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Overview
Stop trying to beat everyone else. True success is playing by your own rules, creating work that no one can replicate. Don’t be the best, be the only.
You’re on the conventional path, checking off accomplishments. You might be doing okay by normal standards, but you still feel restless, bored, and limited.
Srinivas Rao gets it. As a new business school graduate, Srinivas’s dreams were crushed by a soulless job that demanded only conformity. Sick of struggling to keep his head above water, Srinivas quit his job and took to the waves, pursuing his dream of learning to surf.
He also found the freedom to chart his own course. Interviewing more than five hundred creative people on his Unmistakable Creative podcast was the ultimate education. He heard how guests including Seth Godin, Elle Luna, Tim Ferriss, Simon Sinek, and Danielle LaPorte blazed their own trails. Srinivas blends his own story with theirs to tell you: You can find that courage too. Don’t be just one among many—be the only. Be unmistakable.
Trying to be the best will chain you to others’ definition of success. Unmistakable work, on the other hand, could only have been created by one person, so competition is irrelevant. Like Banksy’s art or Tim Burton’s films, unmistakable work needs no signature and has no precedent.
Whether you’re a business owner, an artist, or just someone who wants to leave your mark on the world, Unmistakable will inspire you to create your own path and define your own success.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781101981726 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/02/2016 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Even though I've lived in California since 1993, I needed fifteen years and, ironically, to leave the country before I finally started to surf.
We often wait like this when it comes to the pursuit of some of our most important dreams. We drive by the water admiring it from the safety of our cars, or we simply stand onshore watching and admiring those who are already in the water. We justify not doing anything by convincing ourselves that people in the water have something that we don't. They've had lucky breaks that we never will, or they've won some sort of genetic lottery or happened to be in the right place at the right time. While in some cases this might be true, our justifications start to become excuses and then narratives we repeat that limit our potential.
When you start to pursue anything that falls outside the boundaries of societal expectations, anything that disrupts or disturbs the status quo, the sirens of safety and security will begin to go off like a fire truck blazing through the streets of New York City. A decision to disrupt the status quo is in many ways a decision to disrupt yourself and your life. But we resist changes like this, despite knowing how much a subtle or significant shift in our lives can come to outweigh what we fear.
And we fear that taking a plunge into the water, into the unknown, and doing the work required to become unmistakable will be worse even than the boredom or dissatisfaction that we currently feel with our lives. So we just stand onshore with our feet sinking into the sand. We continually choose to do nothing, settle, and compromise until we get to the end of our lives and find ourselves looking back at a life that could have been.
• A life in which we could have published the novel we've stashed in our desk drawer.
• A life in which we could have started the company or nonprofit that is deep within the chambers of our heart and mind.
• A life in which we could have dared more greatly and dreamed more audaciously.
But we always have a choice to take one small step forward to begin our quest for change. Nearly every innovative, groundbreaking, creative idea that defies the limits of what we once thought was humanly possible started as nothing more than a thought in someone's head, a moment of creative daring, before it became that person's unmistakable dent in the universe.
Given that we're about to enter a new and unfamiliar environment and attempt to learn a completely new way of living, we have no idea what our limits are. We might imagine those limits to be greater than they are, dreaming of being Michael Jordan when we've never picked up a basketball in our life. Or we might imagine them to be worse than they are, that we can't even try to write or draw, sing or dance.
Inevitably, when you get in the water you'll face obstacles like rocks, waves crashing down on your head, jellyfish, and other surfers yelling at you. Similarly, the pursuit of unmistakable work also comes with its own set of obstacles that you will have to face, like critics, naysayers, moments of panic, fear, anxiety, self-doubt, and competition.
Before you get ready to paddle out, consider what's making your feet feel like they're stuck in the sand forever.
Sharks, Drowning, and Other Things That Keep You from Getting in the Water
Two forces, one external and the other internal, are the most common culprits that account for the delay and death of many potential projects and the failure to pursue our unmistakable art. To become unmistakable, you have to become aware of these defeating influences and how they work, so you understand their power to work against you and know how to assess or ignore them.
The Voices of Parents, Peers, and Society
When you start to become unmistakable, the voices of people who want you to follow their plan will get really loud. Those voices will often come from well-meaning friends, family, and colleagues, and some less-than-sympathetic adversaries like competitors, critics, naysayers, and strangers on the Internet.
Whatever their intention, these voices will question your sanity and say you've lost your mind. They'll give you a list of reasons why you will fail, and tell you how the odds are stacked against you.
For many years, I heard some variation of the following:
You don't have enough experience.
You just don't have the talent.
You're too old.
You're too young.
Your cousin or friend or uncle or aunt tried to do this and failed.
If this doesn't work out, you'll be old and broke. Then what are you going to do?
How are you ever going to make money doing that?
Nine out of ten businesses end up failing.
Only one in a thousand people will make it in acting, writing, or anything creative.
Millions of blogs are out there. Why would anybody read yours?
This is such a waste of your education.
Friends and family will fill your ears with tales of woe, disasters, and debacles. They'll kindly suggest a backup plan that involves following the script that they follow, what society has told them to do. They'll tell you that your work is no good and they'll question your talent.
Why do the voices get so loud?
1) People want you to remain as you are because you make them realize they're ignoring their own calling. People are uncomfortable when you start to change, because your actions remind them what they've been avoiding in their own lives. They're forced to confront the fact that they're choosing to remain the same while you're making a drastic shift in the direction of your life. You hold a mirror up to all the fears they've given in to and all the goals they've chosen not to pursue.
2) Criticizing is easier than creating. If you're a critic you get to avoid the risk of failing, looking stupid, and making the world wonder what the hell you were thinking. As a critic, you're off the hook. But the most iconic creators in history have all contended with critics. Every single book, piece of music, or film has received negative reviews. Browse the contemporary reviews for classic books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and The Sun Also Rises. You'll find a one-star review for all of them. If your work is unmistakable, it will have critics. So you must embrace or ignore the critics and create anyway.
3) Some people are just rule followers. Sometime early in 2013, I went to a job interview. One of the people interviewing me, Chuck, had become incredibly indoctrinated. When I asked him about the culture of the organization he said, "When we say work starts at eight o'clock, we don't mean eight-fifteen." I never forgot that. Following rules was his world. I quickly realized in that moment that this was not my world and I didn't want to be a casualty of defending the status quo as Chuck had. You can follow a set of prewritten rules or you can start to make your own.
The people who criticized me when I started have since moved on. A handful of critics have been replaced by thousands of people around the world who have supported my work.
If I had listened to those critical voices, I would never have put another idea out into the world.
You wouldn't be reading this book.
The Unmistakable Creative podcast wouldn't exist.
I would have missed out on getting a world-class education from some of the greatest minds of our time.
And I would be miserable.
The best way to silence your critics is with commitment, conviction, putting your head down, and getting back to work. The people you admire certainly didn't start out with legions of fans, readers, and supporters of their work, and they have dealt with their fair share of criticism. They're the ones who didn't let the critics paralyze them. You probably haven't heard of the ones who let one bad review destroy their art: they never shipped anything again, never used the opportunity to improve, and never offered the world their unmistakable art.
A former boss at a major market research company wrote me off as not interested in controlling my own destiny. What he didn't realize was that I was simply not destined for his version of what it meant to control destiny: climbing the ranks within those walls. My goal was to break down those walls, build, make, and create things that didn't yet exist. As Morgan Freeman said in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, "Some birds aren't meant to be caged." To me, a limitless opportunity for self-expression is an essential ingredient to controlling my destiny.
Author Robert Kurson, best known for his book Shadow Divers, was hardly destined for success when he was in high school. Because he was ranked 606th out of 660, a guidance counselor recommended that he not go to college, and instead apply for the Peace Corps and hope for the best.
Robert's love of storytelling, however, led him to write for his high school newspaper, and he eventually got the attention of somebody at the University of Wisconsin. He gained admission, earned straight A's, attended Harvard Law School, and became a best-selling author. Needless to say, if he had taken to heart his guidance counselor's advice, his life might look a lot different now.
Similarly, Mars Dorian, our special projects artist at the Unmistakable Creative, has had his work called too edgy and provocative. Plenty of people don't like his work. But if you've ever seen a book cover, logo, or piece of art he's designed, you instantly know it's his. He's the embodiment of what it means to be unmistakable, whether or not everyone loves his art.
More than twenty-six publishers turned down what became a giant bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Tim has since made a fortune as a start-up adviser and investor, he hosts his own podcast, and recently he was the star of his own television show called The Tim Ferriss Experiment.
Another spin on dealing with criticism comes from blogger and creator of Fearbuster.com Jia Jiang, who turned being rejected by every venture capitalist who wouldn't fund his start-up ideas into a global movement and a book, Rejection Proof, a hilarious examination of how to overcome fear and dare to live more boldly.
Every one of these people contended with critics, people who doubted them, and people who rejected their ideas. But they didn't let the sting of that criticism keep them from making the unmistakable contribution they were determined to put out into the world.
Remember that the sting of our critics or naysayers is often harshest in the moment. The temptation is to believe them and listen to what they have to say, but it stands staunchly in your way to becoming unmistakable.
When my previous self-published book The Art of Being Unmistakable landed me on TV with media pundit Glenn Beck, I was exposed to a significantly larger audience than I had been in my entire career. And it wasn't long before some vilifying reviews appeared on Amazon. The one-star review that is permanently etched in my mind reads, "I hope Rao is a better surfer than writer." In spite of the success I was experiencing, that criticism still hurt. And I knew that if I attempted to cater to my critics, I'd not only hold back, but lose my voice in the process. I haven't read a review since.
We also have to be aware of our negativity bias when it comes to the sting of our critics. Think of how easily you can let one small negative part of your day dominate an otherwise perfect day.
In his book The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor describes the positive Tetris effect. People who play the game Tetris for an extended period of time start noticing potential Tetris patterns everywhere (e.g., while walking down the cereal aisle in the grocery store). The same effect, it turns out, can be applied to positivity and happiness. The simple act of noticing three good things creates a positive Tetris effect in your life. So rather than focusing on the critics, you start to shift your focus to the handful of people who are supporting you, and suddenly you'll start to notice a lot more of them.
Another way to mitigate the voices of your critics is to create a picture of what your future would look like if you believed what they said. My business partner Brian Koehn described the crossroads he was at in high school: he could work a dead-end job like every other teenager or start his own company. He decided to start a skateboard company. Because he was still in high school, he had more than his fair share of naysayers. He visualized what would have happened if he had listened to his critics:
It felt like being told what to do, and I never wanted to be told what to do. I know where that path ends. But the skateboard company was a whole world of possibilities. The picture of the future was all around me: I saw my peers not making any money, not having any fun. I saw all these adults working jobs that they hated. I had this constant reminder that if I didn't take this chance that's exactly what my life was going to be like.
If he had listened to his critics, Brian wouldn't have ended up touring the Midwest, pushing his limits, having insane amounts of fun, making money, and selling his skateboards in twenty-seven stores within two years. Whether he had started his company or not, the critics would have been long gone. If he hadn't started the company, their words would have continued to linger, affecting other decisions he made throughout his life. When you visualize how much catering to your critics can limit the potential of your work, you can more easily ignore them and move on. Compromising and giving up on something that matters to you is a really high price to pay just so you don't have to hear those voices when you decide to go against the grain. Nobody will criticize you for maintaining the status quo-but you'll never be unmistakable either.
You have to find the courage to take action in the face of criticism if you're going to do anything unmistakable, and realize that your critics are not the ones who are going to live with the consequences of the choices you've made.
The critical voices are loudest when you're standing onshore, contemplating a paddle out. Once you're in the water, on your way to becoming unmistakable, the voices will gradually be drowned out by the sound of the surf. You've left behind the critics on land. You'll hear your own voice whispering that you are doing what you're destined to do. Nothing silences those external voices like catching a perfect wave while the gods smile on you and your heart races.