I love people who think for themselves.
Especially when it challenges the status quo…
When it makes the status quo nervous and shake in their boots, or shows without a shadow of a doubt (in a polite way of course) that the emperors truly have no clothes … well that’s even better.
Seth Godin, of course, is one of those people who somehow escaped any permanent damage by the “system” that’s been running the show for the past couple hundred years.
He can think for himself.
But better than that, he can spread an idea.
You’ll probably find a lot of reviews of his new book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, all over the web.
Rather than focus on what he said, which you’ll find out when you read it, I think it’s better to focus on why what he said is so important.
Here’s the scoop:
You don’t have to be a cog in someone else’s machine because you now are your own machine. And you have access to all the tools you need to leverage that to make an impact on your own.
You are a human. Valuable, unique and important.
So it’s time to let that out.
Seth calls that ART.
I call it figuring out who you are and then making sure you DO and BE just THAT.
He calls people like that LINCHPINS. Indispensable people.
I think almost everyone is indispensable… it’s just that not many people act like it. And few follow through with the actions that would make them indispensable.
We don’t do it because we’ve been trained otherwise. And because we’ve been trained to be scared about being ourselves out loud.
Here’s where this book gets closer to the truth than almost any one I’ve ever read about business, growth, marketing, etc.
Seth isn’t afraid to point out that no one can give you the map you need to get where you want to go.
Heck, they can’t even give you a good answer as to where you should be going.
You are responsible for that answer. After all, you’re the only one that it’s given to.
That’s the “work” that has to happen.
It’s not easy. And it might not work out the first time… or the second time.
But once you dig to the heart of where you’re going and what you bring to the table and what you are here to give, all of the business how-to and life how-to pretty much fades into the background.
It isn’t so important or necessary as it is if you’re using it as the sole guide to move your ship forward. (Many businesses are doing this, and that’s why they hang on the latest and greatest business growth fad.)
It’s refreshing that a business book (if you want to call it that) finally centers on the only thing that really matters in the end:
MAKING AN IMPACT… ONE HUMAN TO ANOTHER
In the past, books that flirted with these types of ideas were probably laughed at by hard-hitting, profit powered entrepreneurs.
At this point, though, the joke is pretty much on them…
Making an impact is transforming from a softie approach to business to one of the only ways to survive long term.
Here’s what struck me the most:
Seth’s entire book centers around a concept that virtually every human being on the planet probably already knows deep in their core.
The fact that he can write a full 236 pages about an idea that is hardwired into our beings goes to show you just how screwed up the world of “work” is at the present moment.
Here some thoughts that came to me after reading this and thinking about it:
-I don’t have enough energy, money, time or discipline to be like someone else or to please someone else. The easiest path is simply to learn how to be me and to build my life and work around that. That is truly valuable.
-Living a life where you don’t make a difference isn’t really living.
-For anyone to have power over you, you first have to give up the power that is inherently yours. (Stop doing that.)
-There is no future in being average. Luckily, at the core, no one is. It’s time to remember that and sprinkle it into reality.
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