Seth Godin said, “Oprah isn’t going to pick you. Her show is over and she’s left the building.”
I didn’t think Oprah was going to pick me.
Pick me for what anyway? Best employee of a family business? Best single parent who only has 2 of her 3 kids living with her?
It was clear I wasn’t going to be picked.
Then Seth said, “No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.”
We are brought up in schools that teach us to wait to be picked … to speak, to be in the Christmas play, or even to ask a question.
We got picked to play on the varsity sports team…or not.
We were picked to go to the special field trips…or not.
Then some of us waited to see if we were picked by this university or that.
We apply for a job and wait to see if we were picked for the position.
Our whole society revolves around waiting to be picked.
So when Seth Godin said for the very first time we are in a place where we can pick ourselves because our world is now built with platforms available making it easy to show up and put ourselves out there.
I had to stop and ask some questions…
Is this really true?
Who gets to decide who gets to be the “picker”?
Why do we hand our fate over to the book publishers, and the movie and music producers?
It used to be we didn’t have a choice…
But now we can make our own art and share it with the world.
We just have to have the courage to show up and express our own creativity.
Seth calls this the connection economy. We are able to connect ourselves like never before with millions of people around the world.
Putting yourself out there is hard and takes courage.
But we can totally do hard things… what are you waiting for?