Being Unique

Coaching clients often assert their need to ‘be unique’. After looking further into this conclusion they come to, it appears the motivation to be this way is born from their assumption that they or their enterprises aren’t unique and need to fix it. They learned from Marketing Guru’s what one “should do”, so they fight to be different in comparison to a competitor. Anything they do is in response to the competitor–be different! All of this action is taken, yet nothing get’s created that’s truly authentic. They fall into a commoditization trap.

Uniqueness means “one of a kind”, or “no copycat.” Yet “being unique” is an ideal to live up to and it doesn’t really bring anyone or any thing into “uniqueness”. It’s an attempt to offset something viewed as not unique enough–being the same as others. Looking at this further, Uniqueness isn’t a goal, it’s a byproduct of creating what matters to you through innovation.

Beneath the disguise that being unique is a wise goal, action is taken to remove the problem–“I’ll take away the non-uniqueness; the dull inventory of the way it looks now.” It’s moving away from dullness, not moving toward a desire. But once the person has reached a victory of “seemingly unique” it fades away. Why? Because of the underlying structure at play. The action is motivated by problem solving, not creating something that matters. The motivation is short-lived once the problem is gone. Once the monkey is off one’s back to offset dullness, the actions are no longer needed because the problem is eliminated. But this leads to a backslide.

Shifting the motivation to what you seek to create motivates trial and error and experimentation, and fiddling during the creative process. These aspects of the creative process bring new variations and models into form. When the vision is contrary to current reality, it presents a resourceful starting point to take action on behalf of the vision. When action is motivation as such, something comes into existence like no other, the process creates it’s own universe for adaptation and mutation, in the pursuit of the vision.

It’s in the choice to create something for it’s own sake that authenticates the end product. So on the one hand, one can move from removing non-unique, and instead move toward creating something that matters, and uniqueness happens naturally. This is the anatomy of where art originates–something that comes into existence because it’s desired for it’s own sake. it’s not forced or obligated or created in response to anything, it comes to exist out of the love to see it exist—this is what makes it one of a kind. Music is created this way. It’s choice, not obligation that causes it. What has meaning and significance has utility in the marketplace. The reasons why you do what you do are what draws you into your uniqueness. It’s about being more of yourself. No masks, no ideals, not fronts, no false impressions, just a genuine face.

Consider how a human being is made and born—out of the love shared between two people and the conjoined love that brings that special one of a kind little being into the world—no fingerprint is like it, no voice is like it, no dna copies it. The origins of love produce this miracle. Love composes new combinations of information and energy into patterns which resolve into an authentic form. We must remember that we can create our own lives as art in the same way, organizing our choices from this generative side of love. And our reasons or motivations for creating what matters to us will shape something special, never seen before into fruition. Our engagement will also bring us into uniqueness ourselves, through the creative act. Babies change parents, students change teachers, audiences change performers. The song plays the band.