We are the great and powerful ones

I have a secret to share with you. For the last decade I’ve been exploring the mysterious, methodical, magical world of marketing. I know so many people find this space to be daunting, distracting, or even distasteful, and it is for similar reasons that I find it to be exciting and promising.

So I’d like to pull back the curtain and give you a glance from the other side. And I’m recruiting some favored characters to help me out.

I think the scenes of Oz from the classic movie Wizard Of Oz provide excellent metaphors for both the process and the profession of marketing. The world of marketing and sales is often perceived as wonderful: a place where you can make yourself into something completely new and totally gorgeous.

It can also feel terrifying: a place where you are confronted by your deepest fears, particularly of being exposed for the fraud that you fear you truly are. In this realm, you may feel both compelled and terrified as you defer helplessly to an “expert” whom you aren’t entirely sure if you can trust.

If you have experienced a long journey of exhilarating self discovery, you feel great anticipation about what might lie at the apparent end of that yellow brick road. You arrive carrying a brave and heavy wish to make it to another destination that seems at least partially impossible.

You want easy answers so you seek out a wizard to ask for help. You bring your lofty expectations to the apparent magicians of public relations, of marketing, and of sales.

But any good marketer knows that the answers to your questions lie not within any potions, spells or fortune telling they may conjure up, but rather inside you.

We may seek out marketing professionals hoping they can give us a brain (better strategy), a heart (a rebrand), or the nerve (we simply want them to take the risks so we don’t have to feel like we are). But we also come bearing a much deeper need. Put simply, we need someone well suited to hold up a loving mirror.

After all, the first question to be asked is “WHO are you?” The most confident of us may speak clearly on this, while others faint at the boldness of this daunting inquiry. Any great marketer will go the distance for you, asking many others about your identity as well to help them artfully deduce the real truth of the matter (which of course is difficult for any of us to perceive objectively on our own).

When we understand the truth of who we are, we connect with what ultimately drives us. “The great and powerful Oz knows WHY you have come.” This is the key that unlocks the door we’ve been standing before. We must know what we are really seeking in order for us to find it.

Here’s where it gets interesting — we cannot understand ourselves without acknowledging our perceived weaknesses.

We may be stunned to discover that this does not mean we are unworthy and will therefore be denied our wishes as we may have fearfully suspected. Indeed, “the beneficent Oz has every intention of granting your requests.”

But in order to have our wish fulfilled, we must first have clarity about why it hasn’t been fulfilled already. This will likely necessitate some honest inquiry and it may also mean we’ll need to adopt some new behaviors. A wizard, be they a professional marketer or someone else prepared for this task, inspires us to take up the challenge.

Very few enjoy change, but an excellent wizard knows that our own transformation is where the true magic lies. In meeting our challenges here, we are sure to elicit and strengthen the very qualities that we need in order for the impossible to become possible.

The wizard is merely a catalyst — a crucial one. She may be someone we’ve hired or she may be a grandparent, a neighbor, even a passing stranger. Relationships of all kinds can act as mirrors, helping us answer key questions about ourselves and see new possibilities.

Any fear we may feel about being deeply seen by others may be an important signal though. It can warn us about giving our power away to others, putting others on pedestals they may not be able to rise to, and attempting to sidestep the work of being our own hero. Indeed we should take care in considering what mirrors we choose to look into.

The best gift anyone can offer us, including ourselves, is to simply remind us that despite our insecurities we are in fact the great and powerful ones we may have been searching for all along.

As we practice trusting in our own goodness, and as we seek to share our power with others (and not hoard it from or lord it over them), we will develop the brain, heart, and courage we need. We will become the ones we may have been searching for.

A previous version of this article was originally published at lydiahooper.com.