I spent a fair amount of time writing, trimming, and refining my recap of the 2013 World Domination Summit. I felt really good about what I had written until I started reading all the other recaps. I’m really glad I hadn’t read any other recaps before I wrote mine because I would have been intimidated and mine would not have been as authentic.
Then I suddenly felt inadequate and feared that what I had put out was lame. It was good to catch myself and realize exactly what I was doing–the old losing “comparison game.” Nobody wins in that game. Even if you are the one that comes out on top you’ve put down or degraded the other person to get there.
As I read the other posts I found by looking at the #wds2013 hashtag I thought other people did a much better job summarizing the talks and what they got out of them. My first conclusion was, “Wow, look at how well they summarized all the talks they went to. I barely included any details about the talks. Nobody will really understand what WDS was. I’m lame.”
A later realization was that I process things differently and did not take detailed notes on purpose. My goal during the talks was to take in the big picture, and make notes about things as they struck me. My plan is to do more detailed write-ups when I can watch the videos and absorb the messages a second time.
Later on I was trolling through other recaps and came across an excellent series by David Harkins on his WDS experience. David’s experience felt like one I could relate to a lot more. One where it wasn’t all “rainbows and ponies” and the “non-stop amazing experiences” so many other people wrote about. His experiences reminded me that I rarely experience things that way anyway and that it often takes time for ideas and experiences like this to solidify for me.
This is a great reminder to me that each of us processes experiences and events in different ways. It’s easy to think that the way “most people do it” is the “right way,” but that would be foolish. The only “right way” is the way you do it.
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