Owning Your Singularity

This is a guest post by Allan Cox

Recently, I published my eighth book, Your Inner CEO, far and away my best. The book’s core lesson is finding and expressing your singularity—how you can be like no other person who has walked the planet. You can learn this life-enriching lesson by applying the psychology of Alfred Adler, the brilliant Vienna physician, who, along with Freud and Jung, make up the holy trinity of modern psychology.

Style-Of-Life: Dimly Aware

The centerpiece of Adler’s thought was Style-of-Life. We all have one, and by it he meant, “an organized set of convictions about life of which the individual, at best, is only dimly aware. This means, for example, that without knowing it you could be living daily with deeply held views of yourself or life, such as “I’m an analytical whiz,” or “Life only works when I’m tenacious.” Are such outlooks good? Without more information, you can’t know, but for now, just imagine you live by these convictions without knowing their hold on you.

So let’s assume you want to know more about yourself. That’s a good thing; after all, it was Socrates who pointed out that the unexamined life is not worth living. So start with this bottom line: If your S-O-L is healthy, think of it as your guardian presence. If it’s not, know that it’s a looming threat and that you’re, well, S-O-L! That is, until you change it in keeping with your true authenticity, in other words, your singularity. You are like a snowflake, you know.

Here’s how you discover your Style-of-Life. You complete three short sentences, using non-business language. The hard part is to boil these thoughts down by adding no more that 10 words between the three. Brevity is key. Less is more. Keep it simple.

Start Today

Get started today, but realize the kind of soul-searching and reflection you’ll need to get this right is going to take you several re-visits, hard-nosed rejection of early and convenient wording, and several weeks or even months to arrive at truthful completions. All the while you’re defining yourself, you’re actually peeling away layers of stuff and identifying your core self—your singularity.

Here are the three starters . . .

I am: (this is how you see yourself)
Life is: (this is how you see life)
My central goal: (this is the goal you’re not aware of that’s pulling you into the future, for better or worse)

Not until you excavate inside and craft the completions to these simple sentences will you have a grasp of your life’s actual trajectory; whether you’re heading true north or off on side paths to nowhere; whether your Style-of-Life is a looming threat or guardian presence.

Your Value Proposition to The World

Aeschylus, a 5th-Century BCE Greek playwright, composed this stunningly simple trilogy: I am like all other men, I am like some other men, I am like no other man. This is what really counts. Why? Because until you unearth your uniqueness, your authenticity, your essence—what I call your singularity—you’re not able to offer your value proposition to the world!

I’ve been terribly brief here, but if this idea resonates for you, get hold of my book, Your Inner CEO: Unleash the Executive Within. It will take you through the drill to discover your singularity and fire it up. If your Style-of-Life is a looming threat, you’ll learn how to change it out for your singularity the world is waiting for. Don’t wait. You gotta know this and do this.
For more support, come visit our new Your Inner CEO Wiki-Ning Community.

All the best,

Allan Cox

Photo by BinaryApe

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This article was published on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under People, Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Owning Your Singularity”

1. Andrew says:
   February 26th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

   I would like to thank Allan for writing this great post.

   Thanks,

   Andrew

2. Sj says:
   February 26th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

   Wonderful piece,we all have our own uniqueness that contributes to this world,just need to find it.

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