What If They Think I'm An Idiot?

🙄 What if they think I'm an idiot?

What if I am an idiot...?

I stood in front of the men’s restroom mirror before walking onto the TEDx stage in February and asked myself both questions.

It was Friday the 13th - what could go wrong…?

I put the jacket on anyway.

🎵 The first album I ever bought was True Colours by Split Enz.

Bold. Original. Fun - unashamedly themselves.

I've loved everything they represent since I was a teenager.

They just headlined New Zealand's biggest music festival.

Fifty years on.

Still themselves. Still selling out venues.

Not nostalgia - rather talent and the power of a unique, authentic identity.

When I was redefining my own identity — after the redundancies; the long period of being ‘left on the shelf’ — I kept coming back to Split Enz.

I asked myself:

🦺 What if True Colours was a jacket?

What if I wore my brand instead of just talking about it?

So I briefed a fantastic costume designer - please make it colourful; make it fun; make it not ordinary - make it my true colours.

🤩 She brought it to life!

I won't lie — the first time I wore it in public, the voice in my head was loud.

I was walking around a shopping mall, getting photographed for content.

This is not what serious people wear. What will they think?

Most people just walked on by - some smiled.

Here's what I'm learning about refreshing and restaging your identity:

The void you're staring into when you consider being more fully yourself...?

It's not actually one of fear.

It's one of irrelevance — the slow, quiet kind that comes from playing it safe, when the opposite is required.

AI is coming for safe - for ordinary - for forgettable.

On the TEDx stage on that Friday February the 13th, in my jacket and yellow shoes, my colours literally behind me —

The audience smiled - at least most of them did...

😅 I smiled.

Not because it was perfect - it wasn't.

Because it was me and custom-made me at that.

Style without substance is just fluff.

But substance without style?

That's just not going 'all-in'.

The real risk is not the jacket.

It's becoming invisible when there's more to give.

You leaving anything in your 'wardrobe' you should be wearing?