Brian Walch explains how to be selfish about your career by creating a "self-empowering slogan." The tool has three parts: name a personality trait holding you back, write a phrase to catch that self-talk, then state how that trait actually serves others. He shows his own example: perfectionism becomes "that might be good enough," which helps him push people to exceed their own expectations.
Chapters
Last week I talked about the idea of being selfish and how being selfish might be the best way to change the world. Specifically, I talked about how to be selfish in your career. I use the analogy of tides being all the external factors that play into our career decisions and how sometimes we need to just throw an anchor out and try to hold ourselves against the tide and see how does it feel and if that's where we want to be. This week I want to give you another tool that you can use to be selfish. To be self directed, self led, and feel empowered in doing so. I call it a self empowering slogan and it has three parts. The first thing you're going to do is to identify an insight. An insight is simply a personality trait, something you know about yourself. Here's one of mine. It's I'm a wannabe perfectionist. I have this ruthless voice in my head that always points out the flaws in my work because I'm not a perfectionist. It torments me and it always points out things that I can do better. Now there are some negative implications to that personality trait. It can cause me to be controlling and critical of others, which isn't good. So to temper the negative aspects, I'm going to create a countermeasure. Countermeasure is simply a phrase that you can use in your head to catch yourself in the moment. So my countermeasure for that insight is that might be good enough. So when that ruthless critic in my head says, look at those mistakes, I say, that might be good enough. When the voice says it could be a lot better, I say, yeah, but it could be good enough. That's it. That simple phrase gives me the time to pause and evaluate what the voice is telling me and what I want to do with that. Now you've identified an insight, you've created a countermeasure, but that's not enough. You have a positive aspect or a positive side of that personality trait. That is the direction you need to lead. When you're ready to go forward and take steps and lead. You want to go in the direction of your strengths and so you are going to voice a vector. So mine is the positive aspect of being a wannabe perfectionist is that I always think things can be better and so I can help people believe they can be more than they think they can on their own. That would be a privilege and an honor to help people in that way. And you know what? It is totally self serving. So here is my self empowering slogan. I'm a wannabe perfectionist. Sometimes I need to say that's good enough. My gift in this is that I can help other people believe they can be more than they can on their own. Self focused, selfish, but empowering. It feels good and it feels right. That's what a self empowering slogan is. And you can develop as many of them as you need. That is the idea of being selfish. It's being self directed and self led so that we can change the world, be selfish, live life integrated.
