Let’s Dent The World (Onlyness) w/ Nilofer Merchant

When Brett was very young, he had a feeling that he wanted to change the world. He imagines most of you did too. It’s not an uncommon feeling for people. Most of us want to leave our positive mark on the world.

So in our first show of Season 4, Where There’s Smoke decides to tackle that little question: How do we change the world? …or at least make a significant dent in it.

The meat of this episode is a conversation Brett had with Nilofer Merchant, discussing the ideas and stories contained in her book, The Power Of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World. In it, she writes, “I believe that each of us have something of value to offer – all 7.5 billion of us. While not everyone will, anyone can.”

Nilofer illustrates the three important phases of Onlyness by comparing them to the growth of a tree. First come the roots: your sense-of-self bursting up from the ground to form the trunk. This is claiming your idea. Then come the branches: your idea spreading to your immediate community of like minds. And finally the leaves and fruit: the “galvanization” and “virality” of the idea.

Now on it’s face, those three phases may seem very doable, even easy to some. But for many, there are a lot of barriers. Claiming your idea and owning it, that requires a strong level of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-love. And then, even if you muster the courage and conviction to fully express your idea, it’s likely that those power are often not interested in it.

So if ideas are going to fuel the next generation of innovation, then how do we get them out into the open? What do we need to know to best equip us to make that mighty dent in the world?