It's as unique to you as your fingerprint, and its impossible for anyone else to perfectly imitate.
What is it?
Your unique worldview – the way you see the world and your own place in it.
Your worldview involves aspects of your personality as well as your emotional connection to your environment and the people who inhabit it.
It's formed – at least in part – by a combination of forces we've already discussed like your upbringing and your background, but it's one force you have a lot of conscious control over as well.
As noted in one of the Core Tenets of The Worldview Exploration Project created by the Institute for Noetic Sciences{5},
“Worldviews not only impact how we understand and make sense of the world around us but also influence how we express ourselves in the world. The constellation of personal values, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and ideas that make up our worldview have an affect on our goals and desires, relationships and behaviors. The more aware we become of our worldview and the worldviews of others, the more effectively we can navigate through life.”
For example, based on your background and upbringing, you may tend to be an optimist, or a pessimist. You may lean toward being altruistic and helpful, or selfish. You may be able to readily commit yourself to a cause or a project, or you may be easily bored and restless.
Your level self-esteem, your personal inhibitions, and even your secret prejudices, all play a role in shaping your worldview, and all can be traced back to some aspect of your background or upbringing.
But in all these cases, unlike cultural or economic forces that changed who you were as your brain was developing, these aspects of your personality are yours to play with.
Despite your natural inclination, you can choose to be more positive, more generous, more goal-oriented. Regardless of what your parents did or didn't do, you can choose to value yourself, to make smart choices, and to favor equality.
Your worldview is yours to create, not simply a product of your past that you have no control over.
How does this affect your content marketing?
There are a million different variations on this theme: what you've come from has combined to color your perspective on the world in a way that's unique to you. And that perspective, in turn, colors everything you think, do, say... or create.
As in, content.
So, the point here is not just to try to change who you are or how you view the world. It's not about trying to put that integral part of you into the background while you're creating content so you can write or record something that you think is "more appropriate" or "politically correct".
On the contrary!
This is about being aware of how your unique worldview is going to affect what you create, and using that knowledge to your advantage! Because your unique worldview is the basis of one of the most important ingredients you can add to this developing storm: your voice.
And as we'll discuss in more depth in a later section, your unique voice is integral to creating engaging content that truly speaks to your target audience.
Exercise #5 – Brainstorming: Your Unique Worldview
1. Consider how your viewpoint differs from other people you know.
2. In five sentences or less, describe that worldview as if writing to someone who has never met you.
3. Read the next chapter.