No one is sitting around thinking of you
When I hear two very similar statements in the same day and within a very close proximity to each other, I know the universe is trying to tell me something. And when the universe tells me something, I want to tell you, my lovely readers.
First it was this headline said by Michael Keaton on Conan O'Brien's podcast. And when Batman speaks, I listen. Later that night it was "People aren't thinking about you the way that you're thinking about you," uttered by Alexis Rose on Schitt's Creek (Owen and I are bingeing - his first, my second time). The message here is basically, get out of your own head and stop thinking you're so damn important.
Bruising egos like dropped peaches
Before you get all bent out of shape, locate the irony in getting upset about what I just wrote. Then feel complete and utter relief. Because if no one cares and no one's really thinking about you, that takes all the pressure off and allows you to:
Stop putting on airs
Stop pretending to be something you're not
Stop worrying about speaking up
Just be yourself
Ad Nauseam
It also means that if you want people to pay attention, you need to repeat yourself and put yourself out there until it hurts. I always say, if you're not sick of yourself and your message, you haven't said it enough. And if you haven't heard me say that, I need to take my own advice!
When no one's thinking about you (because they're thinking about themselves and how other people think about them, and so on and so on), you need to work hard to get your message across. You need to put it in more places with more frequency. It took me about a year or more of talking about Personality Brand before it started to register with people. Not because they didn't get the concept, but because they missed the previous 50 posts about it. Because they were busy reading other things and worrying about themselves. Because they aren't thinking about me. And I couldn't be more thrilled to know that.
Who are you?
I've also been hearing The Who song in the car recently. A lot. Like every time I turn on the radio. Who are you? It's a very deep question and I'm sure they were deep on something when they wrote it. And, as I have more conversations with clients and potential clients, the answer is we don't really know who someone is. Or at least we don't for a very long time.
As a society we're quick to make judgments and assumptions of people, to put them in a box. But 99% of the time all of those things are demonstratively false. We don't really know each other even after we think we do. Because, we're focused more on our notions of someone else than actually who they are or what they're telling us. And because we have our own stuff going on. We're all "like so busy" so who has time to truly get to know someone?
This is good news (aka, there's hope)
What's great about this is that it means you can — and should — keep telling people who you are, what you love, and how you can help them, because chances are they'll need to hear it ad nauseam before getting it. In other words, if you aren't sick of yourself, likely no one really knows who you are yet. They aren't getting the message. They're not seeing it enough to get through. They aren't focused on anyone but themselves yet. But they will be. When the time is right. And when the time is right, your message needs to be authentic, it needs to be honest, it needs to be you and it needs to be somewhere they can see it, read it, hear it or watch it. Or all of these at the same time. Because even though people aren't thinking about you, they still want to know you. They still want to hear what you have to say. They still want to create connections. They just need you to be more you and more often and in all the places and all the times. And, if you need help with this...