Act One: Water or Kerosene?

Growing up in the Black church, one of the first songs we learned in Sunday School was "This Little Light of Mine". It is a simple song, beautiful chorus, covered by so many artists, from the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, to The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, and is sung in churches across the world. The song was written by Harry Dixon Loes in the 1920s (but he didn't really want credit). It remains indelible, even today.

Yesterday, as I made my way home from a day spent with my business partner and friend, the song came to mind. You see, he asked me a difficult question and when I answered it, we engaged a deeper part of our ongoing conversation. The focus was on my light, my fire, my sparkle. He wanted to know what lit it, what stoked it, and what made it flare up. That was eye-opening.

For decades, literally, I have been on a quest for self-development. It hasn't always been pleasant, and the results have been emotional, to say the least. Sometimes, I get it right and blast through limitations and fears that I've curated since early adulthood. I've addressed some of my longstanding memories from childhood (I had an awesome childhood, but I was and still am an introvert, which many of us who are will tell you has its own awkwardness). I've gotten over the stuff that made me scared to approach an attractive young lady or hold a conversation when one was interested in me. I maintained a healthy mind, body, and spirit to the extent I could. I, quite frankly, worked to become the best version of myself.

Along the way, and to this day, I also got it quite wrong. Influenced by mentors who didn't live my life, I made decisions I regretted. In my own bad judgement, I caused others to experience unintended pain and undesirable consequences. In my desire to fit in, especially when I was in the military, I made myself into whomever I needed to be at the cost of being true to myself. The hardest recollection of those missteps, mistakes, and outright poorly designed attempts, however, is that I very intentionally dimmed my light.

You see, I wrote a book called Start With A Sparkle: Passion, Path, Pinnacle, about a decade ago. That book was a labor of love, and the beginning of a career I wanted - to serve and love others by sharing my wisdom and being my best self. In that book, I intended to show the reader who I was and what my IKIGAI was, the sparkle of life that illuminated my eye. I believe I did that and more. I was happy with the work I produced and happy with the start it gave me as both a writer and consultant.

Then, somewhere over the last few years, I made it a priority to dim that sparkle. I covered it with a shade, trying to do what I had done years before - fit in. In my quest to tell the world who I was and what I did (we call that "marketing", don't we?), I let my sparkle smolder. I was offering it water instead of kerosene. If there is one mistake I made in business, it was that. In fact, I'm still making it.

Marketing is subjective for the small business owner, but for me, it is labor. The kind of labor I don't really want to do. But I looked at marketing as vegetables, "Not always tasty, but good for you in the long run." So, I chewed and swallowed, trying to make sense of something that should never have been my work to begin with. As with many of us veterans, we take the unpleasant with the pleasant, and because we think about getting missions done, we just "Suck it down and drive on."

That was NOT the right answer for me! In fact, it was antithetical to my book and my work. I had literally fed my sparkle the opposite of what it needed just to "build my business". I was mistaken. I thought I could learn the answer from books, videos, and gurus. I thought if I just carved out some time each week for "marketing", I could compartmentalize my way to success. You know, "Focus on one thing, even if it is unpleasant, until it is complete." I think they call that "Eat the frog first" in some circles.

But eating the frog was pouring water on my sparkle, the thing from which all my goodness flows. I wasn't doing work; I was harming myself unintentionally. I was going in the opposite direction of what my heart craved and what my life needed. I was afraid of pouring kerosene on my sparkle because it would burn too bright.

I cursed at the thought that I should be seen in my authenticity. I didn't want people to know that my journey toward my best self wasn't linear, it was rocky, imperfect, flawed, and left a trail of tears (mine and those I loved). I didn't want people, especially business interests, to know that I didn't have every single answer for my own life. If I couldn't fix me, how could I help them?

It scared me to think that my flaws would not only be seen but potentially held against me in the marketplace where others seemed to be so well put together. Here I was trying to break into a space where big guns like Tony Robbins and Brendon Burchard had their ideas so well-articulated and had their offerings so clearly available - they seemed like they already had all the answers. And what do I do? In response to that pressure, I dim my light. I offer to my sparkle water, hoping to camouflage my fear in being known and seen. I learned yesterday, I was singing the wrong song.

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."

Act one is the remembrance of who I am and what I do. It's really simple: I live a life of great reflection, of growth and development, of trial and error - I am my own petri dish. And in order to be successful, I can no longer desire to fit in, or stand out, or compete in a marketplace full of greatness, I have to be myself. So, sparkle meet kerosene.

"Let it burn!" - Rashad Howard