Pick Yourself

Ok, I am secretly addicted to the blog of Seth Godin, a new-age, rah rah, smarty pants publisher/entrepreneur. I do not even know what he is exactly, but I like his blog, his wisdom, and his big bald head, which you click on to get to his blog (this delights me every time). For where I am right now, he speaks to me.

Yesterday (or sometime in the last couple of days) he wrote this.

It was exactly the topic Jonathan and I have been discussing endlessly these last few weeks, as we did our taxes (how depressingly low our income is!) and assessed our life (we are so happy, but we need to make some serious changes!)

We have always been picked. Picked by the teachers, picked by our friends. We have been picked for great colleges and picked for great jobs. We have been picked for scholarships and honors and friendship. We are grateful. But perhaps being picked keeps you passive.

No one is really being picked right now. If you are waiting to be picked, no matter how talented you are, you could be waiting a long time. You could write books, have a child, train for a marathon, learn a language or an instrument, in the time it might take you to be picked. It didn't used to be that way. But the old institutions are dying, no one knows what is going on, or where the world is going, or what the next model of ANYTHING is going to be, so all the traditional pickers are frozen, unable to do any picking.

This can make you feel really bad about yourself if you are waiting to be picked.

And it is hard to change, if you are used to being adored, courted, told you are smart. If you are used to sitting and waiting for someone to say, "I want you!"

Those days are over. If you want to do something, do it yourself. If you want to make something happen, start now. If you want to be picked, pick yourself.

Seth Godin says it better than I do. But maybe if I write it twice, and you read it twice, we will all do it.