I’m a mathematician, a theologian, and a health coach. On the bad days, that combination makes me feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing or where I belong. But on the good days — the better ones — I get to just be myself. I get to think about the things I actually want to think about, and that’s genuinely pleasurable. As I’ve been exploring Writing About My Point of View, I keep coming back to the idea that this strange mix isn’t a liability. It’s the whole point.
Being multidisciplinary is a good conversation starter. People get curious when you cross categories they assumed were separate. That’s what draws me to why you should write like a thought leader — the idea that your specificity is what makes you worth reading, not your comprehensiveness. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about thought leadership is that you have to know everything. You don’t. You just have to know what you actually think, and be willing to say it. That’s harder than it sounds, and it’s what I’m still working on through The F.A.T. Formula for Thought Leadership- A Personal Reflection.
What I find useful is thinking about it the way ABBA accidentally became glam rock — you mix up different categories and you get something fun and interesting that didn’t exist before. That’s not a grand strategy, it’s just what happens when you stop trying to fit in. 6 steps to writing thought leadership content like a pro frames it more methodically, but the underlying move is the same: own the weird combination, and name it clearly enough that other people can find it. I haven’t landed on my three core messages yet, and if I’m honest, I’m not sure what I’d do differently the day I did. I float around a lot, following interesting things.
Maybe that’s okay for now. There’s something in why I want to be a Christian writer that resonates — writing as a way of working out what you actually believe, not just broadcasting conclusions you’ve already reached. I’m somewhere in that process. And Tips on writing articles by Stephen Moore keeps reminding me that the craft itself is part of the thinking. I don’t need to have it all figured out before I start sharing it. I just need to keep going.