There Are No Secrets (And That’s the Secret)

I think the best secret you can learn is that there are no secrets.

This space is normally reserved for opining. Sometimes, I use a little anecdote to reveal a lesson I’ve learned that I also wanted to share with you. Other times, I goof off, using a bunch of animated GIFs or parenthetical asides to land some jokes.

But no matter what I put INSIDE the post, I know there are some people reading — perhaps even you — who read this part hoping to take the same thing AWAY from this section: a secret.

We live in this culture where the perceived value is rather high when you say things on a stage (literally, like at an event, or digitally, like on a podcast). What this does, however, is it replaces internal think time with external consumption time. I need an idea or answer or inspiration, and so I will consume this podcast to give myself a kick in the pants.

But sometimes, the best way to get an idea is to kill your heroes and realize you’re it. It’s on you.

Sometimes, the best way to find your answers is to open a notepad and sketch, or sit and think in the quiet.

Sometimes, the best way to get inspired is to go for a walk, and maybe cross to a different side of the road than in the past.

We place a premium on the answers and ideas of other people, and it’s altogether too easy to assume “they” hold some kind of great insight that we are incapable of discovering ourselves. Why?

I think the best secret you can learn is that there are no secrets. I think…

JAY ACUNZO is a keynote speaker, a former media strategist and marketer at Google, HubSpot, and VC firm NextView, and the current host of various original series for brands. His weekly podcast, Unthinkable, explores how to trust your intuition. Through stories and experiments, the series attempts to ground the idea of intuition in reality so you can use it as a tool to do better work. Learn more and subscribe at unthinkable.fm