Why Sharing Our Perspective Matters
I came across this tweet on my feed the other week. I couldn’t stop thinking about it because in many ways she’s right.
Who am I to be sharing my thoughts and ideas? Surely there must be someone smarter. Someone who can say it better. Someone more qualified than myself. In fact, there's probably already someone both smarter and more qualified, that has already said 95% of what I'll ever say in my entire life.
Even if I assume all of these things to be true, is it still worth sharing?
Definitely.
If no one shared their writing because it's already been said, then the world would have an ever-dwindling number of writers. On a long enough scale, there may be no new writers except those doing academic research. And just because it’s been written before doesn’t mean it’s accessible. The majority of knowledge is locked away in academic jargon. Even if you never contribute anything new, the world becomes a more diverse and richer place to live, when there are more perspectives that co-exist.
If you're anything like me, you'll have countless reasons for not sharing your perspective. Worst of all, the reasons usually sound pretty reasonable. But each reason is backed by fear-soaked logic. I let that logic prevent me from sharing until recently. It took me 34 years to finally realize why my perspective matters. Why all of our perspectives matter.
The messenger matters
When talking about the world of ideas, we usually try to separate the idea from the person. But inevitably we return back to the person because we’re only human. Great ideas come from great people. The same statement said by an unknown scientist versus Einstein will have much more impact coming from Einstein.
It may be a cliche that each of us is unique, but it doesn't stop it from being true. The older I get and the more people I meet, the more it's reinforced. Even if our ideas aren't unique, the combination of our age, language, body, gender, race, culture, upbringing, and myriad other factors each contribute to making our perspective our own. We’re usually taught to separate the message from the messenger, but they are inextricably linked. It becomes even more important as a minority.
We learn and connect best with those most similar to ourselves. Having a friend, role model, or mentor that looks and sounds like us makes everything they share more relatable. This is why I wrote about our future self being our perfect mentor.
You can hear advice or lessons from thousands of different people, but until you hear it from someone you can identify with, it doesn't quite have the same impact.
As someone who's Chinese American, I didn't realize how much of a difference this made to me until I saw the recent biography of Bruce Lee ‘Be Water’. I feel like there has never been a Chinese American role model for me that's well-respected in the public, outside of those known for kung fu and martial arts movies.
The signal I received from society was that people only value Asian people if they're great at martial arts. I saw no evidence of Americans caring about the ideas of Asian people or had examples of Asian people expressing their ideas in public.
In ‘Be Water’, I think they did a good job of distinguishing Bruce, the man, from his martial arts prowess. They captured his charisma, passion, philosophy, and how he made others feel. I'd never seen this kind of humanization at this level of cultural relevance. People were comparing this Bruce Lee biography to Michael Jordan's Last Dance.
Growing up, I always thought it was irrelevant who came up with an idea and what they looked like. But now looking back, I think I only thought that because there wasn’t anyone I felt I could connect with on that level. This made me really thankful that a Silicon Valley thought leader like Julie Zhuo published an essay called Letter to My Younger Asian-American Self. When we can see our own self reflected in the story of others, it allows us to feel seen and provides us a sense of belonging.
Sharing our perspective and embracing who we are and our differences can actually make our message more relatable.
A beginner’s mind can be more valuable than an expert’s
Many of us are also afraid of sharing our perspective if we're not an expert in the things we're talking about. But I've found that approaching a topic with a beginner’s mind or from an outsider's perspective is often more relatable and interesting than someone who has spent their entire career building expertise in a singular field. The expert becomes blind to the things they see every day. They’ve built a skyscraper of knowledge, but have forgotten how they laid the foundation.
While experts may know the most about their field, we need more people who can speak across industry and other manmade boundaries in knowledge. When it comes to writing for understanding, their expertise often gets in the way. They've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.
This means there will always be value in beginners sharing their perspectives. Sometimes it takes us seeing another beginner start their journey for us to finally give ourselves permission to do the same.
It's a part of the learning process
The most important aspect of sharing our perspective is that it requires us to develop a perspective. We learn through the creative process. We learn about the topics we write about; but more importantly, we learn about ourselves.
We think we have so much to say about something until we're forced to write it all out. We're usually left with a couple of paragraphs or a single sentence. Reading it over makes us realize we're just parroting the headlines, tweets, or opinions of others. But there’s something about the idea that attracted our curiosity. There's something valuable to us buried underneath. In the next moment we’re presented with a choice: move on and leave with a surface understanding, or get to work and begin to excavate.
Embracing the next stage requires us to sit in discomfort to clarify and chisel away until we’re left with a kernel of original thought. This doesn’t mean we come up with a truly original idea. We may end up exactly where we started with something resembling what we read earlier. But we’ve put in the work to arrive there ourselves. This kernel represents our perspective and we can then use that as the foundation to develop and explore further. It's not uncommon for me to change my perspective during this time, sometimes doing a 180 in the opposite direction.
It's not always pleasant, but thinking for yourself is rewarding in a way that retweeting isn't.
The creative process builds our emotional resilience and intuition
The creative process requires us to continually run ourselves through the emotional journey of creating anything great. We won't make it to the end every time, but it teaches us perseverance.
“Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.”
- George Addair
What I've realized is that fear and doubt are always a central part of the journeys that matter most. And if we can act despite the presence of fear and doubt, we exercise one of the most important mental muscles we have. And like any muscle, if we only use it during the critical moments when we need it most, we’ll find ourselves under-prepared and disappointed. The creative process, therefore, serves as our gym. It represents a safe space in which we can repeatedly challenge and push ourselves until we’re not only comfortable enough to face our fear and doubt but to embrace it and dance with it.
Once we've gone through this journey enough, we can even begin to use fear and doubt as our compass. We know the presence of these feelings means we’re on the journey to something great.
You have to ask yourself if what you're doing isn't surfacing fear or doubt, is it even worth doing?
Curation is a valuable form of perspective
In the age of information overload, curation and developing a perspective has never been more valuable. The people who make new discoveries are rarely the ones who can best present, share, and make an impact with their discovery. It takes people with great taste to come across an idea, connect it to existing ones, and package it in a way that effectively lodges it into the minds of others.
In the past, when information was scarce, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. But now, censorship is achieved by flooding people with a torrent of irrelevant information. Power used to be concentrated with the information brokers; now it is shifting to trusted curators.
Curators act as the guardians we entrust with our attention. Without curators, we're at the mercy of random chance or algorithms that constantly push information to us that further drives us into our own bubbles and biases. Many of us are turning to curators, not algorithms, to tune our information diet.
Curation is a skill and an art form in itself. Think of the curator of an art gallery. They want to convey a narrative to the visitor and place each art piece in a particular spot within the gallery. They may trace an evolutionary arc within art forms and styles, perhaps the growth of an artist across decades, or the different ways in which the same cultural milestone was interpreted by the artists of the time. Perhaps the most important aspect of being a curator is knowing what to leave out.
Yuval Noah Harari is the epitome of a curator. He's the author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, which sold more than 12 million copies. He initially doubted anyone would like his book because he believed he wasn't contributing anything new. He didn't do any new research, all of the ideas had already existed before. However, as a curator, he provided enormous value to his readers. He took the scattered information buried deep within academic publications and made it accessible, exciting, and relevant.
Improvement comes through creation, not consumption
If we ever want to improve as a creator, we must create. We can't expect to become better only through consumption. You can't eat your way to becoming a Michelin star chef and you can't read your way to becoming an NYT bestseller.
When it comes to improvement, volume trumps quality. If anything, we should be lowering our bar for what we share if it leads to greater volume. Practice is paramount and the early works aren't going to look pretty. Especially when we're just getting started. I’m applying this mindset to this very blog.
In my mind, the first 100 posts don't count. It's just practice. I can focus more on quality and developing my personal voice and style once I get past that milestone. Until then, the more worried I am about being an "original" and “great” writer, the longer it will actually take to be original and great.
Through volume, we also gain our unique style. In the beginning, when learning anything, it's best to let go of any notion of being original and instead copy others.
In college, I managed to turn a free $25 sign-up bonus in poker into $20,000. When I first started, I played by the books. I had predefined hands I played depending on my position relative to the dealer. I played straight-forward, betting when I thought I was ahead and folding when I thought I was beaten.
I focused on gaining experience through volume. I worked my way up to playing 8 tables simultaneously, accelerating my learning curve. The sheer volume helped impart a higher-level understanding of the game by allowing my mind to do what the human mind does best, recognize patterns. Only after I had hundreds of thousands of hands under my belt did I start to develop my own play style. You’re allowed to break the rules only once you’ve understood why they exist in the first place.
Practicing in public
We should be more accepting of ourselves and others when it comes to practicing in public. While we’re relatively good at reserving negative judgments of someone practicing a sport, we don’t offer the same leeway for those working on a creative endeavor.
Creative endeavors are particularly tricky because people can pick it up at any point in their life. Whereas sports participation falls off as we age, I’m inclined to think creative participation increases. This means we may see beginners of all ages, yet society associates beginners with youth.
When we witness someone practicing basketball and missing shots, doing dribbling drills, or playing a pickup game we can generally gauge their relative skill and understand that they’re improving and playing to have fun. But when we see someone else’s or even our own creative works, we immediately compare it to the greatest works humanity has ever produced. It’s especially harmful when people openly criticize (not give constructive criticism) and tear down others' work to make themselves feel better. It would be like going into a middle school basketball game and openly making fun of the players.
When we’re practicing free throw shots we don’t tear ourselves apart and question our existence whenever we miss. We simply know that with deliberate practice and time we’ll improve. The same applies to our creative work. Each essay is just another shot. It almost doesn’t matter if it hits or it misses, what’s important is that we adjust and take another shot.
We’d all be better off if we eased up on the self-criticism and just let ourselves practice.
Your future self will thank you
Our future selves will thank us for creating. It gives us an immediate leg up in our career. Online writing acts as our very unique and powerful resume. It stands out. Over time, each of our contributions accumulates to represent a body of work. When I’ve been involved in the hiring process, it’s always a huge leg up when I see someone has demonstrated care in their thinking. Even if it’s just personal anecdotes completely unrelated to “work”, it provides a glimpse into how they think, who they are as a person, and a window into their personality.
On a personal note, it essentially allows us to relive moments of our life. When we visit upon our earlier thoughts it’s almost as if we’re living two parallel lives while we’re reading. We’re reliving the moments that led up to the writing and we’re re-contextualizing everything we’re reading with the benefit of hindsight and personal growth. Our writings serve as waypoints to revisit the various stages of our intellectual maturity.
This body of work is our legacy. It’s a collection of snapshots that can help convey who we were over the course of a lifetime. We could see how much we changed over time. It's also a way to create a stronger sense of connection between different generations of family.
I wish I could read the thoughts of my grandparents when they were in their 30s. Getting their perspective of life before I was ever born. To see how they arrived at their current way of thinking and what major experiences shaped their world views. Or to see how my parents saw the world before and after they had kids (my sister and I). Or before and after they met each other.
I want to know my great great great grandparents and what their lives were like. To know the struggles and the joys that happened in another world and time, yet still have a personal connection to. It would be amazing to look back as far as we wish in time, playing our personal origin story in reverse. It would help us realize just how special, lucky, and unique we are. That all of the events, ideas, and thoughts of our ancestors had to happen just the way they did to lead to us. And that we’re now a part of this chain. We’re participants in history.
We'd be able to see reflections of ourselves in our family members. It would be an education in humanity. We're all much more alike than we'd think. Whether you look back decades, hundreds, or thousands of years, people have similar hopes, dreams, worries, and fears. Just like us.
By creating, you're unintentionally writing your own autobiography. A capsule for your children and future generations to come to understand their place in the world and in history. Our perspective will always matter to those we love and who love us the most. Whether it’s today or in a distant future when we’re no longer around.
Thanks Jackie, Fernando, and Julia for reading drafts and providing feedback.
