Be Remarkable
Be Remarkable
By Jay Forte Humanetrics, LLC
Published in Personal Excellence, February 2004
We are currently bombarded with information and data. In fact, the new expression is that information now shows up in “obscene torrents.” So much information comes at us that we now have a greater time trying to determine what is meaningful and what is not, rather than how to use what information does come by.
This is truly a statement of today’s cultural mindset. We rarely have a moment to stop and think – because the pace continues to escalate. And much of what we see looks a lot like everything else we see. So how do we create a great personal image? How do we get noticed professionally, even personally? We need to be remarkable.
I heard a great story that explains why we bypass the common place. It seems that there is a section of the brain, located in the center of the back of the brain, that is about the size of the top of the little finger. We’ll call this the secretary. This portion of the brain is responsible to assess stimuli and if it recognizes it, it processes it, allowing the balance of the brain to process other things (daydream, think, etc.). This is the part of the brain that is responsible for getting you safely from home to work without ever remembering any part of the journey. Only when something unusual happens (siren, ball rolls across the street, thunderstorm or bad weather, etc.) does the secretary call for full brain power and you remember it.
So here is the secret. If you want to be remarkable, if you want to be noticed, you must do something that “shocks” the secretary – you must do something that doesn’t look like things that everyone else does. If you do, the secretary takes over and you blend into the background. Things that challenge the secretary are more remembered – they required greater brain involvement and therefore made a greater impact.
So how do you become remarkable? Each of us has a tremendous amount of gifts and talents – things given just to us. It may be our writing or presentation style, our ability to perform, sing, dance or play an instrument. It may be our ability to tell a story, paint or listen well. There is some talent that belongs to us – and our job is to identify it and develop it.
Knowing it is the first step; developing it is the way to take it to “remarkable”. I heard a speaker in the past who identified that his career took a quantum leap when he allowed himself to present in a way that was uniquely his. The moment he stopped trying to be like others and developed his own approach, he connected and became “remarkable.”
Our challenge is first to know what we have the capability of becoming remarkable in, then to have the courage to try. Remember to shock the secretary so that you get remembered – and they will remember you for the thing that you do the best.
Humanetrics LLC. All rights reserved 2007.