Guest post written by Barrie Davenport of Live Bold and Bloom.

“Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.” ~George Henry Lewes

Most of us are just regular people.

We live our lives in our little corner of the world. We go to work and do our jobs. We spend time with our families, enjoy our hobbies, and put our pants on one leg at a time. We do pretty much the same thing day in and day out, with a few bursts of excitement and drama.

Perhaps in our personal sphere of influence, we are viewed as someone special. We are loved and important to those around us. But we tend to view others who live bigger, bolder lives as the real stand-outs, the true originals.

You might look at these people and wonder how they do it. How did he come up with that great idea? How does she have so much style? How can he be so funny? We all want a dose of whatever these people are drinking, but we can’t seem to find the bar.

These unique people must belong to some special club with privileges and talents unavailable to the rest of us mere mortals.

When we meet these shiny, exceptional people, we tend to view ourselves as boring and prosaic in comparison. No spotlight here please. I have nothing special or interesting to offer the world. There is no way I could ever be that ingenious or brilliant or avante garde. It must be some kind of fortuitous genetic anomaly that accounts for these abilities.

Yes, there are gifted people born with superior intelligence or incredible talent and abilities. There are those with the predisposition for magnetic personalities, a positive outlook on life, and creative expression. But is it their genetic gifts that make these people original and unique?

One of the dictionary definitions for the word original is this: “arising or proceeding independently of anything else.”

According to this idea, a true original means it’s the first and only. For example, the very first blade of grass that ever grew was an original. Or was it? That blade of grass was composed of molecules, cells and chemicals that already existed. The intelligence that created that blade envisioned a new way to combine those elements to create something different, something unique.

Originality isn’t creating something from nothing. Originality is taking what exists and seeing it in a different way.

You’ve heard the expression, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Nothing is truly original. The tools for every new, fresh, bold idea are available to us right here and now. All we really need is vision, passion, and action. You can be gifted and talented, but you may never harness that vision. You can be quite average and make unbelievable contributions to the world.

Arthur Fry is the guy who came up with the idea for Post-It Notes, the yellow slips of paper with adhesive on one end. They are ubiquitous now — cultural icons. Fry received his early education in a one-room rural schoolhouse and had no special advantages growing up. As an adult, he worked for 3M as a researcher in new product development.

Fry was in church when he came up with the idea for sticky notes. He sang in his church choir, and he used slips of paper to mark the pages of his hymnal. When the book was opened, the makeshift bookmarks often moved around or fell out altogether.

On a Sunday in 1974, it occurred to him to use a new adhesive he learned about at work to create a better bookmark. The Post It Note was born. The amazing commercial success of this humble product is undeniable. (Here’s a great article about Arthur Fry and the Post It Note.)

You don’t have to have special talents to be unique. You just need to harness what you have at hand.

If you want some ideas to uncover your own uniqueness, give these a shot:

1. What can you do?

What are the things you are good at doing? It doesn’t have to be something dramatic or earth shattering. Can you cook? Are you a good listener? Can you repair things? What seems simple to you may be complicated or overwhelming for someone else.

2. What do you enjoy?

Having passion and enthusiasm about something provides energy. When you have that energy, you can accomplish much, much more because you aren’t struggling against yourself.

3. Pick something and focus.

Being unique requires some time and effort. Don’t try to be astounding at everything. You’ll be exhausted. Pick one thing right now and focus like a laser on it.

4. See things with new eyes.

We get into ruts and routines, even with the activities we love doing. Ask yourself frequently, “How can I do this differently?” How can I make it more interesting, fun, special, appealing, beautiful, useful, pertinent? Challenge and stretch yourself.

5. Pounce on inspiration.

Just like Arthur Fry, you need to take advantage of inspired ideas. How many times have you said, “I could have done that?” Don’t let these ideas float in and out of your mind. Keep a notebook with you all the time. Write them down. Think them through. Put them into action.

6. Copy ideas.

And then expound on them. Look at what other people have done that seems original and unique to you. How can you change it to make it better or bigger? Remember, nothing is really new. Build on existing material and create something different.

7. Keep learning.

The more knowledge and information you have, the more raw material you accumulate for creativity and inspiration. Become an expert in your field of interest. Read, take classes, ask questions, observe other experts.

8. Be sincere.

Uniqueness just for the sake of being unique is an exercise for the ego. Nothing more. Uniqueness and originality arise from a sincere desire and passion to challenge the status quo, find a better way, express creativity, and satisfy curiosity. Feed the soul, not the ego.

9. Embrace failure.

Before Arthur Fry’s Post It Notes ever made the big time, his idea was rejected several times by 3M and received initial lackluster response from consumers. He believed in the value of these little sticky papers and was persistent. It paid off. Experimentation and failure are part of stepping out of the box. Some things work, some don’t.

10. Become a salesman.

Learn what people want and need. Find the people who share your interests, passions and ideas. Then present your unique ideas and solutions to them. I doubt Sara Blakely, the woman who created Spanx body shapers, sent out an e-blast to a bunch of men. She thought about a real problem (visible panty lines) that is bothersome to a real group of people (all women with butts), and she worked to promote it in front of the largest possible audience of these people (The Oprah Winfrey Show). From panty line problems to a multi-million dollar business.

What’s so unique about that?

If you want to get started on your on unique path, check out these free downloads that will help you get inspired, learn more about your passions and interests, and help you start setting goals to take action.

Barrie Davenport is a life and career coach and the founder of Live Bold and Bloom, a blog about bold and fearless living.

Writing obituaries is hard work, and most people do not enjoy the process. Writing an obituary is like facing death and facing the finiteness of life, also of your own life. In the process of writing you experience a wide range of emotions, ranging from grief over a loss to the warm smiles of fond memories. It also helps us put life back in perspective, let’s us focus on what’s truly important and what might not be.

This is why writing an obituary for yourself is a very powerful exercise to help you focus on those important things. Stephen Covey asks you to do this exercise in his record-selling book “The 7 habits of highly effective people“, and I’ve added a much more detailed version in my ebook “Personal Core Values“. We want you to focus on the important aspects of your life, and facing the end and looking back on your life is a powerful visualization to help you do that.

The results of this exercise may be that you change some aspects of your life, sometimes just a little and sometimes dramatically. Roz Savage is a woman that shows how this exercise can cause dramatic changes for the better. In the TED video below she tells about how she did this exercise and what the results are.

She used a variation to the obituary exercise that I really like. Instead of only writing the obituary of your life as you envision it, she also wrote the obituary of the life she was currently leading. By doing both of them you’ll get a very clear vision of the difference between them. Roz discovered that she was on the wrong path, and she turned her life around and rowed solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be writing a lot about various aspects of the Eisenhower Matrix, this post is part of that string of posts

The Eisenhower Matrix has two main dimensions, the urgency axis and the importance axis. To understand how to decide whether something is urgent or not, I’m going to dive into the dimension of Urgency in this post. Urgency is a dimension that’s time-related. Something can get urgent for a couple of reasons, but the main characteristic is that you need to give it attention NOW or at least on a short notice. If you don’t things go wrong or you’ll get in trouble.

Basically there are four types of urgent:

• Procratinated urgency
• Unexpected urgency
• Stealthy urgency
• Implied urgency

Procrastined urgency

These are the deadlines that are around the corner. They create urgency, because the deadline is coming closer, whether you like it or not, and you still need to do work to meet the requirements for the deadline. There’s urgency right there.

Most of the times however, this urgency is mostly caused by procrastination. People have a tendency to procrastinate work, especially if they don’t particularly like the work. That procrastination invokes a sense of urgency as soon as the time gap between the present and the deadline gets close to the amount of work that still needs to be done.

Time to deadline >>> estimated work left -> very high risk of procrastination
Time to deadline >> estimated work left -> deadline comfortably in the distance
Time to deadline > estimated work left -> first sense of urgency
Time to deadline = estimated work left -> high urgency
Time to deadline < estimated work left -> stress + poor quality
Time to deadline << estimated work left -> forget it, you’re busted

Common examples are your taxwork, handing in reports, sending in articles to magazines and so on. They’re hardly ever urgent when the deadline is set, because usually there’s ample time to get the job done. But if you wait long enough, the urgency kicks in.

Unexpected urgency

This is a type of urgency that doesn’t give an early warning. Suddenly it’s there as an interruption of what you were doing, or what you were planning to do. Something happens, and that something requires your immediate attention.

Some examples of events with this type of urgency are when you’re involved in traffic accident for instance, or when one of your kids just puked all over his bed. It’s the type of event that forces you to drop everything else, and give immediate attention to.

Stealthy urgency

The third category is a type of urgency that sneaks up on you if you ignore it. It’s not related to deadlines, and it’s not an interruption. This is the kind of urgency that evolves from neglect or from spending too little attention to certain things.

This one happens both in the material world as in the emotional world. In the material world for instance, neglecting to do maintenance work to your roof will lead to an urgency when the roof starts leaking (usually during a massive rain storm).

In the emotional world this kind of urgency can occur when you’ve spent too little time with people that matter for instance. It’s what the song “Cats in the cradle” is all about.

This stealthy urgency is a tough category, because you could’ve known it was coming, yet you didn’t recognize it or even ignored the early warning signs (hence stealthy).

Implied urgency

Implied urgency is something we all recognize, but somehow we never really see it as something with an urgency factor. Implied urgency is associated with the activities that would create (close to) immediate urgency if we decide NOT to do them.

For most people this is true for their jobs. If you decide to quit your job today, you create an immediate urgency on the financial aspect of your life. Your mortgage or rent, the utility-bills, taxes, the groceries, and many many more will not cease to exist instantly. So quitting your job creates an urgent gap between your cash coming in, and your cash flowing out.

It’s this implied urgency that we all feel when faced with these kinds of decisions. If quitting an activity creates more urgent activities than the amount of activities your quitting, you’re dealing with an activity with implied urgency.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
~ Douglas Adams

Wow, did I underestimate the amount of work I had coming my way in the past couple of weeks. To an extent even that I totally ignored be an original, my twitter-accounts and all the goals I set for myself a couple of weeks ago. I simply needed the time for other things, both work and family related.

I had more stuff to do, than time to do it in. And whenever time is limited you need to make choices. One of the choices we make all the time, but often without giving it much attention, is the choice to focus attention and energy, or to divide it. The results are very different though.

Do you want to do some things very well and other things not at all, or do you want to do them all but in a half-hearted mediocre attempt? The former appeals to most people, yet the latter is the most common course of action. This is due to the fact that choosing NOT to do some activities, requires the ability to say no. And saying no can be hard.

How to choose what to do and what not to do

If you choose to do some things and ignore others, it’s best to choose this deliberately. This usually is my pitfall … I tend to subconsciously drop stuff. And although this works most of the times, it also causes an uneasy feeling of not having a total overview.

A simple tool I use to create that overview is the Eisenhower Matrix. A simple matrix that lets you rate activities on two scales, an importance scale and an urgency scale. You can plot the activities in there and quickly see the relative positions with regard to importance and urgency.

Usually it’s very obvious where the stress comes from. It’s having too many activities on the urgency side of the matrix. And things get on the urgency side due to deadlines, often imposed by others. Although deadlines are not the only factor creating urgency, caring for a child that’s ill for instance is also very much urgency driven.

Take care of urgent matters first

The 2nd quadrant of the matrix is the most important quadrant. It’s the high importance, low urgency quadrant. This is where a lot of the things we want to do reside. But if there’s too much stuff in the urgency side, you’ll never get to it.

This sort of was my case last couple of weeks. Deadlines seemed to pop-up out of nowhere, and they all landed around the first week of May. It’s an uneasy feeling when deadlines pop-up out of nowhere, and they did, mostly at my job as a teacher. I’m still in my first year of employment there, and you really have to have gone through an entire schoolyear to really understand and know all the different processes and deadlines you’ll have to deal with.

So with so many urgent stuff to work on, you really have only one real option: grind your way through it all! The important stuff before the unimportant stuff, and all family matters in front and in between.

Whoosh

Most of the deadlines have gone whoosh now. My time schedule is under less strain, and my mind is a lot clearer again. Time and space to write blog posts again, and soon I’ll restart my goals too. But first I have to get a new overview of all my current activities and plot them in an updated Eisenhower Matrix. Preparation is gold.

Some progress, but not as much as I like. Other priorities claim my time and attention, but they deserve it. So nothing to feel bad about, just something to report about.

Progress report on goals

Goal 1: Write 100 blog posts
Goal 2: No candy or chips
Goal 3: Photography everyday

The intentions for this week were better than the results. I did not write as much as I intended, although the start was good. Other priorities (other projects …) are at the core of this, and I’m very much okay with that! I do realize that this goal has a fairly large claim on my time, and any backlog will be noticed …

The “no candy or chips” goals performed a lot better! I noticed this week how much of a habit it became to go to a vending machine to get a late afternoon snack. I really needed to consciously suppress that urge! I managed to do that. Only on one night did I fail this goal, and I was being very honest there. This goal really was to suppress the urge to snack late at night and late in the afternoon. The day I failed the goal, was of a different kind. This night was just a cosy night with my wife, with something nice to drink and some chips as a snack. But nevertheless …

And taking photos everyday … well, I didn’t do that enough. I see pictures all around me, and often I just don’t stop to make them. Sometimes because I’m in a hurry to catch a train, and sometimes because I know my iPhone is simply not capable of taking the picture. I really should carry a better camera … or take the time to find something creative to shoot with something simple as an iPhone camera.

Blog performance

The blog metrics:

• Average daily visitors: 266 (-41)
• Average subscribers: 289 (old feed) + 953 (new feed) = 1242 (+1)

I’m still too busy with a lot of other stuff to really give serious attention to the blog and to promotion, so I guess this kind of development is to be expected. I know what to do, and my active involvement in the A-list blogging club is a constant reminder of that.

The club is open for all new members until Thursday April 15 by the way, and that’s special because it used to be open for ex-bootcamp members only. For $20 a month you get access to material and monthly live video sessions by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Mary Jaksch of GoodLife Zen. You’ll also get access to the forums, where a variety of members exchange information and knowledge. It’s a valuable resource, as far as I’m concerned and I recommend it to everyone. I would highly recommend it, even if there wasn’t an affiliate program (I suck at affiliate marketing by the way … )

Anyway, other priorities are taking my time and attention. And they rightly deserve it at this point in time, so the blog is on maintenance mode, instead of on full-blown growth mode

image by kevindooley

What is money anyway?

Money in it’s essence is a promise between people. It’s a promise that that little piece of paper or that coin represents value, is worth far more than the paper or the metal it is made of.

It’s a trade mechanism that enables an exchange of value between people in such a way that value creation and value consumption can be (far) apart in time. You earn money whenever you create value, and you can consume value when spending that money.

Over time that system of promises has grown into a worldwide monetary system with lots of different currencies. In the essence though, it’s still a promise between people that enables asynchronous exchange of value.

Asynchronous creation and consumption

Money has enabled the act of saving too. In the old days it was useless to save up promises between people. The exchange of value could be asynchronous, but not very much apart in time. Money has helped us to bridge that last gap.

Money enables us to extend promises over longer periods of time. We can keep money for 30 years and it’ll still be valuable. Inflation devalues it over time, but not quite as much as a regular promise made 30 years ago by someone you haven’t talked to ever since!

And so the money itself has become an object of desire. People want money, and many goals are set about earning money, owning money, and being wealthy. And it’s also very easy to turn into a SMART goal. It’s easy to specify exactly how much you want, at what point in time, and it’s highly measurable. All the traits of a goal that could work (and often does for people).

But a lot of people forget that the money in essence is a promise. The money by itself is fairly pointless, it is what it represents that holds the promise of value.

Money as a core value

When people define their core values, it’s not uncommon for money to appear somewhere in the process. Most of the exercises I created in my e-book are designed to avoid that pitfall. But when people out of the blue start defining personal core values, or life goals, or personal mission statements, money often appears in them.

But money is only a representation of something else, just like it is in the monetary system. When it comes to values, the question to ask is: “What does having lots of money bring me?”. And the answer cannot be physical, you have to get to the meaning behind the desire.

It might bring you a sense of security, which might indicate that security or peace of mind is a core value for you.

Or it might give you the feeling of being successful, and the underlying core value might be success. The money may also be simply a measure of growing (with growth the underlying value), or of overcoming obstacles (with the underlying value of challenge or adventure). Or it’s the status that comes with having lots of money that’s important for you.

What does money represent for you?

Either way, the money represents something. Knowing what it represents is important, because it enables you to identify other ways of achieving progress on your underlying core value. Money is not the only way you can achieve progress on that value.

What does having money mean to you?

The first period of six weeks has come to an end. So it’s time to look back at the total progress on the goals I set myself. And it’s time to set three new goals for the coming period of six weeks.

Progress report on goals

Goal 1: Get rid of 100 things
Goal 2: Strength training everyday
Goal 3: Make music

The six weeks are over and although you can see that not all bars are at the 100% level, I consider this first six weeks a success! First of all, the 100 things goal has reached the 100% mark. This is the stuff I got rid of:

100 things less in the house, it really cleared up some spaces of the house, but at the same time it only scratched the surface of all the stuff that we own. This exercise really makes you aware of how many stuff you’ve got around, and how many stuff you actually use or actually want to keep.

A nice side effect for this exercise was also that I found all kinds of stuff that my wife had lost I could’ve reached the 100% mark earlier, but I ran everything through the “Spouse Acceptence Test”, and a lot of stuff I was ready to say goodbye to ultimately ended up not passing the SAT.

The Strength goal was a success as well. I did not make it to 100%, but over the course of the 42 days I reached a 75% success rate. This means that I did some exercises on 3 days out of 4. Which is way more than I did before the six week period. I’ve also noticed some progress on stamina for some of the exercises, I really improved in my ability to do push-ups. 25 was tough in the beginning, but now I can do 50 without overexerting myself.

The Music goal was a goal for fun. I wanted to make more music, and I succeeded at that. I made NO music before this six week period. And in this period I almost hit the 40% mark, which is awesome! I also worked my way around the problem of not being able to make noise when my family sleeps. A new keyboard with headphones, just me and the music, without waking anybody up.

This was an awesome period. Life besides the goals was a little hectic though. I’ve felt out of control on many occasion, but things are getting better now

It’s time for three new goals.

New Six Week Goals

Time for three new goals. One results goal, one effort goal and one fun goal.

Results Goal:

Write 100 blog posts
This one is ambitious, but I’ve been behind on writing blog posts. I really want to write more, and I want my blogs to grow. Blogs, because I’m talking about this blog and about De InspiratieKamer, the Dutch blog I started with Remco Langeler.

100 posts is more than 2 posts per day, so this is going to be a lot, and falling behind on the goal is going to be a problem. I won’t be publishing all 100 posts in the 42 days, that’s too much. I will definitely publish a lot, but I’ll also have posts available for guest posting. And it’ll be a good feeling to have some posts “in stock”.

Effort Goal:

No candy or chips
This is another goal in the “shape up” goal, just like the Strength goal in the previous period. For the coming 42 days I’m not going to eat any potato chips or candy. They are weak spots for me, I usually turn to them in the afternoon or late evening when I feel a little hungry. That’s a choice, but it’s slowly growing into an unwanted habit. So this goal is to break the habit forming characteristic of this goal.

Fun Goal:

Photography everyday
After working with music for the last six weeks, I’ve decided to move to another hobby I’ve neglected for a long time: photography. I like looking at the world around me and I like creating images that show the world in different perspectives. Or to show parts of the world that are overlooked or taken for granted. So for the coming six weeks I’m going to take pictures everyday.

The new six week period starts tomorrow, tuesday april 6 and ends on monday may 17.

Blog performance

The blog metrics:

• Average daily visitors: 307 (-10)
• Average subscribers: 290 (old feed) + 951 (new feed) = 1241 (-26)

Ouch.

The title says it all. A lot of what I’m doing with these goals and reports hasn’t turned into a habit yet. I missed a weekly report, six daily reports and several days of goals. Not quite the progress to put on display, but it’s here. These reports are not to show how good I am, they’re a means for me to report back to myself and to you on how I am doing with these goals.

It’s a pitfall to forge results when you’re holding yourself accountable in public (like I’m doing now), but that would be fooling everybody including yourself. Improvement doesn’t come from faked reports, improvement comes from holding yourself brutally accountable and acting on it.

Progress report on goals

Goal 1: Get rid of 100 things
Goal 2: Strength training everyday
Goal 3: Make music

I’m still behind on all the goals, and only the 100 things goal can still reach completion. But because of the nature of goals 2 and 3 (counting the successful and unsuccessful days), just one day in the red renders the 100% mark unreachable.

I have to say that the 100 things goal is very helpful for me. Besides getting rid of a lot of stuff, I also got rid of a lot of other distractions. That said, I still got 35 things to go and time is running out. I did manage to collect a total of €94 by selling some stuff.

I did not perform well on the strength goal. I’ve had quite some busy days in the past week, that left me drained from energy. Some days I simply didn’t want to do any exercises, and other days I just forgot. Hardly a habit yet. I’m going to define a basic set of exercises, that I have to do no matter what. It needs to be a simple set, so there’s no excuse for not doing it.

The music goal has also not been a complete success. I played on some days and I’m feeling some progress in playing. There’s still a major learning curve to be conquered, but I’m enjoying it and that was the goal.

Blog performance

The blog metrics:

• Average daily visitors: 317 (+1)
• Average subscribers: 315 (old feed) + 952 (new feed) = 1267 (+5)

Steady.