Pick Yourself And Be Like Your Creator

“She’s a pigmy,” said my beautiful teenage daughter. 
 
“A what?”
 
”A pigmy.” 
 
“What? How? Is she small?” I said, trying to understand.
 
”What?” She asked, confused and looking at me like I must be 50 or something. 
 
“How is she a pigmy?” 
 
“Dad! A ‘pick me!’” ’
 
“Ohhhhh. What is that?” 
 
She went on to explain that a pick me is just what it sounds like. Someone who interacts with others with an attitude of seeking validation. It means the way they talk, dress, or anything else they do is designed to get attention and love, I presume, so that they can love themselves.
 
This is not an uncommon type, and unless we are lucky sociopaths, we all fall into it sometimes. 
 
But then I was listening to a book by marketing guy, Seth Godin, called Linchpin, and he used the same words when he said (and I’m paraphrasing), “don’t be a ‘pick me,’ pick yourself.”
 
In any industry, we can go about things in one of two ways: 
 

1. We can look for the gatekeepers who decide who and what is good, and we can wait for them to open the gates. Musicians can try to impress record labels, writers can try to impress traditional publishers, business people can try to get hired by a company, and so on.

 
Or…
 

2. We can pick ourselves. We can make music and publish it on iTunes, we can write books and self publish (like this one!), we can start our own businesses (like this one!). 

 
Godin didn’t mean we couldn’t work for a business, but the way we work matters. 
 
Instead of phoning in your work every day, just doing the job as the cog in the machine, you can “pick yourself” and start taking initiative, making yourself the last person that would get laid off if anyone got laid off. That’s what he calls a linchpin. 
 
I like it.
 
Because we were not created to be cogs. And none of us were created to be “pick-me’s”. 
 
The law of identity, A is A, means that we are someone completely and utterly unique. Having begun our lives in the mind of God, we were then fashioned exactly as fearfully and wonderfully as He intended. 
 
Then, we were given the reins. “Go create…as you produce, multiply, subdue earth…” says God. 
 
“Go and be like me and fulfill what I had in mind as I dreamed you up,” says God. 
 
My daughter was using the term only slightly differently than Seth Godin. By “pick me” she meant the kind of person who is seeking validation. You know the type, because, like me, sometimes you have likely been the type. 
 
It’s a tragedy. 
 
Picking yourself is picking God and His wild imagination of what you could become, what you could create, and what you could give the world, blessing it on His behalf and for His great glory. 
 
I mean, you could be glorious in your creating and giving and if you are so glorious, how much more glorious your Creator! 
 
I’m feeling love for you right now if you are reading this, and I pray you pick God, pick yourself, and do something amazing today. (And often, it is the little things that can be most amazing!)
 
 
 
 
 
Reminder: Focus Today 
 
Don’t forget to live in focus, abiding in the present and in Christ. Everything good can happen when we do that, and you can’t imagine just how good until you let God be God in this way.