. Let them impact who you are, what you do, and why you do it. You have to love all the hard won bits of your personality and life experience, even if they were born out of hard or challenging times. They make you you, and that’s amazing. The more you can let your life be touched and realize this, and then reflect it back to the world outside you, the happier, shinier, more powerful you’ll be, and people like that. They WANT to hang out and work with confident people. They want to be around people who understand their own life, and love themselves. People who feel good about themselves make the world a better place to be in. I want that for you. I want you to know what makes you freaking special, and how you impact the world.
Business owners, I want you to be able to answer the questions “what do you do? what makes you special” with a clear, sparkling answer that makes your conversation partner say ‘yes please! I want that’, because I believe it’s something already inside us that if you are feeling disconnected from it, you just need some time and a quiet space to figure it out.
I feel so passionately about this, that I wrote a book on it. 5 Steps To Being An Expert In Any Field: a guide to selling out your services + getting paid more. It’s a fun, clear, action oriented way to really figure out what makes you special, and how to leverage that to get paid more. Me? I’m really good at connecting ideas in new ways. Making overwhelming things become simple, easy and fun. Working with creative businesses to make more money. Plus I love writing and supporting other people. I’m a giver, and I like it. If you don’t have a business, but still struggle with ‘what makes me special’ you can totally still use this guidebook. Just replace the word ‘business’ with ‘community’ and you’re good to go. The concepts are the same, and the results speak for themselves. Enter your deets below to get instant access to this red hot resource.
I freakin love that you used the word “deets!” LULZ