How to find what shines

Think about an idea or concept that, once you heard or read it, you couldn’t forget it. In fact, not only could you not forget it, the idea set or changed something about how you thought or acted, permanently, from that moment on.

Now, email me and tell me what that phrase is and how long it’s been part of your life.

Mine is, “Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.” It’s from a little book called Notes on Love and Courage by Hugh Prather, which I first read as an angsty 80s teenager. I don’t know why it resonated so strongly with me, but not only did it become one of my principles for living, I even wrote it down in my “quote book!” If you have no idea what that is, clearly you were not also an angsty 80s teenager, because quote books—blank lined-paper journals that you’d fill with, well, quotes—were quite the thing. Or at least they were amongst my angsty artsy friends group.

Even though quote books themselves are no longer a thing, clearly I’ve retained the habit of collecting shiny ideas, like an intellectual version of my favorite bird, the magpie. I’ve always loved not only magpies’ beautiful black-and-white plumage, but also their attraction to shiny things, which they take and use to help build their nests.

I wasn’t born a message designer. No one is. It’s certainly not on any list of careers I considered growing up. In fact, as recently as 10 years ago, I’d read, watch, and listen to people like my friend Jay Baer and envy his ability to craft “tweetable” (X-able?) phrases, like those I collected.

And so I wondered, could I learn to do the same thing? The answer: yes. All I had to do was consciously collect shiny ideas. The more I looked for and collected powerful ideas and phrases, the more I picked up the feeling of what they looked and sounded like, a phenomenon known as “perceptual learning.”

It’s one of the reasons I love reading books on an e-reader. Anytime I come across a powerfully articulated principle, axiom, or piece of advice, I highlight it. Then, thanks to a nifty service called Readwise.io, I get an email every day with a random selection of five of those previous highlights.

Here’s just a small selection of ones I’ve marked as Favorites:

• “That’s life; the dead keep the living alive.” The Overstory by Richard Powers
• “First and final impressions remain the longest.” The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Breckenridge Carnegie
• “The biggest problem with being needed is that it requires someone else to be needy.” Magic Words by Tim David
• “If you can see a bandwagon, it’s too late to get on.” Killing Floor by Lee Child
• “Generosity is the mother of ingratitude.” Trust by Hernan Diaz
• “Truth is the daughter of time.” The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (These last two were literally next to each other in my favorites list!)
• “We all want what we’re used to.” Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• “The story is what you carry and every time you add to it, it gets heavier.” Billy Summers by Stephen King
• “Only the man who knows too little knows too much.” The Golden Spiders by Rex Stout

Perceptual learning is also why I’m asking you to send me your found quotes—because those quotes and phrases you carry in your head show that you already know how to spot powerful principles on your own.

Why is that important? Because powerful principles are the bedrock of building buy-in with your messages. As I note in my second book, actions people agree with are based on beliefs they already have. Not only that, the more you can spot powerful articulations of those beliefs, or of the advice that arises from them (like my Hugh Prather quote), the more you can state your beliefs and your ideas with similar strength.

Anyone can get better at message design. The first step is to find the great messages already all around you. I can’t wait to see what you find!

Please note that many of the links are affiliate links, which means if you buy a thing I link to, I get a percentage of the cost, and then donate it to charity.

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