Seth Godin believes that “in the era of picking yourself, it seems…that you’re better off finding a path that doesn’t require you get picked in order to succeed.” In the eyes of Godin, “getting picked” is the idea that someone else has allowed you to occupy a certain job, social position, membership, etcetera, by choosing you. And that picking process, it’s bad.
Godin proposes this example to his audience: Marc Maron once auditioned for SNL but was rejected (or “not picked”). But Maron later chose to start his own podcast that eventually became successful (“picking himself”).
But my question for Godin is how do you pick yourself when you want so desperately to be picked by someone else?
For teenagers, acceptance, whether it be social, academic, or any other form, is one of the most valuable commodities there is. We want our peers to like us, to instantly choose us for a group project. We want to be chosen as the president of our clubs, or selected to be on a varsity sports team. We want to be admitted to the colleges we applied to. So much of our lives early on is centered around a “pick me” sort of world. So how do we thwart it?
