I wanted to share something with you today that I think can help as you are preparing your platform, specifically, I call it a legacy project. A legacy project is like a platform, but there’s specific things that we do to make it even better. Something that you can actually use to then leverage for your interview, for media appearances, for on-stage questions. It just makes everything so much easier!
I talk about this in chapter four of my book, Create a Powerful Platform that starts on page 77 and the very first insert talks about the six things that you need to know for your pageant platform.
Number five, this has been coming up a lot lately. So this is why I specifically wanted to share this with you. And that is to focus on the light. I’m going to just teach this to you. It’s in the book. So maybe you’ve read this paragraph, but I want to go a little bit more in depth around this. Because it’s something that I think a lot of people make a mistake on and I don’t want you to make this mistake.
Oftentimes, what women do, especially when they’re new to pageantry, is they choose a topic that they want to raise awareness around or educate about throughout their year. But they choose that topic based on the problem that they see in the world. And that’s okay because the problems are so evident in our world, so we see something and we’re like, “Ah, I want to change that. I want to fix that.” And so, oftentimes what women do is they choose the problem. Let’s put the problem over here. Okay. “Here’s the problem. And this is the thing I want to raise awareness about, I want to make a change on.” Or whatever. What I want you to do instead, in order to stand out from all the other women who are focusing on the problem, is I want you to focus on the light.
So what do I mean by that? Well, every problem is kind of like the shadow, right? There’s like a shadow sign in the problem. But what I want you to do is find the light. Where is the hope in that problem? Another way of looking at it is the solution. What’s the solution to the problem? Let me tell you this too, there’s usually many solutions to a specific problem. What we work on together, as your coach, is I help you identify your specific solution to the problem. Something that comes only from your perspective.
So, how do you do that? Well, let’s take, for example, bullying. Bullying is a major problem in our world in many different capacities, at a lot of different levels. Everything from kindergarten bullying, all the way up to workplace bullying. There’s so many and many, many things in between. So instead of just saying, “Oh, I want to stop bullying.” That would be focusing on the shadow side, focusing on the problem by naming it and saying, “Oh, it’s bullying. I want to stop bullying.” What I want you to do instead is, what actually is the solution to bullying? Is it helping people make friends? Maybe it’s just that people don’t know how to make friends. And so, they’re wandering around alone and they feel like the only way to find self-worth is by putting other people down.
What you might say is, “You know what? The best solution to that is teaching people how to find and make friendships genuinely so they can find a fit in the world.” That’s one solution that you might say, for example. Another one might be that maybe there’s a solution that you say that, “Bullying needs to actually be spoken about.” We actually have to figure out, and identify what is bullying and why do we not do that? And so your solution might be four steps to help people understand and combat bullying by identifying it and by choosing a different path or something. That’s the light side of it.
Now, whatever your solution to the problem is, it’s going to come specifically from your individual experience. That’s what makes it so unique. So, while everybody else is out there, like, “Yep. We’re going to combat bullying,” or, “Yeah, I’m bringing awareness to heart disease.” I did that for years. I was like, “Oh, I’m just raising awareness for heart disease.” That’s fine. Because awareness is, I mean, it’s good to know that there is heart disease, but it’s not really solving the problem. We’ve got to solve the problem. So, when I first started in pageantry, I chose heart disease and I was like, “I’m bringing awareness to heart disease and all the problems about heart disease.” And it wasn’t until I got this, it clicked with me, the legacy project clicked, that I was like, “Ah, what if instead of focusing all my energy on pointing out the problem to everybody, if instead I created a solution and I said, ‘This is the solution’?”
That is how for me, Get a Better Body was created, through lots of research. Through lots of personal development and personal understanding and coaching. I discovered, “Ah, this is really the solution. It’s get a better body.” And Get a Better Body was my solution, my light, focusing on the light to answer and address that problem.
That’s what I want you to do. I want you to focus on the light. How can you still address that problem, but from your unique, specific ideas of what your solution can be? That is how you stand out. Because while everybody else is talking about bullying, you will have a specific solution. And that, my dear, is how you win a pageant!
