All influencers know: we have to “create”. Create often, with passion and impact.
Create so much your audience doesn’t stand a chance at forgetting you, and so well that your competitors don’t stand a chance at beating you. The issue is that most aspiring thought-leaders keep putting it off. They cut corners, shut down, and blame a slew of primary culprits along the way.
“I don’t have the…”
Time
Ideas
Confidence
Knowledge
Stamina
You can keep telling yourself this or you can face the truth:
The only thing you’re lacking is obsession.
Prolific (highly consistent) creators like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tupac, Salvador Dali, and Stephen King aren’t simply “motivated”. And, they weren’t afforded more hours in their day than the average individual. They had to practice their way to “expert” like everyone else. Most of them were only confident about one thing: their determination to “figure this out”.
The point being: they weren’t gifted with anything you don’t currently have.
They just spent their tenure obsessing over their impact. They create day and night, often across several mediums and platforms. They coach in the morning, interview in the afternoon, and write in the evening, all to get their gift into the hands, minds, and hearts of as many people as possible.
The question is: is this obsession a skill one simply has, or can you create it at will?
Take a journey with me and let’s see.
Your Purpose Needs to Envelope The World
Human beings have a hard time seeing beyond “self”. Most of your gurus take full advantage of this when they tell you to discover your “why” and tell of their own. They point out that they wanted to make their spouse and children proud. They show you their dream home on a vision board from 2012, or talk about travel and paying off debt.
“The dream.”
And everything they say, you’ve been emulating.
“Sure, it would be nice to be location independent and not have to worry about a boss. I would love to not have to stress over paying for my kid’s college.”
Do you find it odd that your level of output is only about as prolific as the grandeur of your fervor?
Look at every prolific creator you’ve ever known, everyone who is both successful and a high-output creator. What do they all have in common?
They don’t have any old “purpose”. They have a mission that envelopes the world.
Steve Jobs didn’t want to create a computer company and make a bunch of money. He wanted to lead innovation for world-altering technology.
His primary focus was to create devices that would touch every human on the planet. He then led Apple to dominate the computer industry on a global scale, an endeavor that required releasing over 200 products in its first 24 years alone.
Look, and you’ll find that true Influencers take ownership of impacting world change, not “self” change. So, the first step to prolificacy is to figure out what your superpower is, and how you can use it to shift a world of people.
Step 2?
Generate Belief & Ownership
As you read the last section, you uttered a mission under the breath of your imagination. You’re feeling a little crazy about the notion of letting it take root and spark a fire in you.
“What do I look like, believing little old me could do something so big? Everyone would think I’m crazy.”
But your brain is no different than your successors. You have imagination, so do they. You also have the same left brain/right brain makeup that can create the plan and set it in motion. The key is getting yourself to believe that you are equally as capable of making a difference in the world as those who have. But how?
You’ve spent your life falling victim to the mental conditioning that “ordinary” is all there is for you. And even if you break free from ordinary, there are several shades of “unordinary” before you reach the sweet spot of “extraordinary.”
But the truth is that you were mentally conditioned to define your limits too close to home. So, you can condition yourself to understand that those limits are a construct. You don’t have to lend them your power.
You can condition yourself to think, believe, and obsess the way Influencers do. Today, we’re going to take a leaf from Napoleon Hill’s classic Think & Grow Rich to help you do it. We’ll lay out a material set of steps a five-year-old can act on. The only thing you need to do is do.
Step 1: Write a Statement
Napoleon instructs readers in the context of driving yourself to riches, and that’s great. You’ll need a wealth of money and the resources it affords you to enact a wealth of world change. But in this case, we’ll alter Napoleon’s original formula to fit the course of your mission.
Your statement will start with a declaration:
By [date] I will touch [number] of human beings with my message in various ways that will happen over time.
What will you give?
In return for my growing audience’s attention and buy-in, I will give them:
- [List the several ways you will reach your audience with your message and how it will help them]
- #2
- #3
- Etc.
I believe I will make this impact with my message through my own relentless push of it. I will iterate and reiterate it as many times as necessary to as many people as necessary. My faith is so strong, I can now see the impact before my eyes. I can feel my heart elate at the sight of it. It is just waiting to show itself at large when I deliver the message in full to the people.
Repeat It
Just like any average affirmation will take root in you the more you speak it, see it, feel it, this affirmation will do the same. Repeat it to yourself several times per day.
If we’re sticking with Hill’s instruction, once in the morning and once at night, take 30 minutes of your day, every day, to visualize your impact and the change it creates in the world. But many of Hill’s readers repeat their statement as many as 10 times per day, for a few minutes at a time.
Why This Works
While a lot of rational people see this as a “woo” practice that bears no weight, I implore you to look around you. Look at others and yourself and you’ll see the proof.
How many criminals go back to prison simply because they hold firm to the belief that they are criminal? How many great minds settle for subpar careers simply because they’re told too many times that that’s what they’re supposed to do? How many entrepreneurs settle for staying small because they’re told big impact isn’t normal?
And who made you believe you have to settle for being normal?
The point being if we’re told anything enough, the sentiments take root. Our beliefs then dictate our thoughts. Our thoughts dictate our actions. Our actions dictate our current reality, which dictates the trajectory for our future.
So, examine yourself. What does your current reality look like? What beliefs got you here?
You believe you don’t have the time, but is it possible to alter that belief? Could you generate the belief that you have a thirst for ideas and the courage to share them, however wild? Could you seek and absorb the knowledge? Could you then obsess over getting what you’ve learned to the light?
Could you? And if you could, would you?
So, then, why don’t you?
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