Kansas City Freelance Writer Liz Craig

Here’s another one of Guy Kawasaki’s five tips for personal branding success (again quoting from that BNET blog post I linked to in my last post):

Make Meaning, Not Money. If you’re into personal branding with the goal of making money, stop now. You will attract the wrong kind of people into your life. Instead, start with the goal of making meaning. What better way to align all your actions with your long-term goals. What kind of meaning will you make? Kawasaki suggests two ideas for inspiration: 1) right a wrong, or 2) prevent the end of something good. What will you do to make the world a better place?

“Life is empty and meaningless, and it doesn’t mean anything that life is empty and meaningless.”

Guy Kawasaki didn’t say that. The leader of my Forum weekend did. That’s the first cosmic two-by-four that hit me in the head at The Forum, an introduction to the Landmark Education curriculum. It sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? But all it’s really saying is that life has no inherent meaning — it’s a fresh, new canvas you can paint any way you want. Whatever the meaning in your life is, you choose it. You create it. You live it.

Early in my career, my life was all about getting together a great portfolio and winning creative awards so I could get more money at the next agency where I worked. These days, of course, I still need money, but winning awards is no longer what gives my life meaning. What does, though, is being in integrity with my own values and helping people create their own successes.

There’s more to meaning than what you do for a living. There’s the spiritual thrill that comes from seeing a great work of art or hearing a Mozart concerto played by splendid musicians. The warm feeling that bubbles up when you’re giggling with a toddler. The expansive feeling when you’re admiring the beauty of mountains or the ocean. The satisfaction you feel savoring a superbly prepared meal. Or the tender love you feel for your parent, your child, your mate, or your best friend. All of this has meaning on a personal scale.

On a broader scale, working for a cause in which you believe can imbue your life with tremendous meaning and the feeling that you’re making the world a better place. You might teach someone to read, coach a kids’ softball team, join an organization that champions the rights of the disabled, work for candidates whose views you share, join the choir at church, or serve on the City Council.

To me, the greatest exemplar of meaning-making is Mohandas Gandhi. His long-term goal was “to become a complete zero.” That meant reducing his ego desires to zero and acting as a purely selfless human being. He held no elected office and sought no fame, yet world leaders sought his counsel, and he commanded tremendous power — through nonviolent civil disobedience — to lead the Indian people in a symbolically important strike against the salt tax imposed by Great Britain. See the 1982 movie, if you haven’t before. Wow. Did he ever give his life — and the lives of his countrymen — meaning! Gandhi died in 1948, having lived to see India achieve independence the previous year.

Gandhi righted a wrong — the exploitation of the Indian people by Great Britain — and made the world a better place by peaceful means. Probably none of us will become the meaning-maker Gandhi was, but all of us, in our own ways, create meaning in our lives.

What gives your life meaning? I’d love to hear from you.

Tags: advertising, freelance copywriter, Guy Kawasaki, make meaning not money, Mohandas Gandhi, personal branding, social media, Writer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Helpful Hints, Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.