The World Isn’t Made For You To Be “YOU” Every creator tells you to be you.
But bruh, what does that mean? This is confusing advice especially if you don’t even know how to ‘be yourself.’
Let alone knowing yourself or being it .
Perhaps you’re like me, a young 17 year old that hardly forged his own individuality. Or you’re a person trying to undo the brainwashing of society that kept you away from understanding yourself.
The education system, the workplace, social media, or your childhood. They we're all systems to prevent you from becoming you.
You wanna speak out? You hold yourself back.
You wanna stand out? You hold yourself back.
You wanna be BASED as fck? You hold yourself back.
It's all due to fear. Fear of judgement, ostracization, or even punishment.
As creatives and creators, it feels as if were held back and there could be more to us and our brand.
So for that, much work has to be done.
Nature Rewards Individuals. To those who overcome their own constraints and become individuals are rewarded.
There's no use for us to be haunted by those previous barriers and fears. It's time to let go and put up the middle finger and say "fuck you" to the world.
For that, we are compensated by being unapologetically us.
When we can finally listen to ourselves, become ourselves and, express ourselves:
We will be unshackled.
We will stop giving a fuck.
We will shine brighter than others.
We will encourage others to do the same.
This is how you secure your future as a personal brand.
If you’re showing personality and authenticity, while being polarizing, you’ll attract people that you resonate towards you.
Those are the people that truly care about you and will be the life-long supporters and buyers of your brand.
Though, all easier said than done.
A reclaiming of our own selves need to be done.
So enough with the fluff.
Here’s an overview:
1- Differentiate your self: understand your individuality
2- Overcome your constraints: stop giving a f*ck
3- YOU are a filter: leveraging you to build a strong brand
Welcome to my pit, this will get deep
Differentiate Your Self. To be yourself, you must know yourself.
If you don't know yourself, you can't differentiate yourself. AKA you will become like someone else.
To be like someone else, this all starts with:
instantly liking other people’s interests adopting the same belief systems having zero critical-thinking dogmatism etc. Then if you're in this situation, the more you try to be 'yourself,' the more you're being someone else, while being unaware of it.
This applies doesn't only apply to people in the real world but to creators.
Many reserve their rights of their individualities as a creators. Then they look like the same, and be the same as someone else.
Anddd it doesn't look good on them.
“Okay how do I get to know myself then?”
What you need is to understand yourself on a deeper level.
How? By a self-dissection.
Take a journal and answer :
What do I value? What are my interests? Who do I resonate with? What are my true beliefs? What sticked out in my past? Am I truly being honest with myself? Yeah that's a LOT.
And let's be honest, you can't answer all of them now because your time is money.
But if you don't have much clarity on a certain question, drop the ego, take your time to dissect that.
"Okay what's the purpose of this?"
Again, it's to understand yourself in a deeper, fundamental level.
You live in a noisy ass world where you're bombarded by influences, belief systems, and JUNK. This all distracts you from cultivating any self-awareness.
If your self-awareness is shallow, your character will be shallow.
This isn't a one-and-done thing. I personally need remind myself of these things time to time.
And no I'm not telling you to journal because you probably already do it.
But I'm telling you to dig deep into your self—so you must keep your differentiated self*.*
The self that makes you unique, the self that makes you, you.
Now to tie this back more to us creatives and creators.
Even in online spaces like ours that is TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, guard your individuality like it is a temple. It doesn’t matter how nice or how inspiring anyone can be. You must be able to think for yourself and always detach your self (individuality) from others.
This is your temple, don't let anyone enter it.
Fucking. Become. You.
2 - Overcome Your Constraints. Now that you have differentiated yourself, you must shamelessly show that to the world.
Easier said than done huh?
How about you stop giving a f*ck about what others think.
Period.
Unless you want to keep on draining your energy, cluttering up your mind, destroying your mental health, and become someone else. Stop caring.
I don’t care who it is:
your “idols” your friends your audience your network Anyone.
If you’re scared of what anyone says about you, that’s a delusion constructed by your own biology, but mainly, your ego. That isn’t actually coming from you.
Pull yourself back from the ego and look at reality—no one cares.
And if they do?
It’s their fucking problem, not yours.
You either don’t care or you say “bye-bye” and let them go fuck themselves.
I know i know, it’s harder said than done, especially coming from an ENFJ personality type (that wants to be friends w/ EVERYONE)
But pause for a second.
You have 4,000 weeks to live, do you want to spend that time in fear that people would judge you for being yourself?
Exactly.
Widen your perspective of life, it’s vaster than you think.
Instead, use those 4,000 weeks to better understand yourself and express that onto the world.
Especially if you’re a creator, you are 10x more blessed than anyone else because you’ve got an outlet (writing & your brand). While you can attract a like-minded audience (and friends) that give a DAMN about you.
That is the true reward of knowing yourself and BEING yourself.
Maybe I’m repeating myself at this point.
But for your whole life, you’ve been silent and held back by other people (society) until now.
Now you’re slowly piecing together your true voice as a creator.
So do you wanna hold yourself back?
I don’t think you do.
So use is it .
Use your voice.
Let is speak loudly.
Let it speak with so much conviction and charge, nobody can forget about you. It’s time to assert yourself onto this world my friend. Become unapologetically yourself.
We good now?
Now let's get into how you can leverage YOU in your brand.
3 - YOU Are a Filter. I'll be going a bit off topic from before but bare with me for now.
From my experience, I see that everyone wants to gain the most followers and vanity in a shorter amount of time.
Why?
Perhaps for status and monetization. And I cannot blame them at all, we all have to get our bag.
Then they attract:
f*cking randoms people they don’t resonate with dead followers that won’t buy from them While having a good chance that they look and sound like everybody else.
Like a random self-improver that doesn't look like he has any individuality to him.
This is the biggest nightmare because it looks horrible on you. Imagine having a big ass number but then, no one gives a shit about you.
“So what can I do then?”
Do the exact opposite of what most people are doing.
Leverage your own individuality. How?
Become a filter.
Understand that, your personality, and your interests is the filtering system of your brand.
We lead in our potential audience and if they can pass through our filter (if they like us),
With our dream audience, we can eventually turn them into our dream customers by nurturing them more with what attracted them in the first place.
Those will be the ones that’ll pay the big bucks for us to help them.
And no, you’re obviously going to attract people that aren’t your dream audience but this is the main focus.
Meaning that the goal for your brand isn’t to farm engagement and attract everyone. But to focus on leading in like-minded people that actually resonate with you.
This is all for the sake of positioning our brands so we can thrive for years to come.
Now this is how we filter.
Talk about:
1- Your unconventional opinions: any contrarian takes you have about a topic. Whatever you think is right that is opposed to other's opinions. EVEN if it may be “wrong” to others, who gives a fuck. Speak it like the truth. And if people for some reason care, fck em, that’s their problem.
2- Your other interests: literally ANYTHING that you value. Could be cooking, philosophy, vlogging, art, design, whatever blah blah. This is a fun creative game when you're trying to articulate different topics (especially if it's complicated). Let it out and you’ll attract similar people while hitting DIFFERENT.
3- Your failures: It can be being vulnerable with your past mistakes and being relatable. You will breed honesty and authenticity. Bonus points if you leave with real value.
4- Your wins: Any celebrations or hitting any milestones while delivering value on top of that. And the same for your failures, your dream audience will like you more.
5- Your past: This is the part where you can engage your story-telling muscle, paint pictures of past events or struggles, and create lessons out of them. This makes you more human.
And from this, you’ll either attract and inspire many people to your brand or get rid of many people.
Especially with the first 2, that’s where most of the filtering happens. Be polarizing (firm to your own beliefs) and don’t give a damn about what other people think.
If they don’t resonate, they can leave.
If they do, they will stay.
“But don’t I need the engagmenet?”
Yes you do my friend.
And I’ll be honest, I can do better with creating more ‘viral’ tweets and playing more to "the game."
But engagement was never the goal to begin with.
The goal is to deliver insight, explosive value, great articulation, and authentic expression.
Then the engagement will be the byproduct.
Even if your growth is slower, you’re attracting a stronger community and a stronger brand. Something that is harder to be replicated by anyone else.
So switch your priorities.
Okay, now let’s use me to illustrate a point.
Sometimes I like to write about philosophical and spiritual concepts while leaving off with value or at least insight.
Like dis:
Okay Anthony, wtf is this jargon? Why post?
Because I am interested in it. I love it. I consume shit like this all the time on YouTube.
So why the fuck should I not talk about what I like?
Exactly.
It seems so outside of my brand’s content but that’s the point.
I don’t wanna fucking talk about personal branding 24/7.
Because I don’t wanna be BORED out of mind and reject a desire gushing inside of me to create content about it.
And I don't think you want to either.
Because I articulate my other interests:
I attract people that enjoy that content I deliver value or insight in a different way I filter out the people that are not interested in this I become unique, than only talking about personal branding Whatever happens, it’s only a win for my brand and how I present myself to others.
Even if you’re not targeting your tweets to be high performing, it shows that you’re trying your best, being unique and being YOU.
Though, for disclaimer:
I always recommend someone pick a main interest they're obsessed with and mainly create content around it. Especially if you want to monetize that in the future.
But if you're already doing this, it's a no brainer to slide in content about your other interests.
So talk about whatever the fuck you want along with your main interest.
It'll only make you unique.
It'll only make you stand out.
That's how you forge a powerful, long-lasting, sensational brand.
Wrapping Up You've made it.
Let’s recap what we’ve learned:
1 - Know Thyself: understand your individuality
2 - Overcome your constraints: stop giving a f*ck
3 - YOU are a filter: leveraging you to build a strong brand
I've got to say, your boldness and your confidence of being yourself will be noticed by other people.
So become a role-model for those people to show them that they can be them as well.
We need more role-models.
Without people like you and me, no one will be willing to stand up for themselves and be their true selves. Even on 'god-sent' Twitter spaces like these.
Be that role-model for others.
Update Recently I’ve been doing free consultations for brands to give back to my community (and since I love talking to people)
If you’re a creator that wants to talk about his interests and passions but still struggle with growing an audience, book a free consulting with me.
There are 2 slots left and I don’t want to waste your time. I won’t only give you growth, but clarity, actionability, and accountability to set you on the right course.
Book now and I’ll do whatever it takes for you to grow:
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See you there :)
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