Are Skills Enough?

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Dear Daughters,

A great majority of us are fed the following story in our youth: do everything you can to acquire hard, technical skills - and soft skills, too - to ensure you can join the labor force, earn a great living and be a productive member of society. It’s a playbook that’s become de rigueur at our highest educational institutions.

While its true that being skilled can make us exceptional at solving problems and effectively accomplishing tasks - things the economy will pay us for - these skills can only take us so far, and never far enough.

They can’t take us to where we really want to go.

To live life to its best and fullest, we need something extra. That something extra is what author Robert Greene refers to as our "source of power”. It’s the things that makes us authentic, uncopiable, different and extraordinary.

I refer to it as “naturalness”.

Naturalness is what makes you different than all of the other eight billion people on the planet. It’s your authenticity, your imperfections, your originality, your presence, your ideas, your curiosities, your quirks, your creative energies and your life force (or “prana” as referred to in yogic philosophy.) Naturalness is the real you that you embodied growing up as a child.

It is as unique as your fingerprint itself. And if you lean into it and become unafraid to embody and express it, you gain a confidence and clarity that becomes more powerful than any skill you can acquire at school or on the job.

In fact, it’s the embracing of your naturalness that leads to outsized financial and life rewards - rewards beyond anything that can be obtained from hard and soft skills alone.

In studying any successful entrepreneur, investor, athlete, artist or creative, it becomes clear that they are who they are not solely because of their skills, but because they have fully seized upon their naturalness. Embracing their naturalness has helped them find what they're most excited about and by following their excitedness, they found their life's work and the confidence to pursue it with rigor and force. Look closely and you’ll notice that their naturalness is stamped on everything they create, sell and share.

Naturalness, especially when combined with skills, is what the world rewards most. So whatever it is that makes you different or odd in comparison with everyone else, is what you must seize upon.

So, if you’re more spirited than most people, lean into that. If you get more excited by comedy than the rest, dive into it more. If you can’t stop reading biographies, embrace that quirk. If being close to nature makes you feel a certain way or if you feel most comfortable expressing yourself through clothing, don’t repress those things, even if societal messages tell you otherwise. Use the mathematical magic of being one in eight billion to pave your path to success.

That’s been the story for countless of the greatest humans in history. You can be next.

My Favorite Maxims On Naturalness

1. "Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are." - Brené Brown
2. “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." - Carl Jung
3. “Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, and different. Thats your source of power.” - Robert Greene

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Have a wonderful weekend!