Why doing things your way is the best strategy.
Imagine being a leader in your field and creating a never-ending demand for your uniqueness.
If you learn to understand yourself better through a simple practice, you’ll even shock yourself with your own unique genius, but in a good way of-course!
Hands down, nothing compares or competes with your unique genius! But I also know that when you decide to do things in your own unique way, you might first be met with a lot of resistance. Cross that, because you will definitely meet with a lot of resistance. If you stay the course though, and roll with the resistance punches, you’ll thrive in your industry.
Why you ask?
Because you won’t ever have to worry about competition.
Think about it, if you truly go into your business, or startup from the mindset of “how can I bring my unique; creative; genius to work” instead of “how can I learn this through a certification or an online course” you’ll create a demand for your work - because you’ll be the only one offering it - plus you’ll grow a true community of fans who would love supporting what you share.
Avoid imitation to avoid being mediocre.
So many high-achievers who transit out of their corporate jobs, leave because they couldn’t take the suffocation of working in the way that didn’t bring them joy and allowed zero freedom. But then, when they’re met with resistance of being independent business owners ( and masters of their destiny), they do what comes most easily: learning how others are doing things and repeating that to avoid the risk of failing. Sooner or later, eventually they feel out of alignment with their new ventures too. This primarily happens because they continue repeating behaviour and mindset patterns of working within the norms of the status quo.
That’s a big no if you want to establish yourself as a leader in your field.
Now, I am not against learning things, in fact, it’s something we should never stop doing. But I’m also a big promoter of creating things by combining what you learn from the world around you with your innate knowledge. Because this is how you make sure your unique value is of high value to those you’d serve.
Expand your entrepreneurial mindset juice.
Entrepreneurship is about creating, innovating, and solving problems. It’s certainly not about repetition or imitating others - which I see a lot of people e.g. online entrepreneurs doing. It sucks that we’re not taught to expand our entrepreneurial mindset in schools, corporate organizations, or factories. But you can give yourself the freedom to do this, if you’re gonna dream about things you dream about.
Entrepreneurial mindset thrives on things like; intuition, curiosity, observation, deep insight, and a lot of self-awareness. In fact, I am willing to even say that self-awareness alone can nurture all of these other qualities too. Once you got these things pat down, finding strategies and action plans are the easy part.
So if you’re really committed to doing things your unique way that’s also beneficial to those you serve, then don’t wait another day without cultivating some self-awareness practices.
A simple self-awareness practice you can try today:
20 minutes of silent meditation in the morning. No mantras, no background music, just silence, eyes closed, and conscious breathing. Keep in mind, a lot of thoughts are going to come up, and this is something you want to invite instead of avoid.
Allow thoughts, visuals, and memories to come up while you sit with your eyes closed, and your breath guiding your awareness around whats coming and passing through.
After the meditation, journal around the things that may have come up; using questions fuelled by curiosity instead of a neediness. Answer your own questions to understand yourself better, so you can really identify your inner most parts. You’ll be surprised at the insights that come up, after you allow yourself to sit in with yourself.
The more you do this, the better insights will come up.
Often, we’re so busy consuming things and being distracted by the busy-ness of our lives and the world, that it becomes too loud for our intuition and innate knowledge to come through.
The more self-awareness you cultivate, the better you decide, the more confident you feel and the more you trust yourself. The more trust you have in yourself, the more challenges you’re willing to take, and trust you’ll be able to handle them. Conquering your own resistance is the biggest step you can take to thriving in your own unique creations.
Self-awareness is seriously a game changer and it increases your success quotient ( and the sustainability quotient) in a huge way.
Happy connecting to the self!
(Click here for a guide to kick-start your self-awareness journaling.)
Harjot Mann, MD
Mindset & Leadership Coach