Brainwashed

You can find "Brainwashed at this website.

In this article, Godin makes 7 suggestions to help readers reinvent themselves. I'll be taking a closer look at two of them.

Acknowledge the Lizard
The "lizard" is the part of the brain that holds our base worries- safety, acceptance, anger. It's the part of the brain that tries to hold back creativity and push obedience for fear of being mocked. It's the part of the brain that tries to make you average, boring, to make you fade into the background because you're safer that way. But for those who create, this just isn't possible. We need to stand out to be heard.
Obviously, as a creative person, it has some effect here in my blog- it's a constant thought in the back of my head: "don't put that out there!" "what will people think if you write that?". This resistance to creativity needs to be repressed to truly create, and that's just what Acknowledging the Lizard is: hearing it, knowing what it sounds like, then completely ignoring it.

Shipping
Things that are rare are usually valuable, it's basic supply and demand. Godin proposes that instead of a physical thing being rare, the rarest thing is the ability to put that physical object out into the world. If your rivals are afraid to do something and you go ahead and do it before them, you come out ahead and with a lot of recognition. However, the Lizard doesn't like to ship- why put yourself out there? Then everyone will just pay attention to you and you might fail!
This kind of thinking is why Acknowledging the Lizard is important- if you can quash that little voice, you can Ship things that your competitors do not.
Shipping is important to a blog- there are so many these days, you need some way to break out of the pack of news feeds and complaining. By putting out unique ideas and ideas that others fear to put out in the open, I can make myself rise above the tide of blandness and lizarditude and get noticed.