For all thought leaders hiding out there
If you feel the mission bursting inside your brains, but coming out like frail thread of pure mountain spring, this is for you. I get you’re busy. I also get you may not see yourself as a blogger or content machine.
And still, how do you get that stuff out of you and into the world?
I’ve heard this quite a bit lately: “I feel I have something to contribute here.” Symptoms include insomnia, irritation at garbage on mountain meadows, pictures of petroleum drenched pelicans, or whatever sets you off. Or glazed eyes through chain meetings.
That’s the game crying to be let out into the world. You may not admit to it at first and that’s fine. That thing that makes you want what you do will take care of itself.
If you’re angry, that’s hope rummaging through your veins like Alien. Rejoice! The object of your affection is near.
Think of the person you’ve felt safest with. The one you’d tell the “I-like-Jeanie-in-5th-grade” x 10 kind of secrets. You’d let them in on your dream project, right?
“I have a book inside me,” “I want to change the way we think about midlife,” “I want my course to go international,” or “I want garbage free mountain trails.”
There’s an agony to keeping that in. But you can’t just process a website/course/new product right now. So where do you start?
Here. You start right here, right now. Open a new document and name it “What my voice sounds like” and then set the alarm for 20 minutes.
Now think of whatever exalted or horrified you in the last day or so and pour it on the page. Not much to think, just write. In fact, do that every day for at least 3 weeks. Ideally, do it for at least 750 words each time.
Here’s the trick I just learned from someone awesome: tie it up to something you do anyway. It makes you stay in the game.
Almost every morning I wake up and do my morning pages. (I wrote about it here.) It keeps my content machine churning.
So to make sure I do the 20 minute thing, I need to do that immediately afterwards. It’s like going straight into a second episode of Friends. Yours could be your first cup of tea or brushing your teeth.
Then each week, spend some time reading through the lines. Any common thread? Do you find yourself wandering back to bringing honesty to the big corporate finance machine? Or bitching about mansplaining?
There’s something there, so get closer and sniff a bit. Now you’re looking for an entry point.
All you have to do is see one hue that’s there. One detail that’s real. You’ll know if you find it. It will ring true and you will feel very, very awake. That’s Universe talk for you’re on the right track.
What’s next? You keep at it. You make a nice string of very, very awake moments. The rest will get handled in the process. I don’t know how. It’s a mystery.
P.S. You might need a website for it. I’ll figure you out. You know where to find me.
Recent Comments