What Makes You Unique

what is it

that makes you unique

it’s a pretty fundamental question and

it impacts not only career growth

finding a soulmate but also

how we set ourselves up in our head

what is it that makes you unique

now ancient japanese pottery sheep in

human clothing and luke skywalker

himself all hold a series of clues as to

what we can do

to separate ourselves from the pack and

stand out

from the crowd now i’ve spent the last

25 years of my life looking at this very

question from a story perspective

working as a screenwriter in hollywood

for the likes of walt disney

and lionsgate helping to create unique

characters that jump

off the page and can entertain people

all around the world

but also in my work as i coach

entrepreneurs and those in the

entertainment industries

to build an authentic personal brand and

that’s the key right

authentic so they can attract more

opportunities to shine

doing what they do best and a number of

surprising things have come up that i’m

excited to share with you today

and i hope that you can take these and

you can use them to elevate your

own authentic personal brand now i know

some of you might say oh the idea of a

personal brand is absolutely horrible

and i get it but what i’m talking about

is yes a little bit about how you

present yourself to the outside world

but perhaps more importantly how you

present yourself

to yourself how you

deal with that inner chatter in your

head that says

who am i what am i capable of

am i worthy now before we dive into this

we have something we need to acknowledge

okay and that is

how absolutely dreadfully you were set

up to be unique

in the first place absolutely dreadfully

and this starts from the moment you were

born

right now babies

they’re cute i’ll give you that but they

are absolutely

bloody useless they’re absolutely bloody

useless

especially when you put them aside a

baby sea turtle

so a baby sea turtle are you ready for

this it’s in its egg

and it begins to crack

and it burrows its way up the sand to

the very surface

and it looks out

and then it comes back down again and it

waits until

nightfall and nightfall comes

and it pops back up it takes a quick

look and then it scurries down the beach

and out

into the ocean to live the rest of its

life all within two days

pretty amazing right but then there’s

also

the baby giraffe so the baby giraffe is

born

and after 20 to 25 minutes it’s up on

those gangly legs

and it’s able to get to the center of

the herd

in order to protect itself if there’s a

predator

it’s able to find its mother it’s able

to find food and sustenance

when it needs it all again within 25

minutes amazing especially when you

compare it to the human baby

it took you two months to just have

enough strength

to hold your own head up without the

help of someone else

absolutely bloody useless so from a very

early

early young age you’re conditioned

to adapt to the needs of the people

around you

so you can survive you learn to laugh

you learn to cry you learn to smile

all in order to elicit that reaction so

that you can

survive and this carries on right this

carries on through our childhood and we

go to school

and what happens at school we start to

form these groups

and we start wearing the same clothes

and listen to the same music

and then someone new comes in and we eye

them suspiciously hmm

do you like harry styles oh i love harry

styles

really do you really love harry styles

oh i really really love harry styles

excellent you can be in our group

because we’re the same

and this is where movies start with our

hero

our protagonist basically

going along with society nothing special

just carrying along conforming

to our protagonist’s surroundings

let’s take luke skywalker so luke

skywalker is working on the family farm

with aunt and uncle and he’s moaning and

he’s

whining my goodness he’s the biggest

monar and whiner of them all isn’t he

but that’s what makes him so good

because now he has this beautiful ark to

go on

but he’s moaning and he’s whining and

he’s talking about these big dreams that

he has

but he’s not taking any action

now does that perhaps ring a bell for

you a little bit or someone you know

big dreams but not taking any action

right i know it has done for me

and this continues on right this

continues on in our life now there was a

study done

at the university of leeds called the

sheep in human clothing you were

wondering how i was going to get sheep

and human clothing into this here we go

so sheep in human clothing what they did

was they took a hundred people

to walk randomly around a gymnasium

but unbeknownst to 90 of them 10 of them

were told beforehand a specific way to

walk around the auditorium

right they were given a plan they were

given a purpose

now they weren’t all going to start in

the same place but they were going to

have a pattern that these 10 people were

going to walk

so off they sent 100 people to walk

around the gymnasium

and what happens well very quickly

and time and time again the 90 that were

walking randomly begin to self-organize

they begin to form snake-like structures

around the ten

that were walking with purpose now again

they hadn’t said anything

but they knew where they were walking as

human beings from a young age

we are conditioned to follow

because it’s part of our survival right

we’re conditioned

to carry on and slide into others

and marketeers have known this for years

and years and years which is why we have

all these influencers and spokespeople

for every brand known to man

right but

here’s the thing they weren’t always

like that

they weren’t always leaders and i’m not

talking about the instagram influencer

who takes fantastic selfies on the beach

in their bikini

i could never look like that in a bikini

but what we’re really talking about is

the people

who stand up and have something to say

who are willing to step up to the plate

be unique and let their voice be heard

these are the influences

and these people something has happened

something has happened that has enabled

them to transform

from an ordinary person to an

extraordinary person

right for luke skywalker

this was the moment where his aunt and

uncle got killed after he found a little

hidden message

in a droid and if you look at any of

your favorite movies there’s always a

moment like this

where the protagonist moves from the

cage

of conformity to owning their unique

destiny

but how do we do that in our own lives

how do we step forth so that we can get

that recognition that we deserve

as being unique and valuable so we can

get that job so we can get that

promotion

right how do we

step forth in our own mind so that

instead of playing a bit part in

everyone else’s life

we can become the hero in our own story

well the japanese art of kinsuji is a

fantastic

metaphor so the philosophy of konsuji

is they treat breakage and repair as the

history of an object that needs to be

celebrated because that object is unique

so here’s how it works

there’s a factory right and it’s

producing all these bowls

and all these bowls they’re beautiful

they’re fantastic

they’re perfect and they all look the

same we go and buy one of these bowls

and we’re very proud of it look at my

bowl isn’t this bowl great

oh yeah and then one day we have it on

the kitchen counter

and we accidentally knock this bowl off

and what happens

it breaks on the ground now what will we

do in our western consumer-led culture

we’d chuck it right we get rid of it

because it’s broken

it’s imperfect it’s not as it was meant

to be when it was created

but the japanese art of kinsuji will go

down

and they will pick up those broken

pieces

and they will put them back together

with gold leaf

making that bowl whole again only this

time

it has gold cracks running all the way

through it

my goodness these are beautiful pieces

and they take that bowl and they put it

on the center of the shelf

for everyone to see

because no two bowls break a like

just the same as we do not break a like

just the same as any movie hero

character

has its own story and own path where

they’ve broken to become

the hero for me

one of my breaks was three months ago

when i was rushed into hospital and i

had an emergency surgery to move

remove my my large intestine

and install take my small intestine and

pull it through my stomach so that now i

i

poop into a bag on my stomach

now we’ve all had cracks in our life

we’ve all had breakages we’ve all had

those moments where we’ve sat there and

said

why is this happening to me

that the world has let me down or

in some cases i’ve let the world down

and i know in that hospital bed

i felt both of those right i’d let the

world down i’d let my family down and

the world had let me down

it was unfair

but if we look at the japanese art of

kinsuji what they say

is that these breaks

rather than hiding them

we need to fill them with gold right

we need to fill them with gold for

everyone to see because it is in those

moments that we become

absolutely unique and here’s the thing

counter to popular belief and and where

we think

we should be unique which is perhaps the

school that we went to

the job title we have the clients that

we’ve won

and all these other wonderful things

well the truth is someone else can

always beat you at that

but they can’t beat you on your own

story

and the cracks in your story that have

enabled you

to become the hero

so we’re in this situation where if

these cracks

in our life need to be filled with gold

and we need to embrace them because

amazingly enough these cracks have

taught us what it means to be human and

how to connect with other people

because of our conditioning as a child

we’re scared to death of letting people

see it because we want to be the perfect

bowl

we want to be the person who can do

everything who’s the hero

but we forget that the hero has all the

cracks

and so there are these moments in our

life where we can step

forth into the light into the spotlight

and have that opportunity to be seen as

completely and utterly unique

but for many of us we step back and we

step back for fear of

people seeing the cracks and believing

us as weak and that fear that fear is

our shadow

and what happens when you step into the

light to your shadow

right what happens when you step into

the light

your shadow becomes more pronounced so

the more that we are given these

opportunities to step into the light

the more there is an opportunity for

people to see our shadow

that where we hold guilt remorse

where we feel as if we’re broken but we

try to hide it

well my challenge to you is that if you

really want to be unique if you really

want to stand into your greatness

instead of being scared about the shadow

we need to embrace it and we need to

fill it with gold so that everyone can

see it

because that is what makes us human and

he’s going to enable us to really shine

connecting with others that’s the thing

so what i what i really implore you to

do

if you want to look at what makes you

unique

is no longer be afraid of the shadow to

embrace the shadow to hold it up high

because when you do that

when you hold the cracks in your life up

you’ll be in a position where you can

mitigate any self-doubt

and you can truly step up to the plate

being wonderfully

beautifully and uniquely

you now there’s so much going on in the

news at the moment

about how we need much so much more

truth and so much more

honesty which is great

but truth and honesty it starts with you

remember the hero has cracks embrace

the cracks so ask you again

what makes you unique

thank you very much thank you