When I started this site I knew I wanted to help people be who they want to be and live the life they want to live, mostly because that’s a path I’ve been on myself. Having a better understanding of the fact that you really can create your own reality has improved my life more than I can ever possibly explain.
Knowing you aren’t the constraints of your mind and the judgments of others don’t make you who you are can be an amazing, if not relieving, feeling. However, despite the fact that I want to help others and I’m passionate about this subject, I’ve noticed something that worries me…
…sometimes going to write a new post can feel like a chore. I’ve been trying to work out why. If I’m passionate about a topic, and I love running and promoting websites, then surely I shouldn’t be struggling for motivation or purpose?
If I noted more specific details about this feeling of writing being a chore I would add:
- Knowing a post is going to take hours to write
- Feeling like I need to keep up a certain writing schedule or I let people down
- Having to give a ‘social friendly’ title if you want something to spread
I know I’m on a little negativity trip here but I want to make my original thought processes a little clearer. Eventually, after quite a bit of brain-racking, I realised why writing posts might feel like a chore to me. I set myself very strict quality guidelines and will only publish my best work. Posts don’t need to take hours to write, and I certainly don’t have to post on certain days, nor do I have to change my preferred titles.
I set myself high standards and want to make sure I stick to them, your personal standards are what set you apart from others in anything you do. I think these standards have helped me immensely and I think the main reason that I’ve been able to grow traffic to this site quite quickly is that I’m always being one thing: YOUnique.
What is YOUnique?
There are a few companies out there called YOUnique (internationally) which I think is quite a clever spin on words, but I’m not referring to any companies when I mention the word here. What I mean by YOUnique is being unique by putting yourself into things. To get a better idea of non-younique, just think how small blogging would be these days if nobody revealed their name or face, it would be no different to most journalism (apart from the name) that we read today and would be totally unoriginal.
I have a high standard for my blog posts because I want them to be YOUnique, I want them to be something I’ve created that is different from anything else that is out there. I always:
- Add attractive images
- Try to incorporate a personal story (this is a big one)
- Have a complete and easily accessible about page
- Come from a unique perspective (age, life experience)
- Refrain from writing about things I don’t have a clue about i.e. Yoga
Being unique might seem like a difficult challenge, but it is never difficult to be YOUnique, and actually being YOUnique makes whatever you are doing unique. Why? Because you are putting yourself into it. Nobody is ever going to have the same personal stories as me or the same ideas for the future of their company, I make sure I keep things open and honest and that way authenticity shines through in my writing, or at least I like to think so.
So, how can you be more YOUnique?
Being YOUnique
Being YOUnique is quite simply putting yourself into things, but what exactly does that mean? To help explain things a little further, I’ll try to give a few examples:
Darren Rowse who had tried his hand at blogging decided to create a resource on ProBlogging over 4 years ago and is still updating it to this day. There were no other ‘ProBlogger’ resources at the time and he simply wanted to share his experiences and the things he’s learned.
Steve Pavlina who was blogging about personal development for over a year without making a penny. The key point here is that money didn’t matter and shouldn’t when it comes to doing things that you love to do.
Drew Curtis when he created Fark.com, the social news site that gets well over 1,000,000 visitors per month. It was different to anything that was out there because Drew made things in the way he liked them, and simply assumed others would enjoy it as well.
Whatever it is that you are doing / creating, see if you can do things in your own way. You could do data entry as a part-time job but that doesn’t stop you from coming up with your own way to speed things up or offer your company suggestions. You could want to break into the hip-hop music industry so just because there is a ‘standard’ it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create your own style (think: Outkast).
If Einstein, Shakespeare, Bill Gates or Charles Darwin had of followed the rules, the world would be a very different place than it is today. See if you can do things more efficiently, more effectively, with more impact or in new ways. See if you can bend the rules and create something people don’t expect to work but ‘just do‘ due to your passion and commitment.
Spark your creative visions and put a little bit of yourself into everything you do. That way you’ll either create something extraordinary that changes the world, or you’ll simply make your time on earth a lot more enjoyable. Call me crazy, but I still have huge plans for PluginID and the future of this company and they involve having a big impact on the world. Because I’m doing what is true for me and making it MEnique, there is no such thing as failure, because I couldn’t do things any other way.