🔋 Embracing Weird, Part 1 - Fear

Let's get a little weird, eh?

One of the first posts I wrote in the recent incarnation of this blog was about finding your maximum and unique value. I think about that concept a lot. A less delicate way to describe it would be to ask: "What makes you weird, but, like, in a good way?" And then, how do you tap into that weirdness to do super cool ish with it?

Letting Yourself be Weird

We all bring something different to the table. My contention is that the sooner we identify and lean into those differentiators, the sooner we can move towards fulfillment. Our weirdness is, to use a phrase I'm fond of, the good stuff.

Things get boring when they aren't weird and novel! That's part of why a lot of AI generated content is perfectly fine but not entirely exciting. Ben Collins, who recently managed to buy and restore The Onion to its old, unhinged self, wrote a compelling post about this recently:

Likewise, if you try to be the perfect middle of everything — to smooth out your jagged edges and dye yourself the same hue as the most average person — you lose the very things that make you, you.

And that is in no small part what this blog is about: getting things done without losing sight of what makes you precisely who you are. That's three-dimensional productivity, baby (or "3DP" if you want to sound super hip).

So how do we…get weird?

I have thoughts. This is the first of a three part series, covering the first core though: embrace the fear.

Embracing Fear

I had a chance recently to deliver remarks to a group of student veteran leaders representing some of the top schools in our country at the Ivy League Veterans Council annual conference.

As is my wont, I set the stakes high: enlisted veterans have the capacity for unlimited impact, particularly those who fully leverage higher education to build knowledge, perspective, and skills. As leaders of these student veteran groups at our nation's most elite schools, I told these folks that they had accepted the awesome responsibility of helping propel fellow veterans to success. This is always important, but essential at this moment when the very notion of higher education is under attack, and when our society desperately needs civic-minded and well educated leaders to step all the way up to the plate. Don't mess it up, I challenged them.

I don't mind introducing a bit of fear into the mix. It's real. And like imposter phenomenon, one of the keys to making good use of it is to acknowledge that every sane person feels it. If you don't feel it, well, that's a different problem.

Fear gets us to the root. If we give it the right space, it can reveal a tremendous amount of useful information about who we are. But if we give it too much space, it can consume us.

"What do you fear about leading in the current student veteran landscape?" I asked the conference goers.

The responses were vulnerable and telling. They revealed a mess of genuine, well-founded concerns. There were patterns to the responses, but some folks shared things that were individualized to their identities and specific situations.

Shortly thereafter, I repurposed the exercise for a Warrior-Scholar Project team summit (an essential part of how we stay connected as a remote team). There, I couched the question in our mission and upcoming programming: what fears or concerns did folks have about our busiest time of year?

The scope of the question in each scenario was different, but the underlying truth remained consistent: exposing fear — in a safe and authentic environment — can build a foundation for unique growth.

Your Task: Find Fear

This question of fear is a valuable one for you, dear reader, to spend some time answering. It can be hard. It can be triggering. It can be sorrowful. But it can also help you build a support structure that allows you to thrive despite those fears.

What are you afraid of? What are you concerned about? What is it that you fear?

You can answer this in a broad, existential sense, or in a more narrow, project specific sense. Pay attention to the parts of your answer that might be tied specifically to who you are and what you've experienced. And if you plan to go deep, I'd suggest having a plan afterward on how you might route yourself out of a spiraling place, like a scheduled meet-up with a good friend afterward.

No matter how you catalogue it, the fears you uncover are a part of you. Part of your delightful weirdness. Acknowledging them, when combined with steps two and three (well now you gotta stick around for next weeks' entries, don't ya?), can give you a platform to get high impact things done.

See ya then 🫡

-Rye

Subscribe for Tuesday thoughts from the crossroads of humanity & productivity