Day 26: Be More of You

Diane Whiddon

So, I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about.  I considered writing about the power of starting over from wherever you are, or the art of extreme self-care, both of which I’ve struggled with this month during this beautiful but slightly daunting challenge.  Then, a couple of days ago, I ran across this post from Lissa Rankin about what you’d say if you had a mic, an audience of 10,000 and ten minutes.  And I knew instantly what I wanted to write about.  It’s what I always want to write about.  It’s my message:

Be More of You.

Best way to love your customers?  Best way to get clients, build your biz, promote yourself and your passion?  Be more of you – glorious, imperfect, awesome, outrageous you.

This is what I tell my clients all the time.  So many lovely people come to me to create their website and ask me, “What should I put in my website?” or “What’s the right way to do it?”

First of all, I want to banish that word “should” from the internet and the English language in general.  Then, I want to take a flame-thrower to the notion of the Right Way of doing things.  There is no Right Way.  And there is nothing that you should do; there is only what you want to do.

Over and over again, my life has gotten easier the more I listened to my intuition and followed my heart, even when it led me down a path that people said was crazy.  “You want to start a business?  Why?  What about a 401K?  You can’t work in your pajamas!  You don’t even know anything about bookkeeping!  You’ll fail horribly!”

Maybe so.  But it won’t be because of pajamas, which actually work rather well as my work uniform, and it won’t be because of ignorance around bookkeeping.  As it turns out, you can hire people to do that for you.

And I’m now in my fifth year of running my own little rockin’ website biz.

So I tell my clients, over and over again, there is no Right Way.  You pour as much of yourself into your site as possible and it will be brilliant, compelling and true.  Don’t worry about doing what someone else did – use your website to shine your light all over the internet and it will be enough.

You will never lose by being more of yourself.

So, right now, from wherever you are, think about how you can be more of yourself in what you’re doing.  How can you let go of other people’s expectations?  Well-intentioned family, friends, even other gorgeous people involved in this challenge – are you doing something because someone else expects you to?  Are you relying a little too much on the safety of doing what someone else suggested instead of doing what your heart tells you?

Think about what you want.  Think about how you want to love your Right People.  Then, think about where you are right now in this moment with your biz.  I don’t care if you’ve been to every #customerlove tweetchat and read and commented on every post, or if this is the first thing you’ve read.

Just take one step toward what you want.  Just one.

You will never lose by being more of yourself.

Embrace it.  We already love you.  And your Right People are out there right now, looking for you.  Shine your light so they can find you.

What one step will you take toward what you want today? Tell me in the comments below!