Remember high school? For some people it was at absolute blast and for others it was four years of torturous hell. For most people it was some of both.

What I remember most about high school was the feeling of not quite fitting in. I was popular and all and had many external successes, but as you know, our mind often creates an entirely different reality.

I spent a lot of energy trying to be like other people that I thought were cooler, better looking, smarter, funnier, had a better body…you fill in the blank.

It wasn’t until years later as I dove into personal development work that I found out many, many people experienced very similar things. Like me, tons of people lived (and are still living) through comparing themselves to others.

What’s the deal with that?

It’s fricken exhausting, isn’t it?

Why do we run from our own self-expression?

Many people have been doing it their entire lives.

At some level, many people would rather imitate others than just be who they are, as if somehow, the knock-off version of someone else is better than the original version of themselves.

From a business and marketing perspective, this is a slow death. It would be easy to say that this happens because we teach people to model successful people. We say to find someone that has what you want and model them.

Doing what successful people do is certainly a way to success, but unless you model successful habits while developing your authentic self-expression, it’s easy to lose yourself in the process.

Is success worth it if you are just a carbon copy of a bunch of other people?

I think this is one of the big reasons people fail in this world. They don’t trust themselves.

I can speak from personal experience that I have had many incredible ideas that I stuffed away for fear of whether they were good enough, only to act on them years later when I got the balls.

Waiting doesn’t work.

Filtering your ideas against what the rest of the world is doing only dilutes your value.

Vanilla is a pretty boring flavor.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
- Howard Thurman

Yes, come alive.  That is it.

When it comes to marketing, blogging, copyrighting and presenting your business…sure there are some fundamentals that you want to learn and put in place, but nothing and I mean nothing, can replace your spirit.

If all of your articles, posts and blogs read just like a hundred other people in your niche…why would anyone follow you?

Be fricken original.

We see this all the time online. People model others but forget to make their work their own. The result is bland, boring copy.

Don’t be that guy.

Find your sweet spot. Identify what really lights you up.

Then, focus on letting your own light shine instead of trying to borrow a tiny bit of someone else’s.

“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.”
- Martha Graham

So, my dear friends, it’s time to get jiggy with it. Go get your freak on! Your authentic, true to yourself, completely original, flava boiling over…self-expression.

Choose today, right now, to do ONE THING that celebrates your self-expression. Let the tiger (or tigress) out of the cage. We want to hear you roar.

It’s time the world sees what you (the one and only you) are really made of.

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