A Year of Promoting The People Who Make the Things I Love: Jan 6–Simon Sinek
In 2022, I am going to spend some time each day promoting someone who makes the things I love. I started this series because I believe that we, myself included, spend so much time on social media dunking on people (however deserved) and not enough time lifting up people deserving of positive attention.
Today’s featured person is the author and speaker Simon Sinek.
I first heard of Sinek years ago when I was looking for TED talks to share with my students. We were doing something called a 20% Project, in which students were given 20% of their in-class school time during a year to work on an independent project of their choosing.
I found his talk “Start With Why,” and it resonated with me. Many TED talks seem revolutionary in the moment, but they don’t always stay with me the way that Sinek’s lecture did.
The repeated mantra “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” has been one that I have come back to again and again. In fact, it is the core of what this series is meant to be.
I began this series because rather than hold onto resentments that I felt other people did not share the hard work that I have done for years, I wanted to instead try to show a way forward in raising up others. While it has been nice to hear from a few of the people featured here so far, I’m not doing this for my personal recognition, I’m doing this to help promote the things that inspire me.
While I wasn’t only focused on personal recognition in my previous writing, it was definitely part of my “why.”
I use this mantra in my daily life as a teacher. I strive to make everything I do in the classroom fit with the idea of “why” I’m a teacher. Each class is a little different. The general idea is that I’m a teacher to help you learn the tools needed to help my students become independent adults and to keep learning on their own.
And since this is a TED talk that I recommend to everyone I know already, I figured this is a perfect fit for today’s selection. My wife ordered his book, also called Start With Why, and I am planning to read it after she is done.
So for today, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you put aside 20 minutes and watch Simon Sinek’s TED talk. For those of you so inclined, he has a Tik Tok channel with more content.
