This blog post is in support of a new book by Michelle Ward and Jessica Swift called The Declaration of You. It’ll be published by North Light Craft Books in Summer 2013. If you’re a Voice Bureau reader who isn’t familiar with Michelle and Jessica’s work, I’d recommend taking a look if you have a high Enthusiasm or Playfulness value. In their own words, readers get “all the permission they’ve craved to step passionately into their lives, discover how they and their gifts are unique, and uncover what they are meant to do.” Learn more about The Declaration of You’s BlogLovin’ Tour, and how you can participate, here.
Uniquity and I have an intense relationship.
As an Enneagram Type 4 — and if you know what that means, you’re probably chuckling to yourself already — To Be Unique, Original, Individualistic, Myself feels like my soul’s deepest longing. Type 4s long to create an original identity — the same way Type 2s long to be cherished, Type 6s long to be supported by others, and Type 9s long for inner peace.
The quest for what Michelle Ward and Jessica Swift term ‘uniquity’ has driven and defined my life.
I’ve been the eight year old girl whose blood ran cold with anger and astonishment when her church friend dared to name her new stuffed animal the very same unique name I gave mine (Tiffin, if you must know, after the town in Ohio I’d never been to but seen in my dad’s atlas).
I’ve been the sixteen year old girl whose heart broke into a million pieces when her ballet friend (a different person this time) named her new golden Cocker Spaniel the same name as my long-dead golden Cocker Spaniel. (Rudy, may he RIP.)
I’ve been the shopkeeper who inwardly rolled her eyes when a socially advantageous customer requested to know what her friends who had purchased housewarming gifts from me earlier in the day had gotten, so that she could make sure her present was on par, price-wise and impressiveness-wise.
I’ve been the blogger who rolls her eyes outwardly — right here, in front of my Mac as I type — when I read stuff online that feels derivative, recycled, or like a mash-up of Blogger X, Y, and Z’s latest articles. Really, people? I think to myself. Was that worth publishing?
I can’t even listen to audio interviews of me from my earlier days in business because so many times I refused to make a statement without attributing it to the person I heard, learned, or read it from — which makes me sound like a bona fide name dropper. Integrate the teaching into my own framework and put it out there as mine? Nooooooo. Not unique enough.
And while I’m a great curator, you’d better believe there’s no quicker way for me to short circuit a work day than to spend the first hour of it clicking through links on Twitter, reading Other People’s Stuff. Damnit! I’ll think. There goes that topic.
My personal recipe for Uniquity has always been: look away from everyone else! Your creativity has nothing to do with theirs!
I’ve been (privately) critical of other business bloggers whose work I’ve seen as “push off” pieces — in other words, they’re not actively developing and teaching their own methods, they’re just “pushing off” of other people’s with a light (or harsh) critique, or teasing out one undeveloped point from the original piece and making it. And yes, I’ve written a few pieces along these lines, too.
(There’s nothing inherently wrong with the above approach, by the way. I’m just a Type 4.)
It wasn’t until I found myself feeling shackled to Uniquity as the most important component of any creative endeavor that I felt moved to take a closer look at what was really driving me.
Several years ago, I asked myself, “What would you, at the age of 94 after a well-lived life, regret not having done?”
Only one thing came to me strongly and clearly, soared up into the open sky of my mind, a warm, soft-bodied bird with an all-knowing glint in his eye: Write and publish your book, it said.
And I knew it was true. Writing my book is it for me. That’s my Thing.
Here in my mid-thirties, I’m a working writer — I’m founder and Creative Director of The Voice Bureau, I still write copy occasionally, and I create lots of teaching and learning materials for our clients and readers. I love to write. I write every day.
But I’m not writing, you know, my book.
Because, well, “everybody” writes books. (No they don’t.)
And “everybody” has a story in them that needs to be told, and what if it’s like my story? (It both will be and won’t be.)
And which is the better route these days — self-publishing or traditional publishing? Which holds more prestige? (That’s my high Power value talking.) Which is easier to market and sell? Will one of the routes banish me to the pile that’s “just like everybody else?”
And so on.
Many times, my prerequisite to Be Unique, Above All, keeps me from ever beginning my great work in the first place.
That is no longer okay with me.
A conversation with (of all people) a health coach friend of mine got me thinking about my creativity in new ways: What if, she said, you were allowed to look at other people and in other places for creative inspiration? What if you didn’t expect yourself to reinvent the g*d*mn wheel every time you write a blog post? What if being UNIQUE meant just being you — and the whole world was available to you as inspiration?
I liked those ideas. And whoa — what a different way of being in the world that is for me.
My instinct is to tie up this piece with a nice little bow, bring it to a tidy conclusion, an exhale.
But we all know that creative work, defining Uniquity for ourselves, and claiming a true and original identity — that’s big human stuff, dudes.
I don’t want to sell you short by pretending that it isn’t.
So I’ll just let you in on a promise I’ve recently made to myself: I am allowed to be expansive. To be all-encompassing. To be Yes and No and All and Some and Never and Maybe. To be in the thick of a creative swamp and to be standing willfully on the rooftop of a building I have erected myself, a building called Unique — and both places are equally valid.
And whatever I am when you see me there — that’s me. Unique enough.
In the comments, I’d love to hear:
What’s your relationship to your own Uniquity? Equally intense? A little more loose and free-flowing? Tell me about it.
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“Bag your boundaries,” she says.
Hello, you.