Who is teaching us to look deeper?

If you read a blog post and it begins with an analogy about car dealers, is your instinct to say, “Well, I’m not a car dealer…” and then jump to the next post?

When you see something working (or not working) in the marketplace, something you don’t understand, do you stop to figure out why it’s working (or not working)? Or is it easier to change the attention channel and get back into line?

I’ve discovered (the hard way) three rules for writing a blog post that will spread:

• Don’t use unfamiliar words or concepts.
• Avoid subtlety.
• Try not to challenge deeply held beliefs.

Education, politics, marketing, tourist attractions—they all seem to work better when we keep people moving, behind the velvet rope, input and output, cause and effect, this then that. When the masses conform to the system we’ve built, the system works a whole lot better.

But who wants to be a cog in that machine? While playing it safe might work, where does it get us?

The best opportunity you have to grow and to make an impact is to seek out the “I don’t get it” moments and then work at it and noodle on it and discuss it until you do get it. Analogies and metaphors are your friends. Dense lyrics, almost indecipherable prose, mysterious successes—these are the places where you will leap forward.

I know there is now an infinite amount of media to choose from, an infinite number of experiences to have. But if you skip over the ones that aren’t spoon fed to you, all you’ll end up with is eating from a spoon.

Seth Godin has written fourteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything.

*Image courtesy of B Tal.