Is Letting Your Actions Speak For You Always Best?

Sheena and I are writing a new, short e-book, and I solicited the advice from some friends. Below is one response I received:

Guys, this is AMAZING. Talk about passion and authenticity and putting it all out there. Get this ebook out ASAP and let me know how I can help you do so. Absolutely fantastic, inspiring stuff and great advice.

Maybe you do this already, but what you wrote in this ebook, you should speak verbally everyday and at every meeting and with everyone you meet. Speaking like that, who the hell could possibly say no to you?

I think this ebook is a bold stand and I congratulate you on it. I would love to see you take this bold stand every day. Michael, I often see you as shy and not pushy, which is ok. It is not good or bad. But I feel that being shy or "not loud", hinders your ability to get your message out quickly and efficiently to as many people as you want. I feel that you did NOT hold anything back in this ebook, I felt your passion. When we talk though I feel as if you don't lay it out all there, you hold back in a reserved manner, which limits the expansion of your possibilities and passion.

What you wrote is great and YOU know it. Act like you KNOW it, when you are talking with sponsors and advertisers and you will be UNSTOPPABLE!!!!

Below is what I wrote back:

Thank you so much for your thoughts!!! I really appreciate your honesty. I completely agree with you on this. It’s weird. My public speeches are more like my writing. But, but personal one-on-one is different and I have a barrier to changing it because that’s “me”. That’s who I’ve always known. However, I’m very open to changing as I can see lost opportunities I've had from not fully expressing myself.

At some level, I think we both suffer from this. We are both nice, laid back guys with good characters who like to let their actions speak louder than there words. Also, for me, I used to be afraid to share my accomplishments, because I didn't want to seem like I was bragging. Plus, I was afraid of failing and didn't want to give people cannon fodder for my way down. Should we change how we express who we are? Maybe we should. I don’t know. What do you think? How could we support each other in this growth?

It seems like there is a subtle line between "selling out" and "selling in" that people sometimes mistake. Often people think that self-help books are "fake" because they change who are are. I disagree. I think personal growth is about becoming more of who we really are or have the potential to be. Although, it involves leaving behind an old way of being, it is very much different than "selling out".

I was never a sales person, speaker, or writer. If I told my teenage self that I would be doing these things today, I would been rolling on the floor laughing. Now look at me. Look at the opportunities becoming these have created in my life. I recently was listening to a Patrick Combs seminar where he stated his belief that the way to find a passion is not by discovering it, but by choosing it. I've never thought of it this way before, but I would say that my experiences definitely show this to be true. Nothing in my past told me what passions would be. I chose them just like I'm choosing a new way to express myself to the world.

Posted at May 26, 2006 11:52 PM