Articles on Success, Significance and the Evolving Role of Work

What makes you great in others’ eyes

It’s not about how great you think you are.

Or how great you really are.

It’s not about how great others think you are either.

It’s about how great others think they are, in part, because of you, your product or service.

Hugh MacLeod said it best:

The product doesn’t get to be kick-ass until the user kicks ass first.

Your home page, about page/bio, elevator pitch, etc. is never about you. Or how great you, your product or service are.

It’s always about the person reading it.

Start with their worldview.
Show them you understand one of their problems.
Show them how their success is your mission.
Offer to help them solve that problem.

The Stories You Tell

There are stories you tell yourself.

There are stories you tell others.

There are stories others tell you.

And there are stories others tell others.

As for the stories you tell yourself…

There are the ones you tell yourself about yourself.

Ones you tell yourself about what you tell others.

Ones you tell yourself about what others tell you.

And ones you tell yourself about what others tell others.

So what’s the big idea?

You are constantly crafting stories you tell yourself.

And since perception is reality, the stories you tell create your reality.

To change your reality—to change yourself—means you must change your story.

Starting right now—with the story you are telling yourself about what you just read.

The problem with elevator pitches

It’s a classic piece of business advice— you should be able to describe precisely what you do in the time it takes to ride an elevator with someone.

As if a stranger cares or would dare ask.

The traditional elevator pitch comes from an advertising mentality—it’s a live 30-second commercial.

Instead of a pitch, try a story.

Not a story about how great you are and how bad you think I need what you do.

Rather, tell me a story about what someone like me is doing to solve a problem. Tell me how they are doing things differently.

The true goal of an “elevator pitch” was never to sell. It was to earn a second conversation.

That’s what content marketing does exceptionally well. It influences second and third encounters.

So how do you craft a story short enough to engage but long enough to explain?

Stay tuned…

On Inspiration

As I look back at stories and poems I’ve written over the years, the ones I composed in a feverish rush of “inspiration” are mediocre, at best. Cutesy, at worst.

The ones I worked and reworked over months, or in many cases years, still surge with energy and relevance. They’re built on a firm foundation.

Would you believe I’m still working on a poem I began in 2003? It’s a good poem, but only recently have I realized that the narrative voice isn’t mine. It’s the voice a young man 15 years younger than me.

I’m not one for giving or trusting advice. But this one has held up over the years, at least for me: Work, don’t wait, for inspiration.

Also, don’t assume you’ll recognize it. Just because you can’t see or feel inspiration, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

To me, inspiration shares qualities similar to love. Many mistake infatuation for love. Just like many mistake an idea or spark of energy for inspiration.

Inspiration is much deeper and more complex than a fleeting emotion. Take its root word “spir”. It means breath.

That’s what we’re really after: life-giving breath.

I prefer to think of inspiration as something achieved, rather than received. It is a breath discovered or uncovered. It lies outside us, but isn’t something the gods of art sprinkle on the chosen few.

Like coal, gold or old artifacts, inspiration is buried and awaits someone with the intelligence, skill and tenacity to extract it. Not to hoard or hawk, but to share it.

Inspiration rises out of our struggle to create—which is essentially a struggle to dig deep within ourselves in search of our identity, place and purpose.

That sudden, serendipitous spark we mistake for inspiration tends to be an imposter. Just like that rush of attraction and excitement toward someone has little to do with love.

Inspiration is choice. And it awaits the few who pursue.

From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on July 21, 2013.

It’s Complicated

Why does a man leave a career as a Brooklyn patrolman to become a Trappist monk?

At first, Brother Patrick said this was a tough question. But then he confessed it was actually the answer that wasn’t easy.

And so begins another beautiful character study in Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon.

I’ve reflected on that exchange between Heat-Moon and Brother Patrick a lot.

Stories, at least the better ones, rise out of uncertainties and complexities, twists and turns. It’s when we have to wrestle, reflect, test, ask, seek and debate that we rely on language and logic to help us work things out.

It is the unresolved and unresolvable that fuels creativity and art. It’s never “the facts” or one-dimensional ideologies or simple answers. Yet we expend an inordinate amount of energy trying to eliminate, or at least reduce, the complexities and tensions in our lives.

It is why blogs, books and courses built on prescriptions are so popular and attractive. We seem desperate to feel in control and in the right.

And even though offering prescriptions and answers can build a thriving platform and offer a decent living, it very rarely makes good art.

Stories hide where the unresolved thrives.

I think the artist’s job isn’t to solve or simplify. The artist’s job is to achieve clarity and offer access.

Consider gossip. With gossip, we take something simple—a true story—and place a facade of complexity over it, which clouds the truth and blocks others access to it. Or we take something complex—something we don’t truly understand (like string theory or theology)—and place a facade of simplicity over it, which also prevents clarity and blocks others access to it.

Clarity is a pursuit of truth and genius. The truth offers us access to the simple. Genius offers us access to the complex.

For those of us who are writers, artists and creative types, we most often work within the realm of mystery, trying to capture the human experience.

And the human experience is complicated and messy. There are no straight lines or easy-to-explain cause and effects. Many things linger unresolved in life—relationships, careers, health, the future.

As artists, our job isn’t to resolve, fix and tidy up. It is to bring clarity to the unresolvable tensions in life.

I believe this is why our entire body of work tends to hover around one or two themes. For me, I can’t seem to escape the themes of identity and place.

Which is why I’m in a continual search for people and places with complicated, wandering and wondering answers. Like Brother Patrick.

For me, when someone says, “It’s complicated,” I lean in and listen.

That’s where the best stories hide.