Your Superpower Is Obvious to Everyone But You

Last week, Pam and I went to see Idina Menzel perform with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Idina doesn’t perform like most people. She talks to the audience. A lot. By the third song, she had already taken off her shoes and was hopping around the stage barefoot in front of one of the greatest orchestras in the world.

Halfway through another song, she forgot the words. Instead of pretending it didn’t happen or fumbling her way through, she stopped the orchestra and asked if they could start again.

The audience loved her even more.

Every mistake, strange comment and unscripted moment seemed to pull the audience closer. She wasn’t trying to deliver a flawless performance. She was creating an experience that could only happen with Idina Menzel.

Toward the end of the concert, she talked about how every person has something unique inside them. Something that makes them different. Something that, if they discover it and truly lean into it, can become their superpower (or, in my language, ​your Tilt​).

The Things We Try to Hide

Most people believe their opportunity is somewhere outside themselves.

They study what successful people are doing. They adopt their systems. They copy their content. They compare their careers, businesses and lives to people who appear to have everything figured out.

Then they wonder why they don’t stand out.

The problem is that the things that make us different often don’t feel particularly valuable to us. They might even feel like problems.

Maybe you talk too much. Maybe you ask too many questions. Maybe you obsess over details. Maybe you have an unusual background, interest or point of view that doesn’t seem to fit neatly into your industry.

So you smooth out the edges. You become more professional. More acceptable. More like everyone else.

Idina Menzel could certainly put on her shoes, follow the script and perform every song exactly as planned. She could also become less memorable.

The very things we are tempted to remove may be the things people remember most.

The Opportunity Mike Almost Missed

The week before the concert, ​I was a guest on the Comic Industry Insiders podcast​. One of the guest hosts was Mike Davis, cofounder of ​Blerds Underground​, a comic book and collectibles store in La Grange, Illinois.

Blerds stands for Black Nerds.

Mike and his cofounder, Marcell Kirk, didn’t simply open another comic book store. They opened a Black-owned comic book store in a mostly white community and began building something much larger.

As they explain on their website:

“Whether you shop with us online or in-store, know that you are supporting more than just a comic book store. You are supporting an underground movement that’s here to make the entire comics industry more inclusive & accessible.”

But Mike didn’t begin with some perfectly constructed plan to change the comic book industry. He started by talking to people.

As he talked about the shortage of Black-owned comic book stores, he began to recognize the size of the opportunity. He found other store owners. He heard their stories. He discovered that the problem he’d noticed was not just his problem.

Today, Mike is helping lead a nationwide alliance of Black-owned comic book stores. What began as a handful of stores is becoming a movement. That opportunity became clearer only after Mike began saying it out loud and sharing it with other people.

Stop Trying to Figure It Out Alone

This may be the part most of us are missing.

We sit alone in front of a computer, banging our heads against the wall, trying to identify the magical thing that differentiates us.

· What is my niche?

· What makes me special?

· What can I do that nobody else can do?

Then we open another browser window and look at what everyone else is doing.

Maybe your answer can’t be found through more thinking. Maybe you need to start asking.

Years ago, I worked with American Business Media to create an event around content marketing (this is before Content Marketing World started in 2011). The industry needed a place where people could come together, share ideas and figure out where all this content stuff was going.

I saw an opportunity, so I helped put the event together.

At our second gathering and meetup, someone came up to me and said that my real strength was getting the right people together, at the right time, in the right place.

In other words, she told me my superpower was being the ringleader.

I had never thought of myself that way. I didn’t have a strategy to become an event organizer or community builder. I just believed that the right people needed to be in the same room, so I worked to make it happen.

Someone else had to point out the pattern before I could see it.

The people around us often recognize our tilt before we do because they experience the value of it. To us, it may seem normal. To them, it is unusual, helpful and sometimes extraordinary.

How to Find What You Cannot See

You probably don’t need to spend the weekend alone in a cabin discovering your purpose.

You just need better feedback.

Here are three places to begin.

1. Ask People When They Have Seen You at Your Best

Don’t ask, “What is my superpower?” That question is too broad and will probably produce generic compliments.

Instead, ask five people who have seen you in different situations:

“When have you seen me doing my best work?”

“What do I do that seems natural to me but valuable to other people?”

“When have you seen me make the biggest difference?”

Ask former coworkers, customers, friends and family members. Don’t defend yourself or explain what you think the answer should be. Just listen and write down their exact words.

And I get it…this is a little weird to execute. Most people don’t do this…but trust me…it works.

2. Look for the Repeated Requests

Your superpower often hides inside the things people repeatedly ask you to do.

Are you always asked to explain complicated ideas? Introduce people? Fix broken projects? Calm everyone down? Generate ideas? Make decisions? Organize the event?

You may dismiss these requests because the work feels easy to you. That is precisely why you should pay attention.

Something being easy for you does not make it less valuable. It may mean you have spent your entire life developing an ability so naturally that you no longer recognize it as an ability.

Look for the pattern underneath the requests.

For almost 20 years I worked with Laura Kozak in different organizations. She became known as “Girl Friday” because she always figured out the problem and fixed it, and before everyone left for the weekend. In Laura’s case, she didn’t even have to ask…people just started calling her that and she came to believe that she had a special gift.

3. Build a Small Experiment Around It

Once you see a possible pattern, don’t immediately change careers or launch a company.

Run an experiment.

Mike began talking to other Black comic book store owners. I helped organize an industry event. Neither of us needed to know exactly where it would lead.

Create a gathering. Publish an article. Offer to help someone. Start a small project. Bring a few people together. Make your idea visible enough that others can respond to it.

Your tilt does not become clear through thought alone. It becomes clear through action, conversation and feedback.

Maybe You Don’t Have to Find It

We talk about finding our purpose as though it is buried somewhere deep inside us, waiting to be uncovered.

Maybe it isn’t buried. Maybe you have been demonstrating it for years.

The people around you have seen flashes of it. They’ve asked you for it. They may have even tried to tell you about it.

You just didn’t understand that it was valuable because it felt too much like you.

So ask.

Listen for the patterns.

Then take one small step toward the thing other people already see.


P.S.: ​A reminder that I’m giving away my book, Burn the Playbook, for free​. Please share it with a friend. I’m finding more and more parents are reading this and then sharing it with their kids.