One of the biggest assumptions that I have gotten caught in historically (and that I see a lot of people caught in) is the assumption that for any given situation, all you have to work with is you and the situation.  If you can’t change the situation (which mostly you can’t, not directly anyway), and you can’t (or won’t)  change yourself, you’re stuck and screwed.

If you’re unemployed, and you can’t seem to find a job, you may become more and more frustrated as you focus on the ‘got to find a job got to find a job got to find a job’, leading to less and less success: You are annoyed, you take that energy in with you to job interviews, it comes across in your interaction even if you try to hide it, you dont get the job, you get more frustrated, and on and on.  Even if you get a job at that point, would you be happy about it? Probably not, with all that energy built up!

If you’re a business, and you are used to marketing through the use of big splashy events and Superbowl commercials rather than providing experiences that surprise and delight your customers, and suddenly your revenues are slipping and you can’t see why, so you keep doing what you’re doing to try to affect the marketplace and make them buy more of your product, spending tons of money on a new campaign with a celebrity saying how awesome your product is, and your share of the market continues to dwindle so you fire your PR people and demand a launch event that will go viral and spread across the internet and whatever Twitter is, and on and on.

The reality of the situation (and something that I don’t think gets taught to us at any point in most of our development) is that there is actually a third element within any situation: the relationship between us and the thing in question.  The relationship is something that we always have the ability to look at and adjust.  We can focus our attention at our relationship to our not having found a job, and choose whether to remain frustrated, or tune it so that our relationship is one that is more calm, accepting “I have not found employment yet, and that is okay, because it does not mean that I will never find employment”, and ultimately useful.

We often don’t get a chance to look at situations like this, though, since we are usually very quick to respond to a situation directly.  The most important thing to take from this, and something I struggle with but am learning, is to slow down and pause before reacting.  Take a second to look at your relationship to the situation rather than just focusing on the situation itself.  Is an advertising campaign the best way to reach customers? Is frustration the best way to deal with your employment situation?  Probably not, but until we learn to take a look at that third thing, we will be stuck there.

So, where are you stuck on things 1 and 2, where looking at the third thing might be useful?

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“The simplest way to do anything is to stop not doing it.”

It may seem kind of “duh”, but if you stop for a moment and take stock of all the places you want to be, the things you want to do, the people you want to meet, the communication you wish your company had with its customers, and then take a moment and really contemplate the attitude and automatic responses you have in your mind about not doing these things, and then begin to change the “no’s” into “yes’s”, I bet you’ll get pretty darn far.

Try it with something small.

Figure out what happiness you’re not bringing toward yourself, and stop not doing it.

Let me know how it goes.

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“Oh, I could never ask him out, what if he says no and laughs at me?”

“We aren’t ready to have a Twitter account for our business, what if people say bad things about our products?”

“I can’t meet with the Dalai Lama because China would get pissed off.”

The thing of it is that we can’t predict the future.  Our minds close us off to new experiences (by predicting disaster) in order to keep things as they are, but things are always changing.

Therefore, if we can’t predict the future anyway, why not try flipping the script a little to keep things in perspective.

Next time, just as an exercise, try asking yourself “What’s the best that could happen?”  What could be the best possible outcome for asking out that guy, or creating that facebook page for your business, or meeting with whomever, or going to that party, or taking that chance.

Everything is always changing.  If you think of things in a positive way instead of a negative way, who knows what could happen. Do a reward analysis, not just a risk one!

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I am not a Gen-Y-er (though being born in 1979, I’m not technically a GenX-er either), but I’m not sure what value is brought by expecting talented people (they are talented, that’s why they got hired, right) to immediate suffer through menial tasks that do not allow them any responsibility, encourage them to contribute, or include them as part of the team.  What kind of lesson does that teach? It seems like needless discouragement to me.

I would say that if you have a Gen-Y-er on your team, a better strategy would be to include them in meetings, allow them to offer suggestions (even if you may think they’re dumb questions, it is your job to help them refine their thinking to come to a more workable idea), and generally value their contribution.  If you meet all these needs, then you create an atmosphere where they want to get you coffee to show appreciation, rather than it being a chore to be resented.

Also, do this with everyone.

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Today (whenever you may be reading this), try to remember that each of us, as individuals, employees, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and lovers, strangers and enemies are doing the best we can at this moment.  We all want to love and be loved, to be understood, to be happy.  We each struggle to get past our fears and our thoughts in order to achieve this goal.

Even you.

Even me.

We’re all in this together.

[inspired by Teresa Basich's wonderful manifesto, and the first decent conversation I've had with my father in  years.]

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One of the big ones is based around not giving myself permission to try things.  So many aspects of my life had been left untouched based on my being unable to see beyond what I assumed was the size of the first step.

“I should travel more!” I thought, “but I don’t have a passport and in order to get a passport I’d have to get a passport photo and to do that I’d need to remember to go to a photo place,” and on and on.  And so things would not get completed.

In Buddhism, there is the concept of the ’second arrow,’ which means that we frequently add a layer of judgment to our activities and choices, which causes us to suffer, keeps us in our heads and restricts our ability to connect with our true selves.

I was doing this, and it was keeping me stuck in one place.

But what I’m starting to realize is, there are smaller steps that are more manageable, if I take them without judgment of the past or possible negative outcomes of the future. There are low-risk activities I can do to bring myself closer to my goals.  Taking even the tiniest of steps in a direction and it can make a world of difference, and so tiny becomes the perfect size rather than a bad thing to be judged.

So whether it’s getting your passport, figuring out what you want in a romantic relationship, lowering your carbon footprint, interacting with your customers, making diplomatic overtures to a ‘terrorist state’, reconnecting with an estranged family member… figure out what you CAN do, and do it.  Don’t judge yourself because you think you could be doing more, or that it seems like it doesn’t matter or make a difference. And if you do find yourself judging, do your best not to judge that part.  You are only human, and it’s in our reptilian brain’s nature to judge ‘this is good’ ‘this is bad’.

It really does.

P.S. the Japanese have a name for this process when used in business: Kaizen

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Conversations will happen that you could be a part of, that you could bring value to.

Someone out there wants to hear from you. Someone out there wants to make a connection.

This will happen online and offline, with friends and strangers.

You can choose not to pay attention, but all this will continue regardless, and all you will be is alone and suffering.

Isn’t it better to listen?  Just for a little while?

What’s the best that could happen?

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Historically, it was very easy for business folks to think of their customers as ‘them’. “how do we get them to buy our product,” people would say, and the answer would often be tactical guesswork, and not lead to particularly effective results.  By beginning the strategy by specifically excluding ourselves and everyone we know, we find that we don’t really leave ourselves with anything to base our strategy on.

In the time when you could safely assume that a significant portion of the country was tuned in to a single piece of entertainment (The Tonight Show, etc), putting a message, any message in front of people would get some return. The talk-to-everyone-to-reach-a-few days are gone, and good riddance.  They’ve been replaced by endless permutations of clusters of people passionate about an endless combination of things, each making their passions known and eagerly anticipating the opportunity to connect, share, get and give value.

The true power, the true awakening, the most effective conversations, marketing, communications, PR, interactions come when we realize and recognize the simple fact that there is no ‘them’. It’s never been more apparent in the history of the world that across geographic, cultural, language, economic and all other barriers, what we all seek under all of our pretense, suffering and assumptions is connection, support and compassion.

Those that realize that we’re all in this together and keep that fact in mind when looking at ways to connect with those around them, to truly listen and engage with people, to provide value, and to empower people will exist happily for a long time.

In spiritual life this connection to the world is essential to feeling at peace.  Different religions suggest different methods of achieving this, from giving to charity, to loving thy neighbor as thyself, to what the Dalai Lama calls Wise Selfishness.  If you’ve ever been depressed, you may remember a distinct feeling of ‘not feeling like part of the world’, isolation, distance from people who care about you.  You may also find your focus turned exclusively inward, unable to include others in your day-to-day life in conversations about anything other than how awful you feel. This is a horribly lonely place to be, and does not result in any kind of engagement with you being at all inviting. It may be valuable to compare this state of mind with business practices of a company you work at or are interested in.

In the same way that feeling like part of the world leads to our personal successes, it is such with business as well.  Even in the distant past, some of the most successful campaigns on behalf of business happened when the company was able to focus outward.  Avon and Tupperware built their empires with this mindset.  Being inclusive and thinking of all individuals as people who could potentially rally around a common cause connected to making their lives better is the only way to succeed.

In other words, there is no ‘them’.  There is only ‘us’. That’s the secret.

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In business, however, I feel as though there is a disconnect from embracing these same values. Kindness becomes weakness. There is a fear that making your business approachable will somehow lead to being taken advantage of by customers (or worse yet, ignored). People are afraid that being open to others will lead to competitors stealing their ideas, or that somehow the company will be ‘exposed’ as less than it claims, and that will lead to something drastic.

These insecurities are quite human and understandable, when we’ve been taught in business (and in our personal lives) that we must portray an image of a secure, independent and successful entity who is not reliant on anyone at all times, or risk losing social status.

What we’re coming to understand is that ‘projecting an image’ is a sure way for people to want to keep their distance. I’m sure everyone reading this knows at least someone who may be a good person underneath, but could commonly be described as someone who ‘tries too hard’ or is ‘always on’. When you think about your reaction to that person, it’s probably something approaching pity, rather than an honest inclination to connect, engage and have a valuable exchange with that person. I’m sure everyone can think of companies (and in fact entire industry trends) that are trapped in fear.

The interesting thing about the world we live in is that those entities are brought into stark relief, as more and more places are embracing a new value of openness, and finding that success follows shortly thereafter. More importantly (I think), the public nature of these interactions allows for people to share in those successes. As follower counts grow for companies that embrace openness like JetBlue, Zappos, Starbucks, they are finding that their goals are being cheered on by the public. People actually want these companies to make money. This would be so far removed from reality even ten years ago as to be absurd.

So, how can we work with companies rooted in fear to open them up to the opportunities? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I would imagine it begins by showing them the effectiveness of a more human approach, and talking out their fears with them. As with anything in life, the antidote to fear is love and compassion. To those change agents among us, are you approaching your clients this way, to address, alleviate and walk them through their fears? If not, it might be an interesting exercise.

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One of the examples I’m most proud of is the Thrillercast series I worked on with Joe V. for Sony last year. I don’t think we knew it at the time, but this became the perfect example of the bridge concept in action.

Identify the goal: Capture the long-standing affect that Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” and associated videos had on the world, through interviews with people who were a part and those who were influenced.

Define the lanes: Identify the areas where “Thriller” had a major influence – Music, Songwriting, Production, Choreography, Dance, Video, Radio.

Define the pillars: Identify the events or items common to each of the lanes that we want to make sure are touched upon throughout the stories.  In this case, the songs themselves became great pillars.

Place your pillars: Figure out how to arrange the stories so that the overall story arc is tight and compelling.  Whether it’s grouping episodes together by topic, walking the listener through chronologically, or some other organizational system, the grouping of the content will ensure that the listener is taken on a smooth journey.

Find your storytellers for each lane: Cast people who are passionate about telling their story and whose stories can serve as a bridge between the listener and Michael.  We new almost immediately whether someone had something to say or would just be going through the motions, and that informed whether we pursued them or not.

Capture bridge stories: When interviewing, keep the tone anecdotal rather than empirical. Anyone can sit there and list the various awards received and the number of copies sold.  Those are things about the subject, and do not belong on the bridge.  Remember, all those achievements happened because of the bridge elements.  We encouraged people talk about their experience with “Thriller” from within their area, the influence it had on them, and how it changed affected the landscape as a whole.

So, when telling a story (be it a bedtime story, a podcast, a twitter stream,  a presentation, a mix CD, anything), ask yourself: Does this experience build a bridge?  If not, you’re not done.

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President Obama’s speech tonight provided me the opportunity to write something I’ve been wanting to share for a bit. His guiding principle, that the cycle of increased-costs-to-decreased-value that the insurance companies have been subjecting the American people to needs to end. Insurance companies, like any other for-profit enterprise, are entitled to work toward as big of a profit as they can legitimately create for themselves, but not at the cost of the health of the entities they claim to be a resource for.

Beyond proposing putting restrictions on some of the processes insurance companies are able to use, the President suggested an alternative opportunity for insurance companies to make themselves available to patients: open the world of options to a wider audience than currently exists (e.g.currently uninsured people) and let customers make the choice where to invest their attention and dollars. By redefining the parameters to create a bigger world to play in, the overinflated balloon of suffering caused by the limitations of the day-to-day process can be deflated and replaced with a more workable and productive model, that ideally will find an equilibrium between stress points and air flow.

What does all of this have to do with me (and maybe you too)? Read on!

As some of you may or may not know, I’ve struggled on and off with chronic depression for most of my adult life. I have lived my last 15 years in a state of aversion, using any number of distractions (food, the internet, unhealthy relationships) in order to try to get out of my head, or not have my thoughts rule me.

I’ve never known what people meant when they said ’stop thinking so much’. What other option is there? How does one interact with the world if not through one’s brain? I’ve been working in therapy for awhile now, trying to think my way out of this situation, which I’d defined as a sense of ‘coasting without connecting’, leading up to ‘not feeling like part of the world’. I thought I could figure out some way to stay in my head (which is the only place to be) but just nice-and-easy integrate my emotions back into my life.

All this came to a head last week when, in a “be careful what you wish for” epic fail moment, all the distractions I’d relied upon to not have to deal with myself suddenly stopped being effective in keeping me out of my brain, and I spiraled into a debilitating depression.

I stayed off of the internet, TV held no interest, I stopped eating altogether. I was desperately in search of an answer, something, ANYTHING that could be done to help me to figure out how to understand and escape my all-too-familiar situation. I didn’t know where the release valve on my suffering was, but I was at the end of my rope and willing to search anywhere for an escape hatch. Somehow in the midst of all this, the concept of meditation entered my brain.

I’ve been trying to learn how to meditate off and on for years, but I never really “got it”. It always seemed rather silly to me, how somehow sitting quietly could possibly solve my very real problems, challenges and self-imposed restrictions keeping me from being happy. It didn’t seem like DOING anything, and therefore it held no weight beyond a novelty. But now, in the desperate quest to find answers outside myself, I asked my Twitter folks for meditation resources, and was directed Radical Aceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, which ended up being a life-altering discovery.

The book, written by Tara Brach, opened my eyes to the totally understandable habitual and very common folly of paying attention to the reptillian brain’s thought processes. Within these pages it is explained in plain language that the thoughts that I’d gotten completely caught up in are the automatic responses of our evolutionary fight-or-flight process. They are comprised entirely of judgments “this is good” “this is bad” “this is dangerous”. They are not rational, nor are they ‘intended’ to be. They are just the brain’s way of processing experience. The trouble happens when we begin to take these automatic responses at face value, when we begin to believe them.

I believed them. I got caught in them. I bought into the fundamental rational conclusion that one comes to when identifying with these thoughts: I’m not good enough. Something is wrong with me. I can never experience love or peace. I don’t deserve these things. And once I got caught in it, there was seemingly no escape.

It turns out, however, that you can’t think your way out of being caught up in thought. It seems simple when phrased like that, but as any of you who have been caught in depression know, when you’re in it there is no past where you felt better, there is no potential future where you can feel better, and it seems like the only way to get out is by some external source (said much better than I have here by Robert Burton in his The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621.) The rallying cry of the depressed is “Save Me” for a reason.

I decided, as a last resort (before looking into a pharmacological option) to commit myself to investing in meditation. This resulted in probably the most intense weekend (three day weekend, no less) of my life thusfar.

In my newfound “I’m going to give this a serious chance”, I discovered that Tara Brach has a free podcast where she expands upon her teachings from the Radical Acceptance book and leads her class in guided meditations (which are basically real-time audio or visual instruction guiding you through the process of becoming aware of your awareness and focusing on your core being rather than getting caught up in thoughts or emotions that are connected to automatic processes). Our consciousness is ‘prior’ to these processes. It’s closer to us.

I listened and learned and focused and tried it. And something finally clicked. This is the other option.

Finding myself sitting by the East River, eyes closed, listening to the sound of Tara’s soothing voice for hours at a time, I began to learn how to connect with my awareness, that which is more centrally ‘me’ than the thoughts, the emotions, the dread. Through these three days of intense change, I’ve gotten closer to becoming in sync with my core being than I’ve ever been, and learned that the way out is actually within us. I finally felt like I’d identified where the release valve was.

It was not easy. It did not come quickly. I’m lucky enough to have a Mom who went through something similar, and found similar release in the practice, and was able to offer invaluable information, advice and support.

Since then, I’ve been meditating for 20 minutes every morning. I’m beginning to feel the effects. I am able to get out of my head more quickly than before. I pay more attention to the world around me. I smile at people on the street, and get smiles back. I’m learning to ask questions when I’m unclear about something, rather than making assumptions that add to my stress level of a particular task at hand. Obviously I’m very new to this process and am still getting the hang of it.

What’s the point? Beyond my full and unreserved support for this practice (especially for my fellow geek friends who have similar challenges getting out of their own way), the point is, I’m learning to deflate the balloon. My balloon had expanded to the breaking point. It hit the wall. The only way out was to let go, let the balloon deflate, let it go slack, find another way to get the goal of living done. Change doesn’t come when we’re comfortable, it’s only in a crisis that change is possible. I’m tempted to make a comparison to business and social media trends here, but you’re all smart enough to get there yourselves, yes?

I haven’t been on Twitter (or blogging) quite as much, I’m a little different in how I interact with the world now, I’m learning to spend more time in the cool glow of presence and connection to the world. I’m figuring out what really matters to me (turns out, as with most people, it’s ‘connection’). I’m working on me. I’m figuring out how to work with my balloon to find equilibrium. I am.

Am I going to give up all my worldly possessions and go live on a monastery somewhere? Probably not. I’ve never been particularly religious, though I’ve always believed that you get what you give (i.e. Karma). The meditation practice does not require any particular religious belief, only a belief in our own primal nature, before thought, before emotion, and a commitment to loving kindness to all beings. There are plenty of resources on the web that can describe all this stuff in far greater detail, and I encourage exploration.

I hope this post will inspire any reader who finds themselves in a similar situation to consider this path as an option, and hope to continue being mindful as much as I can for as long as I can.

Thank you for listening, hearing and loving.

P.S. I realize that I addressed a bunch of this stuff in my “You Matter” post. I was considering revising it to take into account this new perspective, but I think its more interesting to be left alone as a ‘before and after’ study.

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Because of my addiction (there are about 200-250 sites with RSS feeds that I have enough of an interest in to want to keep up with, at this point), I’m frequently overwhelmed with the numbers sitting next to each feed in my Thunderbird install (ApartmentTherapy, for example, has 19,000 posts that i have not yet gone through).

Relatively recently, I’ve been able to dig myself out from the pile enough to mentally put the feeds I subscribe to into three distinct categories:

1. Feeds where I find value in a large enough % of the posts to want to keep top-of-mind
2. Feeds I thought I’d like, but never end up reading.
3. Feeds with not infrequent gem posts, but either a really high volume or not consistent relevance to make me check the feed regularly

The first two are dealt with easily enough, and weeding your overall list of subscriptions is a mentally freeing experience, that allows you to concentrate the awesome in your daily content ingestion routine.  That pesky second one is a problem though.  I feel bad unsubscribing because chances are there are some really great thought-provoking posts that get written, but having to filter through content that isn’t as relevant to me leads to huge bulidups and makes it seem like a chore.

If only there was some kind of service or website where I could get notifications of content that gets posted to these sites, without the ‘unread items’ piling up, so I can click through to the ones I’d be interested in…

Oh wait!

That’s right, many blogs and sites have dedicated Twitter accounts (frequently using Twitterfeed) that spit out headlines and links every time a new post appears.  Additionally, lots of bloggers connect their wordpress installs to their twitter accounts using plugins to notify when they’ve written something new (I use Ingoal’s Twitter Updater, which is fine except it uses zz.gd as a shortener rather than bit.ly)

So Twitter has become my RSS Purgatory, and I frequently ‘downgrade’ blogs that have lived in my RSS reader over to following them.  I’m working on setting up a dedicated Tweetdeck group for these types of accounts, which should further optimize the process.

Do I miss posts? Sure.  But I can safely rely on my community to let me know directly or indirectly when there’s worthwhile reading out there.

So, if you’re like me and have way more feed subscriptions than you could ever keep up with, take an hour, weed the garden, and move some over to Twitter.

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To that end, I thought I’d share some self-reflection strategies for those times where change needs to happen that just happen to be carefully worded so that they can apply to business as well.  Wasn’t that clever of me?

I. Accept the reality of your situation.  Go ahead, give it a shot.

Chances are, things weren’t what you thought they were – If the bottom has fallen out of your situation, consider for a moment the prospect that you may have been judging the reality of your situation inaccurately to begin with, and that the new realizations and trends can serve as a reality check and give you a new place to work from.

Rethink, don’t combat – There is the tendency when we feel attacked both as people and as professionals to want to strike out in anger against those we perceive are doing the hurting (e.g. See: RIAA suing its customers, the venom with which traditional print media regards bloggers, blaming society/our parents/ex-girlfriends for our current situations).  Often, those people are not actually the root cause of the issue, but rather are symbolic of a deeper, more internal issue.  This is a perfectly natural reaction, but once you’re done throwing a tantrum, it’s time to look within and see exactly what led to this behavior.

The goal is to rebuild, not to regain – Take this opportunity to look at what’s not working and change it, rather than trying desperately to get things ‘back to the way they were’.  Things will never be the way they were, because the world and your place in it is fundamentally different at this moment than it has ever been. Accepting this can free you to decide where you ultimately want to end up.

II. Figure out where you want to go

Identify and embrace core values.  Figure out what they’re not, then figure out what they are. – Get back to basics.  What do you stand for? Be as specific as possible.  In thinking about your core values, throw out all the mottos, taglines, things people have complimented you onand phrases that you’re used to parroting back into the world.  If it helps, write them all down on paper and cross them out with a big pen.  Those are not your values. It’s time to get real.

Your core value statement is what sets you apart as unique in the world, it will need to be specific enough that you can measure every action you take against it to see if you are aligned or not.

Start from scratch, sort of – OK, so take those core value statements that you came up with, and consider: if you had the chance to reset yourself, without being beholden to all your current baggage and learned behaviors, what specific values and activities would you embrace?  What would you  immediately leave by the side of the road? What would you take out back and stomp on repeatedly? How would you interact with others? What kind of impression would you want to make?

III. Identify barriers to getting there

Figure out why you’re not there already – An important step in being able to take action is to look at why you haven’t yet done so.  Accept that some of the reasons may be emotional in nature and therefore not objectively rational.  The important thing is to get as many of them ‘down on paper’ as possible, so you can evaluate whether they should continue to be able to hold you back.

Identify the consequences of not doing anything – Chances are, if you’ve read this far, you are at least considering addressing change.  However, to really drive the point home, it may be helpful to take a look at what might happen should you continue on your current course. Just keep in mind that not making a decision is, in fact, a decision as well.

IV: Do something about it!

Yes, this is the scary part.  Hopefully parts I-III have given you enough preparation and data so that you can be aware of what you need to do, how to gauge whether you’re being true to you core goals.  If you’ve made it this far, you are ready to act.

Don’t try to do it all at once, but do something. – Take some small steps, measure, adjust.  Try something new, do something differently than you have in the past.  Put yourself out there in a way more aligned with your real goals. Commit yourself to ramp up the process.

Measure, measure, measure -  As you get more comfortable with the action -> measurement -> adjustment loop, you will find that opportunities for change begin to present themselves in a way that they haven’t before.  As with the actions you took when ramping up, it is critical to test new opportunities against your core goals and values.  If they are in alignment, then act, measure, adjust accordingly.  If not, dont do them.  When reviewing, always remember to ask yourself whether you getting where you want to go.

Build momentum, but be mindful of your speed - One of the things that may have gotten you to the place you were was years of momentum.  If we aren’t careful to be mindful of our goals and values, our momentum can take us down disastrous paths.  Remembering our high school physics, it takes much more energy to stop and reverse direction than it does to always be adjusting your course.

Accept setbacks, ignore haters, keep to your path as much as you can. – This is pretty self-explanatory.  Whether we’re talking about you or your company, there are going to be wrong moves, there are going to be people who are waiting for you to fail, or fudge a result or have your adjustments be ‘all an act’.  Those people are easily ignored.  Stick to your guns and your values, and the vast majority will appreciate the improvement!

So there you have it.  Jeremy’s not-so-concise guide to handling change, both personally and in business.  I’m looking forward to seeing what my 30s have to offer!

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• Just plain good advice (0)

Ready?

You matter.

There are people out there, many of whom you’ve never met and may never meet, who would not be where they are it wasn’t for you.  Do you get that? Does that sink in?

Who you are and what you do affects people. You have a place in the world that is uniquely your own, a perfect you-shaped hole that only you can fill.

You are curious and interested. You inspire these things in others.  You have passion to share, even if you have no freakin clue what it is yet.  It’s there, waiting to explode out into the world. By virtue of you reading this post, I know this much about you.

You have every right to be proud of yourself. You have every right to love who you are. I’m giving you permission.  In fact, you have an absolute responsibility to do both of these things.

You know that inner voice? That voice with its arms folded right now, shrugging and saying “Yeah, but so what?” or “This guy doesn’t even know me” or “What is this nutjob on about!” ?

That voice hates you. That voice desperately needs you to think that you don’t matter, that you’re not good enough, that you’re not really a part of the world, that when people say something nice about you they dont really mean it, or they don’t really know the real you, or whatever.  That way, that voice wins, and gets to be smug, and be right, and have control.

Here’s the secret.  I have a feeling you already know this.  That voice is a liar. All that stuff is 100% fiction.  Because you matter.  You have a place in the world that is uniquely yours.  Whether you’re out feeding the homeless or home on the couch watching TV, that you-shaped hole can only be filled by you. And look at you, you’re already doing it!

That very same voice inside my head has controlled me for a long time.  I’ve bought into it. I thought “Yeah, I’m smart, so what? I didn’t have anything to do with me being smart, it’s just how I am.”  That voice got to win. I don’t blame myself, nor do I think I’m a victim of it, it is simply a statement of fact. But now I’m writing this to you, because I’m geting the sneaking suspicion that what I’m saying in this letter is true. And that I need to tell that voice “Thanks for your input, but you’re wrong, and I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”  And that you do, too.

I know it’s easy to discard this letter as saccharine nonsense or empty words. People don’t tell each other that they matter very often.  Sure, it’s implied by a smile or a hug or a tweet or an IM or all that stuff that’s easy to file in a place where it doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme.  I think this needs to change.

Here’s what I want you to do.  This is absolutely essential. Chances are, if I’ve communicated what I want to say effectively, there’s someone in your mind right now who you know that matters to you, and needs to read this.  I want you to pick up the phone, write them an email, meet them for dinner, mail them a letter or even send them a tweet and tell them strongly and directly “Hey, I wanted you to know that you matter to me.”  Don’t qualify it with a particular reason or accomplishment or what they’ve done for you. Just leave it at that, and mean it. If you’re on Twitter and feel comfortable doing so, consider using hashtag #youmatter.

Okay, so that’s what I wanted to make sure you knew.  Letter over.

With all possible love and admiration,

Jeremy Meyers

P.S. This letter is also available on youmatterletter.com

[this letter was inspired by several conversations had at and around Podcamp Boston, and by a few people who matter to me very much.]

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Shredded Wheat

Shredded wheat was invented in 1893 and has been available, unchanged, since then.  There are some variations (size, with or without sugar), but its pretty much stayed the same for over 100 years.  Even the plant where it’s made is the same one that’s made shredded wheat since 1954.

Notepad.exe

Notepad has remained virtually unchanged since Windows 3.0, which was released in 1990, almost 20 years ago.  The only feature additions have been to address bugs and to increase the size of the files it can open.  Yet every coder, designer and content writer I know uses Notepad for at least some of their productivity, be it to take notes, quickly edit a CSS file, or do markup. Spending the time to create something that will stand the test of time is a far better use of resources than being able to connect to the internet from my toaster oven. I’d love to hear about other examples.

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When you tell your own story, its hype.  Other people telling your story is better.

In the 300 episodes of content that I helped to create while at Sony Music, very few of them (with the exception of Yo-Yo Ma) were focused on the artist talking about themselves.  This was by design, because stories told by people’s stories  to the music and the affect it had by coming into their lives definitively resonates more.

The danger with talking from the position of the creator (or your company, or your product) is twofold:

1) It’s increasingly difficult for your audience to believe you can be objective.

2) We all tend to severely over-edit or severely under-edit.

A question came up in another panel (run by @cc_chapman) about what non-profits could be doing better in the SocMed space, and I suggested that what may be lacking is an effort to truly document the stories of those that are affected by contributors donations.  If you have a charity that delivers shoes to poor kids in Africa, you’d better believe you’ll get more donations if you shoot a FlipCam video of the kids unwrapping and trying on shoes for the first time than if you point that same camera at the founder of the organization and let them talk about how much they need money to get those shoes over to Africa.

The Tom’s Shoes AT&T commercial is a perfect example of results-based storytelling, and finding that rare balance of focus.

Enabling the broadcast of passion and stories of people who are affected by what you do, or the product you put out, or the service you provide, whether it be  through podcasting or even just a comment section on your websites pages is the most powerful and effective way to show potential buyers/donors/fans/friends the value of what you bring to the table.

So my advice, when working on that new product strategy, that Social Media tone assessment, that podcast, your resume:

The story is the results, the results are the story.

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As of this week, I’ve left my position as Digital Content and Editorial person at Sony Music and joined the Studio D team at PR firm Waggener Edstrom.

This decision caps off a decade-long career in the music industry that saw the rise of Napster, the industries curious response, and the resulting transformational steps. I don’t want to editorialize too much about the state of the business (meet me for drinks for that) except to say that there are a lot of very smart people who are very passionate about music that remain at companies that are slow to transition to the new realities of their marketplace.

In any case, this post is not about that. It’s about my process and discovery and how using online tools helped connect me with what has ultimately become my new gig.

When I came across the job posting (on Craigslist, of all places), it seemed like it’d be a very good match. The job entails creating content, project managing websites and advising on new technologies and integrating new communications platforms into existing strategies. My level of interest and excitement grew when I began to research Waggener Edstrom, who admittedly I’d never heard of before (the music industry tends to be very insular in the list of companies hired to do PR, and honestly does not tend to work at a scale where a WaggEd would make sense).

This is a company that truly believes in the power of storytelling, authenticity, and unlike many PR firms, they are expanding their interest, dedication to and staffing of the digital world. They are mainly known in the PR world for being the agency of record for Microsoft, although they work on many interesting accounts, including many in the commercial products sector. They are constantly winning awards both for their work (recently awarded NW PR agency of the year , and Entrepreneur of the Year for Melissa Waggener) and for employment (PR week named them the bronze medalist in their “best place to work” awards) I very shortly found myself becoming a big fan of WaggEd.

Because this would be a major shift in the trajectory of my career, and because I spend way too much time on social networks, my next step was to research all I could about the company, and more importantly the people, minds and voices with whom I would be interacting. It’s very important to me to be surrounded by people who share my vision for the power of communication, storytelling and authenticity.

Waggener has several blogs, one of the most popular being Thinkers And Doers, a home for insight from the Studio D team. Their posts reflected a curiosity and viewpoint that I could easily align myself with, so I began commenting, when I had something to say about the topic.

At the same time, I searched for and followed as many Waggener people as I could on Twitter, using the bios page on waggeneredstrom.com as a starting point, and expanding the list using @dacort’s tweepsearch.com. I set up a separate TweetDeck group specifically for all the WaggEd folk, and started listening to what they were saying, selectively responding, and getting to know some of the people inside the company and what they’re all about.

Throughout this process, I’m happy to have been able to chat with a bunch of people and really start to get to know them. Now that I have the job, I also have friends inside the company, so I wont be starting from scratch, which is always a bonus when beginning at a new job.

You’ll notice that throughout the course of this post, I have not mentioned any of the typical steps one takes in order to get a new job (e.g. the interview process, references, linkedin profiles, etc). While these obviously took place (Waggener was very rigorous in their interview process), that process has been covered to death elsewhere, and was less notable than what happened outside the “what strengths do you think you can bring to the company” type interviews.

Anyway, they made the decision to bring me on board,  I start August 3rd, and I look forward to the new challenges and opportunities this position will bring.

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I’m not going to say that one level of interaction is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than another, I just find it curious.  I’ve always tried to chat with people that I know online about things not related to online, because hey, we’re all people first.  Is it possible that the second type are looking for some kind of validation from those around them.

In thinking about it, it seems like perhaps many of the ‘talking about talking’ folks are used to being a ‘big fish’, so to speak.  When you surround yourself (intentionally or by virtue of your job) with people who are less familiar with online communications than you are, I think we all have a tendency to go into ‘guru-speak’, talking about talking, in order to evangelize the importance of the medium.  Some folks have a hard time turning that off when they’re in a room with other online-focused people.

So I guess my message to this second type of person is:  Relax, you’re amongst friends.  You shouldn’t feel the need to prove your net-savvy, or active in the online world, that’s why you’re attending a tweetup!  In-person meetings are the time to get to know people as people.  Find out what music your favorite blogger is into, complain about the weather, start a drinking game.  Talking about talking really just comes off as trying too hard, and makes me want to roll my eyes and go talk to people I know have no interest in talking about follower counts over beer.

Tweetup (via @socialmedium)

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Leave ‘em in the comments :)

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How could we have gotten 15 years into the development of the web and not addressed this fundamental disadvantage vs shopping in person?  Well, my thought is basically that this shortfall was not made apparet until the new surface area of business-with-consumer (not business-TO-consumer) communications were created via myspace/facebook/twitter/etc.

There is a huge opportunity to envelop customers tastes, contributions and personality into ecommerce sites rather than purely tacking them on at the end of the design/UX process.

As an example of a starting point, do you know those product registration cards included with electronics that sometimes you fill out and definitely never get any value from?   Maybe those could be revised to offer a unique ID that consumers could use to drive traffic to a specific site, a la a low-investment affiliate program. If I can send people to companyname.com/customer/jeremymeyers and also customize what people see (model numbers, reviews, links) once they get there, you’ve involved me as a customer and an advocate, created a new traffic stream to your site, and treated me special.

As usual, a leader in this particular concept is Threadless (my favorite ecommerce site on the web).  I have a page on Threadless thats all about me. Here, check it out.  It can pull in feeds from other sites, and i can post blogs about products I’ve purchased, which show up on the products page.  They also have a built-in affiliate program which they call “street team”. Referrals which lead to sales earn me $3 in store credit.

All of these are really simply implemented ideas that will create a much ROI and ROE.

In order not to be left in the dust by sites like Threadless, eCommerce sites (and consumer goods sites in general) would be very wise to reconceptualize their online presence to envelop their users and include them in the building of the site from the ground up, rather than allow them to comment on content generated internally.

Have you seen any other great examples of customer envelopment? Please share in the comments!

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I’ve really had it up to here with Social Media Experts (including, and sometimes especially, those who go on rants about social media experts as if they aren’t ones themselves) going on and on and on about how twitter is a fundamental paradigm shift and how important it is that everyone learn how to do it the “right” way by listening to them.

Here are some things that really piss me off (not just me, either)

• If you’re at a conference that you paid to get into?  Be at the conference.  Don’t spend 90% of your time tweeting what the people on stage are saying.  You’re not a participant, you’re a court reporter.  And it annoys the HELL out of people who follow you because you’re making an assumption that they’re interested in whats going on at this conference enough to eat up some significant portion of their real estate.
• Here are some topics that you can just shut up about right now.
  • I’m interesting, so everyone must be interested in how I use twitter. (also known as ‘hey I joined a site,I must be an expert!) syndrome
  • Number of followers don’t matter even though I have thousands and that’s why I’m here attending/speaking at this conference
  • The shifting business paradigm making it so much easier to get paid to chat all day.
  • Listening is the new talking even though I’m talking about listening without actually listening
  • Posts entitled “What _____ can teach us about social media”? Shut up. Not everything is about Social Media. The world is bigger than that. Filtering everything through the SM lens narrows the ability of people to take larger messages, lessons and tools from the things going on around.  And isn’t that the point?
  • Just because a company has a PR mishap or doesn’t do something according to your own arbitrary rules of how companies should be run (whether or not you’ve ever worked in the industry in question, at a company of that size, or at a company at all), doesn’t mean they FAIL or that it’s a CATASTROPHE or and they’re OBVIOUSLY OUT OF TOUCH. Shut up. Nobody wants to read your blog posts about it except other people like you.

We get it. That’s why we’re using the site.

Also: DO something. If you can’t cite specific examples of ways you’ve used stuff you’re talking about to help a company you work for? Shut up.  You know what helps people to learn? Show, don’t tell.

It is your job to provide the maximum value per-interaction as possible, right? That’s what it says on your linkedin profiles? If your value proposition (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little) to people who pay attention to you (be it online or in person) is spouting confucian words of wisdom about marketing and being a stenographer in rooms full of people also being stenographers (especially if you complain about people getting information for free that you paid for), then maybe you shouldn’t be a Social Media rockstar in the first place.

How did a group of people that are supposed to be all about effective communication of ideas and authentic interpersonal relationships devolve into such self-congratulatory ego-fed bullshit?  As @davewiner has taken to saying: “Dude! No One Cares!”

STFU and GBTW.  And no, your job isn’t building your personal brand.

Rant over.

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