James Allen argues that originality starts with imitation. Beginners should copy their heroes' thinking, not their style. As skills become automatic, your own personality emerges, turning learned techniques into something authentically yours.
We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying. So it's okay to copy, but what to copy is a bit trickier. He said, don't steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes. You want to see like your heroes. Yeah, I have heroes in online business that teach the same or similar things. I don't want to just be another one of them. I want to be me. When I'm just learning it, I look like my heroes. If you do a side by side, it's like, wow, you look just like this other drummer, this other business owner, because I'm learning and I am copying and I understand that. But I'm not going to claim that, oh, this is all me, this is all my idea. But eventually you get to a point where it becomes second nature for you. Their style becomes that way and you start to see like your heroes. The more you can inject your personality into it and who you are and embody you, the more original it's going to be.
