30 Days of Genius- Seth Godin

Seth Godin's words are in bold. My personal comments are in italics. 

• What is actually hindering you from pursuing what you want? Fear of what? 
• What is it that holds you back from doing what you want? Is it fear of poverty? Failure? What others will think about you? Identifying and naming your fear will help you to look past it. Are you really in jeopardy of the crippling poverty you are imagining in your mind? What does failure even look like, how will that negatively affect your life? And how does the opinion of others have any effect on your life? Godin tells the story of Brene Brown, who keeps a list of the people whose opinions really matter in her wallet at all times. And if someone is not a parent, spouse, child, best friend, or true influencer/leader in the field why should she be in fear of their opinion? Why should you?
• "The man who invented the ship also invented the shipwreck." 

• Art and success is about creating change.
• If you are creating something but not introducing change, you're not an artist. You're a 'creative' with a lowercase 'c'. To be an artist, or a Creative (in Chase Jarvis' words), you must elicit a change in the world. Do something new. Influence someone. Be original to be successful.
• As Al Ries and Jack Trout write in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, you don't need to be right. You just need to be first. 

• "This might not work"
• Always remind yourself that what you're doing might not work. Because failure should not come as a surprise, but should be expected on the path to success. Seth did not become a great blogger after his 6th post- it took 6,000.

• Will they miss you if you’re gone?
• What are you doing to make sure that it is your value, and not your persistent marketing or mass cash expenditures, that is being sought. Whoever 'they' are, and whatever 'gone' means, if your product/service/ideas would not be missed, ask yourself if you're doing something of true value. If Seth stopped blogging, people would be disappointed. If Chase Jarvis stopped publishing Creative Live content, fans would be upset. If you stopped providing your service, would you be missed?

• Everyone should have an online blog for public journaling- it makes your brain work differently, your thoughts exist in the public domain. 
• Posting a thought or idea or belief online every day helps you think through content, and look back to see the changes in your opinions and thought processes. 
• An online presence is not about building something a lot of people follow, but something that provides value and is based in truth. 5 million Instagram followers who don't even realize they're following you is exponentially less valuable than 100 fans who look at your work whenever it becomes available. 

• Always ask- 'what are we doing this for?'
• At the very base of Godin's philosophy is a physics-first practice of digging deeper than the face of an action. If you're in a job- what are you doing this for? If you're examining a traditional system (like education)- what are you doing this for? If you're considering a career change- what are you doing this for? This question gets you to think deeper about the weaknesses in societal structures (like the bubble that is higher education) and about yourself (why do you do what you do in the way that you do it?)

• "The snooze button is an anathema to me."
• Seth has structured his work and his life in a way that makes him thrilled to wake up every morning. He doesn't dread a moment- and awakes with eager anticipation for his day.
• I'm going to print this out and put it next to my pillow. 

• Thoughts to leave the audience with: "We have created this platform where people are responsible for what they do. You could be more generous. You could lead people to place they want to go. You could weave a network that connects the disconnected. You could see people who are disrespected and treat them with respect. You can bring dignity to people who deserve it. All those things are available to you. It’s not someone else’s job to do those things, it's our job to do them. And we shouldn’t do them tomorrow. We should do them today."
• "Genius," Godin reminds us, is not a thing we need to aspire towards. It is innate within all of us. The word's Latin root defines it as the little voice inside all of us that tells us what to do. So we do not need to wait for something to come to us. We do not need to get all our little ducks in a row. We only need to act, and to act today. Big or small, if we change the world or change one life, we have the power to create change. And creating change, remember, is what success is all about.