Want to truly leave your mark? Start with heart. 

I am consistently surprised by all the regurgitated ideas and content that is out there. While I’ll be the first to admit that there is nothing new under the sun, I’ll also be the first to recognize that we are a lazy society, settling for pop songs like Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Getting Back Together.”

We are never ever ever getting back together
We are never ever ever getting back together
You go talk to your friends talk
To my friends talk to me
But we-eee! are never ever ever ever getting back together

Wow. I need Taylor to up her game and start writing songs like the 22 year old woman she is. She sounds like she is still 15. 

Create, don’t curate.  Curation is great for queuing up tweets or posts in tumblr, but when it comes to generating content for blog posts or graphics, I need originality and I need it now. Be inspired by others, but don’t riff (read “rip”) off other’s material and call it original content. Your words might be original, but your idea is not, and really what value are you offering to the world if you’re just sending the same ideas out there?  The world has plenty of words as it is. What the world needs is ideas, questions. 

If it’s already been said and you know it, don’t bother saying it again.  What if no one posted a blog or a tweet if it had already been said? What a wonderful, quiet world it would be. How amazing it would be to be able to always take in fresh ideas and constantly be learning, rather than having to sift through all of the inauthentic nonsense and parroting?

Challenge yourself to do your best ideas - everyday.  Work from a deep place, that’s where your best ideas are. Practice being in that place because it’s not easy. And when you have ideas, learn to let them go when the time is right. Don’t work from a place of fear. Don’t rush your process. There’s two major reasons why it’s worthwhile to dive into your work in this way: 1) you might die tomorrow, and 2) ideas are conduits for more ideas. Do you want to have more ideas? Commit to digging them out of yourself in the first place. 

What are other ways you’ve learned are the gateways for leaving your mark? 

photo via wildolive