This week we’re talking about self-expression. Expressing yourself, finding your voice, getting those ideas out of your head and into the world is our topic for today.
WHAT IS SELF-EXPRESSION?
Let’s start with is defining what self-expression is. For me, self-expression is really this idea of figuring out your own perspective and sharing it.
You have to come up with something that’s uniquely yours. That is the self part of it, that it comes from you. It is not repeated from someone else. It is all the inputs that you’ve taken in and your processing of that.
You’re adding your feelings to it, your thoughts about it, your opinions about it, and then taking it from the self and putting it out there into the world. That’s the expression side of it.
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THE TWO PIECES OF THE PUZZLE
Self-expression involves two components. It has to have you in it, and it has to have your feelings, your beliefs, your thoughts, and your ideas in it. It also has to be shared and put out there into the world.
Sharing with other people is what makes it interesting. Otherwise, it is just self-reflection, not self-expression. When you express it, when you share it with the world, you have now started an action in motion. You’ve put it out there for other people to respond and react to it.
That, I think, is what is the magic of self-expression is. You have started something. You’ve created movement on a particular topic or idea, and now that idea is alive and that idea is available to other people to react, to respond to, to create a dialogue, and start in interaction that can lead to other things.
It doesn’t matter what those things are, but self-expression is the catalyst. It is the starting point.
PROS AND CONS OF SELF-EXPRESSION
Now I want to talk about the good and the bad. Every idea has a yin and yang, a good and a bad, and self-expression is no different.
If I have to look at what are the good things about self-expression, I think when you have the ability to express yourself, to get your ideas out, you start to understand who you are a little bit better.
Your identity, besides being examined, is now being shared because your identity is created by a lot of what your beliefs are. When you express those beliefs, you let other people in to understand who you are.
You draw people to you that are like-minded and you repel people that have dissenting points of view or whatever it might be. Finding the people that you connect with in this world is important.
YOU GET TO EXPERIENCE NEW PERSPECTIVES
The other good is that when you express yourself and you exchange ideas with other people is you are going to hear different points of view. You are going to get different perspectives back.
That back and forth exchange of ideas creates usually new and better ideas or better perspective and understanding on both sides of things that you had not thought about but the other people introduce into the conversation.
Or it creates new ideas that take you to different places and maybe start different conversations. What’s great about that is sometimes these ideas can create an action that otherwise would never have happened.
That could be anything from an invention, some type of idea that leads to the invention of a solution for some problem in the world. Or it could lead to an idea that is a better understanding of something that leads to better relationships between two people or two different perspectives, at least a better relationship.
YOU ARE CHALLENGED TO THINK DEEPER
Or it leads to further examination. It makes you think deeper about and maybe invite other people to think deeper about certain ideas that maybe need to evolve, that maybe need to change.
Those conversations that take us forward as a people, that change us and move us out of rooted opinions and into being open to new ideas help us evolve. Those conversations that help us have a better relationship with other human beings in this world are important.
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SELF-EXPRESSION ALLOWS OTHERS IN
That’s the good. Now for the bad of self-expression. I use “bad” very loosely here, but some of the challenges you’re going to run into when you have self-express are I’d say first and foremost that because you are inviting people in to examine your ideas that you are now sharing and putting out there, you’re going to get responses that you don’t like.
Those responses could be things that either you just don’t agree with or that make you feel a certain way. They could cause you to have emotions that span the board. It could be anger at the disagreement of someone else’s opinion. It could be sadness about not thinking of something that they thought of or whatever it might be.
(Self Expression – Tip of the Week)
You’re going to have all these emotions around the responses you get to it and potentially fear of that judgment. Because you put yourself out there, some other people out there might judge that opinion that you’ve created, that expression of yourself.
It’s on you to decide if you want to take in that input or to let it go.
That is what you’re opening yourself up to. Now that you’ve expressed yourself, you have left yourself open for other people to have opinions about what you’ve said, and you have to be okay with that.
That doesn’t always mean that their opinions coming back at you are good, or that it’s appropriate. You’re going to get appropriate and inappropriate, things you like and things you don’t like. You’re going to have things you agree with and things you don’t agree with.
ACCEPT CHALLENGES AND GROW
Those challenges hopefully help you grow as a person. That is the first bad part. You are now opening yourself up to this conversation that can feel uncomfortable, that can make you uneasy. It can challenge your own beliefs in a way, but without those challenges, you can’t grow.
Either you are challenged and it makes you reflect deeper and better research your own feelings and opinions, and that might strengthen them, or it might move you to a slightly different perspective that you hadn’t considered before.
However, you have to open yourself up to those feelings of being disagreed with and how uncomfortable that might make you feel.
SELF-EXPRESSION CAN CAUSE US TO DOUBT
The other bad side of self-expression is that sometimes when we express ourselves, we start to feel nervous about those ideas. What if we are wrong? That feeling of getting something wrong, that fear of disappointment that you’re failing at something and saying something that is just plain incorrect and being corrected scares a lot of people.
Then the other thing to worry about is change. You might put an idea out there and then have to deal with the fact that those ideas might change how you think about something. They might change how you act. They might change your current comfort level. Change can be scary and can be uncomfortable.
THE OPPORTUNITIES OF SELF-EXPRESSION
Those are things that you can run into through self-expression. However, there is an opportunity now that I want to talk about. When you start to put yourself out there and express yourself, you can choose where.
Whether you express yourself to one person one-on-one, or you express yourself in a small group of common interests, or if you express yourself to the world, you get to choose those.
You can control what you are opening yourself up to you. Are you opening yourself up to the opinion of one person, to a few people, or the many? When I do a podcast like this and I put it out there, I’m opening myself up to being disagreed with by the many people that find it right.
GET YOUR THOUGHTS OUT THERE
I’m okay with putting this out there and seeing what happens because I believe everyone’s entitled to have their opinions. Those opinions can be different and that’s okay. It doesn’t affect me that their opinions are different, but then you have to accept that.
I think the opportunity is that you get to express yourself, get those ideas out of your head and out there into the world to create an action and a momentum around these ideas to see if they create new ideas and to see where they go.
You may not know how to have a goal in mind, but it might lead to something that’s interesting that might help you grow and develop as a person.
There is opportunity there that is the unseen growth and development of yourself, of your own perspectives, of your own ideas, and of your own momentum in this world. You open yourself up to where that will take you.
CREATE COMMUNITY
I think the other opportunity is that you draw people into your world that are in agreement with what you say, or that are interested in the things that you’re bringing to mind. This starts to form a community around some of these ideas; you have supporters that are in the same realm as you with people that want to discuss it further.
This means you find the people that are in your world that want to be drawn to that message, united around a certain message. That’s the opportunity: you may no longer feel alone in these thoughts. You may bring people in that also have the same thoughts.
That community builds strength around giving that idea momentum, whatever it might be. Maybe the idea just needs discussion and that’s all. Maybe it just needs to be expressed.
BRING LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE CLOSER TO YOU
In some cases, it might just bring you closer to people that are in the same place as you. That feeling of community helps empower you and gives you the confidence to accomplish your goals in life, especially if you’re talking about things that are relevant to your life, career, finances, personal life, whatever it might be.
Bringing people into your world that have common ground is really what community, friendship, and fraternity are all about.
There’s the opportunity that expressing yourself might lead to the growth of your own perspective, but it also might lead to community and support for your own ideas and for the ideas of others.
HOW TO BEGIN SELF-EXPRESSION
That opportunity, I would say leads to my challenge for you with this episode today, which is what can you do to go out there and express yourself? If you had to introduce a topic to someone, what would it be? What is something that you are interested in learning more about and hearing other people’s opinions on? Is there something that you’ve been challenged or frustrated with?
These are all great topics to start a dialogue on, and that dialogue could be one-to-one or it could be in the form of a podcast or a social media post. Just ask a question to the people that are following you in your immediate circle.
“Hey, what are you thinking about this topic XYZ?”
Seeing what the responses are and starting those conversations, you might learn some things about people around you that you never knew.
That’s my challenge for you guys today. As always continue to put yourself out there, express yourself, and build your personal brand.
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
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Talk soon!
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