Personal Branding Weekly - Cursed By This Myth?

Have you heard that knowledge is power?

Well, that’s a myth.

Knowledge alone is not power. Applied knowledge is power.

If you want to be average and not stand out, then you’ll operate on this myth. Think about it. How many people do you know who really know a lot? Ask them any factoid, piece of trivia, intimate details of a process or an operation and they know. But, ask them to apply it or to review how it’s been applied and the best practices of what worked and what didn’t and they’re stumped.

Competing on results

It’s not enough that we know things. We need to know. Apply what we know. Gain experiential knowledge. Adjust. Then, repeat that process.

Today we compete on results not just on knowledge. After all, we have the world’s biggest living library easily accessible through mobile and can search anything we need to know.

Those who can apply it and garner results yield personal brands that are more respected and more powerful.

Ask yourself – how am I applying this?

As a parent of a young school aged child, I ask – what did you learn today? I think the next question we ask is even more important – what will you do or can you do with what you learned today?

Sometimes the answer is nothing. And, we laugh about that. But, we also learn.

Are you asking yourself that question?

I find that the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of the questions you ask. [tweet this]

It’s these questions that will provide direction and the course correction you need to meet or exceed your goals.

Should you do it yourself? Should you enlist the assistance of others?

Another one of those quick quotes I heard and keep top of mind (I only wish I could give proper credit to who created it):

You lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink; You can lead a person to knowledge but you can’t make him think.

Starting today, assess:

1. Where you’ve been.

What knowledge have you recently acquired and how are you applying it?

2. Where you’re going.

What have you learned from experiential knowledge (knowledge gained through actual life experience), and what gaps do you need to fill by acquiring more knowledge and how will you apply this new knowledge?

What I appreciate most about the Personal Branding Blog authors is they have experiential knowledge that they share with you every single day.