Not having this is costing you focus

“Tell me a story, Vince.”

I stopped halfway towards the straw of my recently-acquired drink at the local Cookout.

11:32 PM on a Monday night, and there I was surrounded by my swing dance friends after a few hours of our weekly practice.

My mind went completely blank, like the vacuum of space had just decided to occupy it right then and there.

Then, everything came into sharp focus…

Looking back, I think that was the moment that kick-started my writing engine again.

More than anything else, this is a double-edged sword that can cleave through all our challenges or hammer us into the ground.

The stories that we tell ourselves about how we are either capable of overcoming incredible odds or couldn’t even open a jar of peanut butter make everything a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our mind shapes our perception of the reality around us.

Our journeys are littered with the proverbial forks in the road.

And the thing that 99% of us don’t realize is that we’re the ones holding the pen.

So if you’re not sure about that, let me put you at ease…

The Digital Heirloom is all about showing others that the pen is absolutely mightier than the sword and that you are the only one who can wield it like nobody else.

So let’s tear this concept apart, yeah?

Your tale is as tall or short as you make it out to be

Think about it for a bit.

At each stage of your life, there are memories, moments, monolithic or minute, that have seismically shaped your identity to make you who you are today.

When I was eight, I remember the first moment that I realized I had potential as a musician from winning my first piano competition.

When I was thirteen, I remember the stabs of pain I felt reading my yearbook messages from classmates who hated me for my musical talent and teachers who praised me for the same.

When I was seventeen, I remember the humiliation of being passed over for a musical feature at residential school for the arts as a pianist because I spent more time focusing on my first serious relationship than my practicing.

When I was eighteen, I finally gave up on the piano when she dumped me, the casualty of many long-distance relationships between a college freshman and a senior in high school.

I turned to dance after that…and it lead me to my future wife.

That’s only one angle of one facet of my life that I could spin into a narrative about how the arts have shaped my love life (and it’s only partially true).

This was also a prime example of how I saw arts as both the proponent and the limiter of progress in that area.

It’s your choice to rewrite your own history, though.

Look at the shinier side of the coin

“I’m just not good at math.”

I hear this statement repeatedly across the spectrum from scientists to artists in the circles I’ve traveled throughout my life.

Sure, dancers, actors, painters, these say it with a certain pride when they talk about how they fell into their profession.

It’s the other side of the spectrum that says this with a certain dread, shame, or embarrassment.

When you’re in a technical field, you don’t want to say this as it absolutely is relevant to your everyday performance.

If they truly believe that they aren’t good with numbers, then they have a limiting belief that will come to hinder their progress sooner or later in their field.

For them, overcoming this is a challenge that is a matter of success or failure.

Fortunately, most of my colleagues have a follow up story that shares how they overcame this self-limiting belief in the form of innovation with programming or focused tutoring and effort, followed by an outcome that lead to a breakthrough.

I personally believe that nobody is bad at anything.

They just don’t prioritize improving in that area because they don’t feel the need.

Furthermore, everyone can be taught with the right approach and the right teacher.

That’s how I’ve chosen to rewrite my self-limiting beliefs, and that’s why I’ve been creating and writing.

There’s a reason we start from our identity

Ya gotta know yourself and where you stand in order to consider what you want to share with others.

Realize that the one holding the pen really is just you.

Your loved ones can only be there to read what you decide to write. They’re not the ones doing the writing.

They’ve got their own lives to narrate for themselves, and anyone who wants to take over for another has some serious issues.

This is why you must realize this point. It’s why I’m driving it home first.

Letting some other movement define your identity is a recipe for regret, disaster, and misery.

You wanna know what I would say now if someone were to ask the same question that I shared at the top again?

Here’s what I would say:

“There was once a boy who started out thinking he would become a great musician only to realize that it was the act of communication in all its forms that he enjoyed.

As he began to understand this point, he branched out and learned to do it physically through dance and martial arts as he matured. While he was doing this, he also cultivated his love of technology and advancement of computer systems to improve the lives of others. Through both, he eventually realized there was a gap between the two that he wasn’t satisfied with for himself.

This lead him to explore the world of social media and content creation through video, visual images, and text. Now he aspires to develop these skills to pass on to the next generation.”

This is what this newsletter is all about…my journey to combine all my skills and use them to eventually create a digital presence and footprint.

So I ask you: What’s your identity story?