Happy Friday Night Love and Light to you!
I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard the name Maya Washington? Yes? No? She’s a YOUtuber about yay-high, who crafted this nifty social experiment campaign about two years ago that revolved completely around shameless self-promotion. I mean, seriously. One random day, waaaaaaaay back in July of 2012, she posted a random video challenging herself to come out of her shell of being an awesome creative (she’s a photographer by trade) and transition herself into a social media savvy buzzfeed. Her campaign was to last 365 days.
Her rules for this campaign were the following (and I don’t quote):
10 tweets a day
3 Instagram posts a day
Several FB posts a day
1 YOUTube vid every 2 weeks
Something on Tumblr (she was murky on this)
During her year long experiment, homegirl morphed from Maya Washington to ShamelessMaya. The campaign itself evolved from the “Be Shameless and Promote Yourself Campaign” to its current state of #BeShameless and #DoYouBoo. The idea behind the campaign, from what I understand, was about the battle a lot of we creative types have with assertive self-promotion and the fear of being deemed tacky about such things. She was also concerned by how there seem to be so many people who are literally well-known for absolutely nothing, whilst so many talented folk aren’t known at all. Maya’s social experiment was one of self-confidence and fearlessness, whilst utilizing the resources she had, along with her talents and interests, to showcase her awesome in a way that engaged the most people. (We’ll also assume she was challenging the notion that mostly whack people win on social media. I’m guessing here. *cough*)
When you start at the first of Maya’s videos and work your way through her evolution (which is huge), you clearly see how she got from that first random video, to being a photographer/creative director now for Prince. Yes. Prince. Gaaaah!
I don’t know exactly what her dream was when she started, or if she even knew. She never said what her exact goals were. We’ll assume her major mission was simply to promote herself in ways she wasn’t used to. She didn’t focus on one particular talent. In order to explore the viability of her content, she tried all kinds of stuff. She went from one video every two weeks to three videos a week. And she rocked them joints.
And that’s not all boo. Her look totally transformed. She went from having all this gorgeous curly hair, to having super short blue hair (there’s a great story behind such things). Her videos evolved from cute standard to gorgeous production genius. Her content changed from playing around with all kinds of random stuff like “How I Wash My Curly Hair” and “What’s In My Fridge” and “How To Get Rid of Roaches” to like thee most amazing celebrity transformations (she’s also an amaze-balls makeup artist), music videos, fashion look books, unusual interviews and really awesome tech tutorials (so our videos can look as amazing as hers). What I love most about Maya is her creative generosity and her positivity. Plus, I adore the way she persistently encourages her viewers through her work to live their own dreams shamelessly.
One time, (at band camp) she made a vid talking about how she’d been studying legendary folk of all industry (and of all time). She said (and I don’t quote) the one thread that bound all the greats together was their willingness to shamelessly promote their cause. Whatever it was.That’s how people got to know MLK, Gandhi, Oprah or even Steve Jobs’ greatness. They told people. They showed people. They used what they had, to get where they wanted to go. Fearlessly. Shamelessly. They experimented with their possibilities. AND they were generous with their gifts. Whatever they were. Through a seemingly simple social media social experiment, Maya Washington did the same dang thing. Mind. Blown.
What’s really flipping cool about Maya’s story is that what she did, every one of us can do in our own unique ways. We’re not talking about rocket science here. We’re talking about taking tangible steps to face and conquer our fears.
Maya wasn’t really being shameless when you think about it. She used that word, but what she was actually doing was challenging herself to evolve as a creator. We’re all creators. We’re all here to live the lives of our design. And we all do. We don’t always like what we’ve designed, but the great news is that we can always change it. Maya did. She didn’t like where she was when she started and by the time her social experiment was over, she didn’t even recognize her old life anymore. She took tangible steps to change her circumstances. She challenged herself to test her own perceived limitations. She used the skills she had to expand and grow to where she wanted to be. She found her inner shameless. ShamelessMaya is now 2 years old. Mission Accomplished. Boo.
I just looooove social experiments, don’t you? Since I like to view life as one big, long science experiment anyway, I get all geeked when I challenge myself to do something seemingly impossible for a pre-determined length of time. I’m always surprised at the outcome and I always prove to myself at the end that I truly can do any and everything I put my mind, heart and soul to do. You already know I believe myself to be a magical superhero. So, there’s that.
Revisiting Maya’s transformation, got me to thinking about my own. My transformation started with a whole food cleanse. Which sounds dumb, but that was the thing I challenged myself to do that changed the entire direction of my life and work. I’ve written and published two novels (about to be a third), created a whole new literary genre, created a brown girl superhero, started an online school for potential superheroes, created a whole new language, walked through and jumped over fire (twice), became a burgeoning farmer, co-authored a healthy food app (and soon to be a book series), stopped buying toothpaste and deodorant (cause I make my own), started this internationally subscribed-to Friday Night LOVE + Light, opened and closed a (really gorgeous) commercial internet radio station AND done did a whole bunch of other awesome stuff I never thought I would ever, ever do since then. Social experiments are the stuff of life. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve actually accomplished publicly and privately. Life Explorer will forever be my job description.
Meanwhile, I’ve never done anything of the magnitude of the #BeShameless campaign. I wonder what would happen if we all decided to take Maya’s challenge? I wonder what would happen if we explored our possibilities by shamelessly promoting our gifts and talents in utterly creative ways? I wonder what would happen if we gave ourselves 365 days to implore the whole wide world to know who we are? What would our wildly improbable goal(s) be? What would you do? Which of your gifts would you highlight? What would you be willing to make yourself shameless about? Hmmm. Something to ponder isn’t it? Really think about such things this weekend and the coming week, won’t you? I have an idea I’m going to run by you next week, K? In the meantime, check Maya out. She truly is an inspiration in what a truly gorgeous #Be(ing)Shameless campaign/evolution looks like. #ThisCouldBeUsButYouKeepPlayinTho
So. That’s what I learned this week. I do hope it helps something. Thank you for reading this (!!!) Remember always to #RuleYoSelf with L.O.V.E. Have a Happy Awesome Weekend! Love you madly!
Osho Lovianhal,
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