This is one of the earliest memories I have of the need to conform. The teacher, or mommy, would say “You have to color inside the lines!” and a friend would say, “but you colored outside the lines!” as if this was more shocking than having a mayor that does crack. (Ok, these days, I guess that’s not that shocking, but I digress!) You’ve probably all heard this line somewhere, in some language, and this leads to the other part of the bull – that the sky has to be colored blue, and the grass green, and carrots orange….
Gosh dammit, it’s YOUR piece of art so be bold, make the carrots fuchsia, and the tomatoes silver, and the sky six different shades of orange if you want! The unfortunate part of this lie we are told early on, is that we all get the same lie. Then we all think that “good” coloring is inside the lines, and since we want the teacher to like us and get nice feedback, we try real hard to avoid going outside the lines. So, now we have started to fit in, be like everyone else in class, conform to this one standard of inside-the-line coloring, AND learned that if we do these two things, we will be praised.
No wonder we all need therapy! This is just the beginning of how we learn, unfortunately, to stop standing out, put our unique talents away, and make sure we do what we’re told, and do it like everyone else does it. What? And then, you grow up, start a business, and you realize, there is no freaking way you are going to be successful if you color inside the lines and do what everyone else does, because that’s not what causes people to find you and want to hire you. But, sadly, this conditioning has gone pretty deep, and opening up to being different is only the first step. Then, you have to find your uniqueness again – that joyous part of you that at some point in your childhood couldn’t give a damn what people thought about you, because you were just you, and you were happy, and that’s all that mattered.
Awakening people to this wonderful, unique part of themselves is a passion of mine, and it’s why I created BullBusting. So, for today, go out there and dare to color outside the lines, and then apply that concept to your life, and your business, and see what you find!
Want to explore how you can reconnect with your own uniqueness? Check out Personality Based Marketing which is all about reconnecting you with your unique inner joy and bringing your uniqueness into your marketing strategy!
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