As the school year gets deeper as the calendar turns from September to October we often are asks for tips on how we can stay in front of the curve or gain ground looking for new opportunities. One thing that we always remind people…anybody…about is how to make your narrative unique so people fully remember and understand the things that make you, you.
Some of those pieces are by doing the little things like handwritten notes, special business cards, or leave behinds that we find that ping our attention starved memories when we leave a place. I love that one of the oldest restaurants in New York, Keens Steakhouse, leaves notepads on tables you can take away or jot down messages with. This summer when visiting the Harry Truman library we found “Ballot cards” that kids could fill out or take home that had fun little questions that would also remind them of the value of voting. There were also these buttons as leave behinds at The Paley Center for Media as part of the 25th anniversary of The West Wing. Subtle but important messages for people to have when they left the room, no?
Back to the individual narrative, or the company narrative, the “standing out” part surfaced again this weekend when I read about 12 year old Dashel Prywes of Tenafly, NJ. According to a fun story by Megan Burrow, Dashel would play for hours with magnetic building tiles at his grandmother’s house, stacking them up until they all came crashing down. Earlier this month, Dashel, now a seventh grader at Tenafly Middle School, used more than 2,600 of those tiles to set a Guinness World Record — building a tower that reached more than 50 feet before it tumbled to the ground. The 12-year-old from Tenafly wanted to set the record for the tallest Magna-Tiles tower to bring attention to childhood chronic kidney disease, a condition he was diagnosed with at the age of 5.
What made it even more intriguing was that he set a record that did not exist before, since no one had ever tried to stack the tiles at this height before anywhere. His “thing” not only makes him unique, but he found a way to use it to amplify a message and help battle a disease. He found part of his narrative at a young age.
Maybe not at that scale or amount of exposure, but I see this all the time. There is the story I often tell about “The Sports Haiku guy” who I met at the MIT Sloan analytics conference. He wrote, and published, haiku’s about sports every day. That was his thing. There is our friend Dylan Sadiq, “The College Cuber,” a first-generation graduate of Rutgers School of Engineering who took his skill doing Rubik’s cubes and has made it into a custom art business because he amplified a skill he had. There are thousands…millions…of people who found their avocation and were able to make it the leave behind of impact, small and large. And we all have it.
Now it’s not easy to find that difference. It takes thought, time and doggedness as well as trial and error, and it may not be as unique as stacking tiles or writing poetry, but it may be something we wear, we enjoy, we share, a cause we tie to, a song we use, a style of writing we have. It also doesn’t have to be demonstrably public, it can be subtle and authentic, but it makes us all memorable, whether that it to millions or just one person. It’s the specialness we all have, just like Dashel found.
It is also not something to obsess over, its something to note and shape over time, what makes us, us. So when asked by someone “How do I find my calling?” or “How do I get a job,” don’t use cliché’s about passions and purpose. Ask them what makes them unique? Listen to their cues, note what they do, and help them shape the story. It’s probably a cool one they hadn’t thought about fully just yet, but when they do, the road becomes a lot clearer not just for them but for you, since you helped pass the idea along.
Lot’s of great stories out there, just ask someone what theirs is.
