Down with consistency!
Consistency is a bitch.
Let’s look at blogging and newsletters. If you’re a business owner in any sense, if you’re a writer, if you’re a coach . . . you’re supposed to ritualistically crank out illuminating advice every week ad infinitum.
You do it, or you’re supposed to hire someone to sound like you and do it and give advice on personal growth. Or astrology. Or Real Estate. Or healthy eating. Or your personal brand or vision. Advice, advice, advice. Insight. Scintillating ah-ha-provoking pieces of literature.
But this is what I see happening instead: Bright stars with amazing messages push out a month or three of amazing blogs or newsletters, then go quiet.
Really quiet.
I know how they’re feeling: They’re wondering if anyone has noticed that they emptied out. They wonder if their precious audience, who read their stories and illuminations, are all scattering to the winds.
Right now, I’m struggling to think up three new fascinating topics for my podcast. And I just can’t. I’m 500 episodes deep. That’s 500+ topics. What more can I say? What haven’t I said dozens of times?
A teacher, a true teacher, does in fact say the same thing 100s of times. We mine our jewels in incredible hardship (often) then we begin to plant them along the road for others to pick up. We plant the same seeds over and over.
Wisdom isn’t cheap. It’s not a weekly marketing email.
We offer our wisdom, then we offer it again. And eventually, we have to stop and wait for more wisdom to incubate itself inside us. Unfortunately, this isn’t how the capitalist world is set up. In that world, there’s always someone peddling a product, or an idea. Keep up.
Self-development is different. Or at least it should be.
I know why I unsubscribe to so many self-growth and business-growth type emails: they become all surfacy. “Buy this and be that.” I can feel how gradually uninspired they are-how the person behind them is reaching to get to some truth, but they don’t give me THEM , the real them.
They want me to buy into them, but they don’t let me see into them.