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How to Dis­cover your Unique­ness — Part 1

September 30, 2009 | 6 Comments

Written by: Lee on September 30, 2009.

earthSo how do you stand out of the crowd when there are over 6.7 billion people in the world? Marketers will tell you that you need to differentiate, life coaches will tell you about finding your uniqueness, sales managers will say you need to find your unique selling proposition, but is this possible? With the margins of difference becoming narrower can we be considered unique?

I am sure some people are shouting DNA! If you are not an identical twin then yes it is highly improbable (not impossible) that some one else has the same DNA. But does DNA help you be unique in the sense of standing out from the crowd. Maybe, our DNA is probably a contributing factor to the type of person we are and some personalities are more likely to stand out.

Now that we have DNA out the way – can we be unique? I think so. I believe uniqueness is a combination of all the different aspects in each of us. If we take individual aspects we are not for example our hair colour is not unique; our political belief is not unique; our skills are not unique, but when you combine everything about you – you are unique! Each of us has our own Unique Blueprint (UBP) and understanding that is the first step on the path to standing out of the crowd or differentiating ourselves.

I am going to write a series of articles starting with discovering your unique blue print, what to do with it and how it can help you to take that next step to achieve your goals. This can be used if you want t brand yourself, stand out from the crowd, just understand yourself better, help you get direction for your life, to get a new job, start a new business or start blogging – whatever it is you want to do.

So how do you discover your unique blue print?

I sat down and thought long and hard about the best method to approach this and this is the best way I can think from what I have internalised through my life. The simplest method to use is a mind map. Another thing is that this method can be applied to products and business by changing the aspects listed below.

You need to find a sheet of paper and draw a circle in the middle and write ‘me’ in it. Draw 12 spikes from the ‘me’ and a circle at the end of each. Write the following words in each circle: personality traits, beliefs, attitudes, interests, passions, physical appearance, experiences, knowledge, skills, fears, ambitions, goals.

For the next step you have to be brutally honest with yourself. This blue print should be for your eyes only as part of your discovery.

Personality Traits
Make two spikes and circle from this circle and in one write ‘my view’ and in the other write ‘other’s view’. Here you write down all your personality traits as you perceive yourself and then ask a few people close to you to list your personality traits (don’t argue with them if you disagree, just note them down).

Beliefs
This is what you believe to be true or false in life.

Attitudes
Write your attitude to everything from life, work, relationships, religion, politics and anything you can think of that you have an attitude towards. Attitudes are usually positive or negative or degrees of these.

Interests
List all your interests whether they are active or just something you like to read or hear about.

Passions
This is an extension of interests but only lists things you are really passionate about. It could even be chocolate.

Physical Appearance
This needs to be as objective as possible. Just describe yourself. This is not a list of how you feel about yourself just what you are.

Experiences
Everyone no matter how old has had experiences. List all the experiences you have had that contributed more to who you are. For some people if will be to do with high/senior school, others could have trips, relationships, bringing up children, starting a business, a successful career or even failure. List whatever you think has had an impact on your life.

Knowledge
This is not intelligence. I have not listed intelligence as this, for me, is a measurement and not an aspect of you. You can describe yourself as intelligent under personality if you wish. Under knowledge list all the things you have good knowledge about.

Skills
List all the skills to have to do things in life whether it is working with numbers, organising or even DIY.

Fears
List things you are afraid of.

Ambitions
An ambition is what you want to be the best at. You may have none here.

Goals
List what you want to achieve. Goals usually have deadlines, but for now just list what you want to achieve.

Feel free to add other aspects I have not mentioned if you believe they are important. You need to spend sometime on this and go away after you have completed it, then come back and read it again. Once you are happy you have put everything down you will have your unique blue print.

My next article is called So I am unique; now what? We take the process further and explore our direction.

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Related posts:

  1. Going after what you want– Part 4
  2. What do they want? – Part 3



6 Comments so far

  1.    Lee on October 23, 2009 1:27 pm      Reply

    Thanks Bill, some­how your post ended up in spam and I only saw it today. I would love to read some of the arti­cles you want to share.

  2.    Lee on October 22, 2009 1:56 pm      Reply

    Glad to help :) I will keep a look out for you Brian.

    What I write is usu­ally from my own expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge and sel­dom based on some­one elses ideas. Say­ing that there is a lot of use­ful infor­ma­tion and good ideas out there, so if I come across some­thing I will let you know.

  3.    Brian Mcfarlane on October 21, 2009 3:25 am      Reply

    Thank you for the great advise. I will use this to help sup­port writ­ing USPs for my clients. It is very hard to find how-to’s on writ­ing unique sell­ing propo­si­tions. If you have any other links to sup­port this i would love to hear from you.
    thanks
    Brian Mcfar­lane
    Search & Social media Spe­cial­ist
    http://www.nerdec.com
    skype: brianscottmcfarlane

  4.    Lee on October 8, 2009 2:20 pm      Reply

    Hi Win­nie.

    I am thrilled that you found my post thought pro­vok­ing and inspir­ing. It means a lot to me to be able to help other people.

    Take Care
    Lee-Ann

  5.    Bill Morgan on October 7, 2009 2:00 pm      Reply

    Great arti­cle. You and I are on the same wave­length as I just wrote an arti­cle on under­stand­ing your unique­ness and how to iden­tify it.
    I uti­lize this to show can­di­dates how to iden­tify their strenghts and weak­nesses as ‘your strength overused tends to become your weak­ness’.
    Though this is only one facet of what makes each of us unique.
    Great arti­cle and look for­ward to see­ing more you have.
    Per­haps we both have arti­cles we can share with each other.

    Bill Mor­gan
    The Job Swami Career Blog
    http://thejobswami.blogspot.com

  6.    Winnie on October 7, 2009 1:51 pm      Reply

    I really like what you’ve writ­ten. Thank you! It’s very inspir­ing and thought-provoking. I was think­ing about start­ing a blog and I’m not sure what to blog about. After read­ing your post, it gets me think­ing — must do the ‘find one­self’ exer­cise and find the things that will get me ‘talk­ing’. I too am a mar­keter and can relate to what you’re ref­er­enc­ing. I’ve booked marked your blog and look for­ward to hear­ing more from you.

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