Comments on: Will The Real Micah Baldwin Please Stand Up?

By: 15 Meanings » Blog Archive » Making tough decisions

15 Meanings » Blog Archive » Making tough decisions — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:38:07 +0000

[...] and thought process and in the end are extremely difficult. A friend of mine wrote a post recently about making choices, and I found a particular piece of the post to be so simple and so true, but for some reason it [...]

By: Tom Venuto

Tom Venuto — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:50:34 +0000

Nice post – I just recently found your blog and you seem to have some interesting posts. It's interesting to see how you're discovering things in your life :)

By: Tom Venuto

Tom Venuto — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:50:34 +0000

Nice post – I just recently found your blog and you seem to have some interesting posts. It's interesting to see how you're discovering things in your life :)

By: Michael E. Gruen

Michael E. Gruen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:56:56 +0000

Does Micah wear pink? Or, does he wear maroon?

Sometimes, the answer is, “yes”.

By: BrettFromTibet

BrettFromTibet — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:33:10 +0000

Good to hear your path of self-discovery, making choices, success and failure, learning about shades of grey. Definitely let the real you stand up.

As you know, I voted against over your #1 d.b. quest on Sphinn. I just didn't buy that it was anything close the the “real you” – maybe some kind of wacky idea or tangent – at best an inside joke that many people wouldn't understand. I was thinking “What the hell is this for? What exactly are you trying to accomplish / communicate / brand? Why spend your energy AND ask people to spend their energy linking to a dirty word?”

I've found “keeping it real” is tricky. I am a lot more than the sum of my thoughts, opinions and ideas (although the internet / social media empowers the illusion thoughts, ideas are everything). Also the line between my real feelings and my public feelings can get blurry – no matter how honest I try and be. If I openly and honestly said everything I thought – I would run into rocky patches with friends, family, relationships, business, the law. Also I've noticed that many of successful sales / bizdev / management types are rather skilled at maintaining various masks as the situation requires. It's something I struggle with cause I am too straightforward and hate politely agree and candy coat.

The Japanese have two words I like. 1.)tatemae – “enunciated principle – i.e., what you say in public / at the company / on the blog” and 2.)honne – “your real, dangerous, private, gut thoughts – what you REALLY think” . The Japanese banter around tatemae (to be civilized and comfortable in groups) but they read between the lines and use psychic powers to pick up on the honne.

A lot of what controls, motivates and inspires me is deeply, wickedly unconscious. I have to read deep in between the lines to even start to understand myself and what I'm “really” thinking and doing.

It sounds like you have been doing some self-reading and made some discoveries. Keep up the great work!

By: Will

Will — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:55:55 +0000

Well put. Your accept hope post was inspiration for a recent post of mine about keeping it real. To me, you exemplify the meaning of being yourself, both online and off. I wish more people would take a queue from you and be themselves :-)

By: Cory Levy

Cory Levy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:48:06 +0000

Very deep post – got me thinking.

By: Meg

Meg — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:41:10 +0000

And that's why I wanted you to write about stuff that was still in progress… stuff you hadn't figured out yet. Because I like the lessons along the way better than the grand conclusions.

Really proud of you.

By: Martin Ringlein

Martin Ringlein — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:38:21 +0000

Nice write-up! I can share the sentiment. Reminds me og a blog post I wrote recently, "Why I love My Mistakes"

Don’t be afraid to making mistakes; don’t seek them out but embrace them when they happen and look for them to be the turning point to something great. They say “two wrongs don’t make a right” – sometimes they do, when you’ve learned from those two wrongs to create the right. Greatness is many things; however, it is often the summation of mistakes whose parts are the catalyst for something new, something great.

I hate when I make a mistake, but love looking back at the mistakes that have made me.