The Art of Mattering

July 07, 2011 2:24 PM

Mattering is a choice.

The choice to be consequential.
The choice to fulfill your whole capacity for living.
The choice to take responsibility for feeling insignificant.

At work, in life and in love.

Consider making these choices to assure your work matters:1. Art that mirrors, matters. People need to see their own truth staring back at them. That’s why artists are artists: They have an unmatched sensitivity to the human experience. How does your work reflect people’s reality back to them?

2. Work that dares, matters. Safe is a very dangerous place to be. If you’re not risking failure, risking your face and risking you future, you’ll never get anywhere. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

3. Innovation that simplifies, matters. If your idea doesn’t solve a real problem for the world, you’re just doing something cool. Never underestimate the marketability of practicality. Does usefulness has a palpable presence in your work?

4. Leadership that infects, matters. Infection has nothing to do with being sick. It’s about transferring emotion, putting something into people and influencing them through your state of being. What are you breathing into people?

5. Love that sends, matters. When you love someone, you should want to parade them around the room. Their existence should be a reflection of your own. And when you gush about them, you should glow like a gas lamp. Who sends you?

6. Technology that humanizes, matters. If you create a collaborative experience, you win. If you create acts of individuality in moments of conformity, you win. And if you encourage regular expressions of digital personality, you win. Are you a robot?

7. Interaction that elevates, matters. The point is to leave people better. To help them walk away from an encounter with a more colorful vision of what they can contribute to mankind. How do people experience themselves in relation to you?

8. Experience that educates, matters. We learn not from our experiences, but from intelligent reflection upon them. It all depends if you’re willing to listen for lesson, then document and share it. What did you write today?

9. Design that points, matters. Information expects a passive recipient, but design demands an active participant. Pierce people’s consciousness, create a smile in the mind and put your audience to work. Do you make people blink and think?

10. Attention that accumulates, matters. If people complain that you’re only doing something for attention, good. Attention is a scarce resource. It’s an endangered species. That’s why anonymity is bankruptcy. How are you turning your attention into permission?

11. Content that confronts, matters. Writing is a contact sport. You have to reach through the page, grab your readers by the lapel and whisper sweet nothings into their hearts. Are you a great date for your reader?

REMEMBER: Mattering is a choice.

And if you commit to it, people will thank you for making that choice.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What’s your mattering strategy?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “50 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Publisher, Artist, Mentor
[email protected]

Never the same speech twice.