Remarkablogger Manifesto: What Do You Stand For?

Sep 16, 2008
18 Comments

takestand This post is the second in a week-long heavy-hitting series called the Remarkablogger Manifesto. The post in the series are:

  1. What Do You Believe In?
  2. What Do You Stand For?
  3. What is Non-Negotiable?
  4. Why Do You Blog?
  5. What Will Your Legacy Be?

The inspiration for this series comes from changes I’m making in my life that are not separate from my work. See the first post, Remarkablogger Manifesto: What Do You Believe In? for more on why I’m doing this series.

What Do You Stand For?

Something I had never determined for myself that I felt was important was: what do I stand for? Deciding what you stand for and what you will not stand for is the next step after taking an inventory of your beliefs and recognizing what you believe.

Why take a stand? There’s a saying: If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. When faced with an ethical challenge, what criteria do you apply to it in order to decide how you will act? How do you make any kind of real difference in the world? You have to know what you stand for.

Clear Path and Difficult Times

Knowing what you stand for makes your choices in life easier to decide, but not easier to live with. It is surprisingly difficult to determine what you stand for, because it’s easy to confuse this with beliefs and desires (that’s why you have to know what you believe before you know how you stand). Taking a stand means you have to defend it (sometimes against yourself). Your path is often clear, even though it may be difficult.

Hypocrisy and Action

Standing for something means you have to act. You cannot claim to stand for something and then fail to act. There is an immense difference between just agreeing with an idea and standing for something.

Because you are acting in agreement with your stance, events are put in motion that move you closer to your goals (sorry, no law of attraction bullshit here!). What is the difference is between someone who agrees with an idea and someone who has taken a stand? Action.

Enemies and Confrontation

Taking a stand means you will make enemies and force confrontation. This makes people so uncomfortable that they never take a stand on anything. They just drift through life avoiding all confrontation and action which would propel them towards true success. This is insidious because it’s so easy to fail to see this for what it is: hidden fear. Fear you don’t acknowledge in yourself.

If you don’t take a stand, you don’t give other people a reason to act against you (you also don’t give them a very strong reason to like you). When you do take a stand, others who have taken an opposing stand will act against you. You will have enemies. It’s been said that if you don’t have enemies, you’re not doing anything noteworthy. If you examine any great person, past or present, you will see that they all have one thing in common: they had enemies.

But most people are so afraid of confrontation that they will run from your stance. They may dislike you because your beliefs conflict with theirs, but they’re not invested enough in themselves to take a stand against you. Being willing to confront–and being known as willing to confront–gets obstacles out of your way.

I’m not saying you should be confrontational. Note the difference: when you stand for something, you’re willing to confront others in order to fight for what you stand for (or fight against what you stand against). When you’re just confrontational, you’re a boor. I’m not talking about being a troll. This isn’t about disrespecting, insulting, or being rude.

Respect and Trust

You will earn respect and trust if you take a stand. This is the other side to creating enemies. Taking a stand means you will draw people to you. Those who agree with your stand will be more likely to trust in you. They will respect you. They will even come to bat for you and defend you. In many cases, even your enemies will respect you, and will trust you to act in agreement with your stance.

By taking a stand, you are polarizing your audience. Polarization attracts some people and repels others. The internet is big enough to build a large, strong audience no matter your stance.

What I Stand For

I can hear you thinking, “That’s great Michael, but anybody could talk out of their ass and say stuff like this. What do YOU stand for.” How do I know you’re thinking that? Like I said yesterday: magic powers.

So here’s what I stand for:

Liberty and capitalism. Even though I may not have just come out and said it, some of you who follow me on Twitter probably haven’t failed to notice I lean a bit to the left in some ways, but not others. It isn’t liberalism, but liberty I stand for. And that means liberty from anyone else’s morals or social values, as well as liberty from economic or physical oppression.

With that liberty, I want to do my own thing unapologetically and make money. I stand for liberty and against restrictions on liberty of any kind, no matter what political party or belief system they come from.

Creating Opportunity. My idea of liberty in action in daily life is that it gives us the freedom to give and take opportunities. How do opportunities come to exist in the world? By people creating them. Lately I’ve created opportunities here for you to get more blog traffic and get more Twitter followers. I stand for creating opportunity, and I stand against those who would restrict opportunity.

Compassion and kindness. Capitalism is not exploitation or harm. It is simply an economic enterprise framework. All of the evil in the world can be prevented when people remember to be compassionate and kind. This is never a system failure, but always a human one. It takes great strength to be compassionate and kind, and like everyone else I can’t always live up to it, but I stand for compassion and kindness, and this guides my actions.

Creative expression and art. Out of liberty and compassion comes an appreciation for beauty and creative expression. So I also stand for art and all manner of creative expression. I stand against the restriction of creative expression and art. I stand against the decimation of art in the public sphere.

How to Know What You Stand For

So now I ask again: what do you stand for? Do you know? If you haven’t written it down in black and white, you don’t really know, because your thoughts are more vague than you realize. If you took a belief inventory from yesterday’s post, then you will avoid the problem of getting your stances confused with your beliefs. Remember: beliefs come first, and they’re how you know what to stand for (and against).

Write down what you stand for, and be prepared to have to live to it. Because if you can’t live up to what you say you stand for… then I don’t think you really stand for it. There are life-changing consequences to this. I’m feeling that already, and I’ve barely begun.

Here’s to your blogging success!

Michael Martine, Remarkablogger

Blog Marketing is what I blog about, Blog Consulting is what I do–How can I help you? Click here to find out.

[photo credit]

  • ...and I stand for delivering transcendent, transformative experiences to athletes who understand their power and beauty!
  • @Alex - Well said. I know what you mean about people who feel there is only one way. I especially don't like it when people like that are leading the country.
  • Just took the test Chris linked to and not surprisingly I'm more economically left/socially libertarian than both Mandela and the Dali Lama. Hence why I'd never go into politics.

    And now, what do I stand for?

    Not just tolerance but acceptance of different ways of being. My philosophy is "there is no one way." I never argue with people but this is the one thing I will I fight with people about (which of course is an exercise in futility because the people who believe there is only one way will never see other ways).

    I stand for minimal negative impact on the world - environmentally, financially, socially. This means taking care to not sh*t on the world out of selfishness and to clean up your sh*t when you do so unintentionally.

    I stand for people helping others and I lead by example on this one. Much of my happiness derives from knowing I've helped someone. Although I do have trouble asking for help because I don't want to be a burden (see the above point).

    As for how that informs my blogging, given that my blog is about helping others and looking at the world from many points of view, I think I'm bang on.

    Thoroughly enjoying this series!

    Cheers,
    Alex
  • @Amy - Thanks! :)
  • What a great series you're working on here. :-)

    I love this post, partially because this is the third time I've read it and I still feel like I haven't had it all sink in yet.
  • Hm, I'll add Sonia's to my list about the helping others who ask - but would that be a belief? Possibly not because we act on it... ugh, Michael, you and your philosophy!

    :)
  • @Rita - I know you didn't do it just to gain exposure. That's why I was clear that it was OK. :)

    @Franklin - Traffic may be a result, but what we're about here goes to the core of who we are, so it is much bigger than that.

    @Sonia - Thanks for sharing. I can tell you know the difference between sympathy and compassion. I know you act on your compassion, too, and it's one reason why I respect you. :)
  • Great post, and great point to do the hard work of figuring this out for oneself.

    I stand for boundaries, for connection, for respect. I stand for helping people who ask for it, with the understanding that sometimes it takes a lot of work and patience to coach them to use that help in a constructive way. I stand for the protection and nourishment of all children, everywhere. I try very hard to stand for compassion and to embody compassion, but it's damned hard and I don't always do very well at it. But I keep trying.
  • I like the idea of taking a stand because building controversy and enemies is one of the best ways to having a somewhat successful blog. It a lot of times bloggers that get fed up with you will end up writing a post about it. This will only let you be in the limelight and get free traffic to your blog.
  • My invitation for examples was not to gain exposure on your blog; it was to demonstrate that heck, yes! I blog what I believe!

    And you are right, this is NOT easy. I thought about my answer for 24 hours before deciding not only what I wanted to say, but how to say it!

    Thanks,
    Rita
  • @Rita - examples would be welcome, I simply wanted to open up the discussion more. If you want to provide examples, please do (more than one link will put your comment into moderation, but I will of course approve it). I'm not saying you have to, just saying you're welcome to. :)

    @James - Harder than it looks, isn't it? :) Funny how we overlook the obvious, as I didn't include anything about my stance on the environment even though I would say the same as you about it.
  • This one is so easy to answer and yet so tough to put down in words, because we're talking concepts, not just statements. I'll give it a shot, though.

    I stand for equal rights, and I stand for live and let live.

    I stand for freedom of choice, action, culture and expression. But I also stand for tolerance, respect and knowing when to shut one's mouth.

    I stand for caring for the environment and its creatures, clean air, water and land. I stand for reduce, reuse and recycle at all times.

    I stand for integrity.

    Hm. Okay, I give up. It's hard to put into words :)
  • Michael,

    Thank you for the response. These beliefs ARE my blog, and I have blogged about both, directly or indirectly. If you would like some specific examples, I will be more than happy to direct you to the posts that speak to these issues directly.

    The beauty of not having a "theme" is that I can share these beliefs in every subject about which I choose to blog. Your exercise here, when I first read about it yesterday, should be "mandatory" for some of the bullsh*&&rs in the blogosphere.

    Thank you,
    Rita
  • @Rita - Thanks for sharing. How do you think this stance informs your blogging? We may not blog about what we stand for, but it has to come through in our blogging somehow.
  • I stand for a firm and respected separation of Church and State.

    I stand for the rights of individuals to express and live their own lives, with a government protecting individual decions, not removing them.
    Thank you.

    Rita
  • @Chris - Yes, I think that might be why after so long third parties and independents are beginning to take a more prominent role in American politics. Here in Vermont, for example, an independent is running for governor and he has received endorsements from the state's three biggest unions (normally they would back the democratic candidate).

    One of my favorite old jokes is: what do you call a Republican who's not rich? A sucker. I like it because it speaks to the point you raise about the difference between values and votes.
  • Interesting where you mention "Liberty and capitalism" - I find in discussions, this test is quite useful for working out where you stand politically

    http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

    Quite often people have a political party affiliation but do not realize their own values are at odds with the way they vote :)
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