A spiritual mentor once advised me: “There is no limit to what you can accomplish, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
I know, I know… you’re thinking it’s a bit counter-intuitive in today’s image-centric world of celebrity power, where branding and identity is everything.
But if you’re one of those sick and twisted types who hopes to make a real difference in the world, to be a vehicle for greater cause, or create ripples of change. allowing for anonymity in your contributions is an idea worth considering.
Mind you, I’m not suggesting anonymity as a form of selfless altruism, though it may end up that way. This is about anonymity as a strategy: a method of getting out of your own way, a means to accomplish a larger-than-yourself goal, something that perhaps you couldn’t accomplish if you focus on personal recognition and gain.
Need an example?
Let’s say you’ve developed a revolutionary method of horse training, one that was more effective, kinder, healthier for the horse, the trainers, and drastically improved the relationship between horses and horse-people.
So you put together a simple teaching kit, offer classes at a local riding arena, and gradually word spreads. Pretty soon, a few big name trainers stumble across your methods. One writes a book on the subject, another produces a series of videos, both clearly based on your work. Neither trainer contacts or credits you, though they acknowledge each other’s contributions to the system.
You catch wind of the projects just before publication. The trainers won’t even return your phone calls to talk about it.
You have every right to be upset, furious even. You want to take them to court, and you know you will probably win. You can expose them as the dishonest people they are, deservedly ruin their reputations, maybe win a judgement against them and a few dollars. You can almost certainly cause problems with their publishers, and likely stop production, and protect your rights to your work.
You’ll also kill your best chance to get your system out there, in the wild, where it will most help the horses and the people you developed it for.
The trainers have the power to get your work OUT there. Arrogant and dishonest though they are, they have the capability to reach more people and to improve the lives of more horses than you’d ever imagined was possible. With them, your system has a chance to revolutionize training methods not only throughout the country, but throughout the world… but it won’t bear your name, and you’ll never see a dime of the profits.
Do you fight for what is rightfully yours, fight on behalf of not only yourself, but also others they have probably stolen from? Or do you decide that getting the message out there is more important than who gets the credit and profit?
It’s not an easy choice, and I admit, I’m not sure what I would do in this scenario. I’d probably look really hard for a third or fourth choice, but it would probably still come down to sacrificing a great deal of either credit or success.
Approaching life (or even a single project) this way requires courage; you’ll be going against the grain of modern society, and you’ll catch a lot of criticism. It requires humility; you’ll need to set aside the natural pride in accomplishment and the desire for acknowledgement. It requires strength of will and personal insight; you’ll have to get your own ego out of the way of your work, and recognize what’s truly valuable to you
But think of what you could accomplish…
MindTWEAK: Is your idea of success based in actual
accomplishment, or measures of accomplishment?
(There is no wrong answer)
