The quest for success is ingrained in you. From the time you can walk, your parents want you to be successful in all that you do. As an adult, you take on that responsibility.
Unfortunately, the success that others want for you probably isn’t the success you want for yourself. But you were never aware that the two could be different, so you pushed for the success that meant that you were one of the best at doing what a ton of other people were doing.
Then you wondered why it wasn’t all that fulfilling; why getting to the top didn’t bring the joy and happiness that others told you to expect.
The reason is, with this type of success, you’re just like everybody else. And while society teaches that being different is bad, your soul wants to be unique and show what’s so awesome about you, just the way you are.
‘Only’ Is Better Than ‘Best’
How liberating! Now, instead of striving and competing to be better but still just like everyone else, you’re free to be who you were meant to be.
This doesn’t just apply to your job, career or vocation. It applies to every aspect of your life. If you’re going to live an authentic life, that means everything you do.
Throughout the book, Rao gives plenty of examples of unmistakable people – people who have tired of playing the old games and have ventured out to live life on their own terms. I know that sounds clichéd, but can you say that you’ve done this in any aspect of your life? Or does it remain an unattainable dream?
What It Takes to Be ‘Only’
It’s not always easy to do this. It takes great courage to go against all that you’ve been taught and conditioned to be. It’s often a process, like peeling an onion, to figure out who you are at your core, then express that core to world.
Rao started his adult life with an MBA and no job. After a series of job failures, getting fired each time, he went into a deep depression. On a whim, he started to surf. Surfing was what helped him to see who he was and gave him a direction in life.
Unmistakable uses the steps of surfing as a framework for anyone looking to strip away conventional expectations to create meaningful, joyful and unique work. He uses examples from some of the 600+ unmistakable people he has interviewed on his Unmistakable Creative podcast to explain what it takes to make your own unique mark on the world.
- The Paddle Out: Getting off the beach and into the water is the hardest part. Rao shows how overcoming naysayers and putting aside fears to experience the joy of jumping in the water is the only way to start.
- The Lineup: A term used for surfers in the water waiting to compete for the next wave. Rao gives advice for how to develop the skills to not only stand out from the competition, but to make them irrelevant.
- The Drop: The moment just before the surfer stands on the board, when everything is at stake. Rao says to embrace this terrifying moment. The bigger and rougher “the drop,” the greater the risk – and the reward.
- The Ride: Learning to ride well and developing your style takes time. Unmistakable people are always learning and making progress to develop their craft and push the limits of what unmistakable means.
- The Impact Zone: Anyone’s resolve and love of the ocean is tested when pounded over the head wave after wave. Surviving “the impact zone” is a requirement for unmistakable work – it forces us to grow and prepares us to take on bigger challenges and more creative work.
- The Stoke: All the work is worthwhile once you catch the perfect wave. This joy keeps all creators creating and makes unmistakable work effortless.
In my own experience as a blogger and a chief financial officer, I would agree with this process. Deciding to participate and taking those first steps is one of the hardest parts. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines (or on the beach), watch the participants and become a critic. It’s challenging to actually get off your butt, risk failing and get in the game. But it’s so worth it.
Once you’re a participant, you learn, experiment, fail, learn from all of it and keep going. Becoming great at anything takes time. On that subject, I would recommend that you read Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.
Your Voice Is Like No Other
Finding your “voice,” that aspect of whatever it is you’re doing that makes it unmistakably “you,” also takes time and experimentation. When twenty musicians play the same piece of music flawlessly but they all sound exactly alike, none of them are expressing their voice. When another musician plays the same piece of music with their own personal interpretation, you know the piece but you also know who is playing it because no one else could play it like they do. That’s voice.
When it comes to expressing my voice in my writing, after six years I’m still a newbie. I’ll never be “done.” There’s no end to reach. I’ll be enjoying the writing process until I die, always looking for ways to stretch myself and express myself in my own unique way.
In case you think this can only apply to artistic endeavors, Unmistakable shows how entrepreneurs express themselves in how they approach the building and running of a business. I express it in how I look at and interpret the finances and operations of a business. Out of college, things felt mechanical for me. After thirty years of practice, I can intuit what’s happening in a business before many of the people in that business. My work as a CFO has become one of my art forms. My writing and the related insights are developing as another. And the intersection of the two? That’s a whole new opportunity that’s taking shape.
If you’re struggling to make your mark on the world or find meaningful work, check out Unmistakable. The book can help you to see your work and yourself in a whole new light. After reading it, I felt inspired to dig deeper and find other ways that I can be more unique, more unmistakable.
If you don’t take yourself through this process in some aspect of your life, where will you be in five, ten or twenty years? How much happier will you be?
What is your next step to being Unmistakable?
Srinivas Rao is an author and the host and founder of the popular podcast, the Unmistakable Creative, where he has interviewed over six hundred creative people. Former guests on the show include Tim Ferriss, Adam Grant, Gretchen Rubin and Chris Guillebeau. His self-published Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Art of Being Unmistakable, laid the groundwork for this new take on what it means to become unmistakable.