This is for all of you who didn’t enter the Change the World in 1 Minute contest.

Why not?

I’m not asking to make you feel bad or guilty. Guilt and obligation can go take a long walk off a short beer. A short but also very tall beer, from which they will fall very far down to the ground and go splat. Where was I? Oh right, I’m not asking to make you feel bad. In fact, I’m asking because I want to make you feel awesome. Bear with me.

Why didn’t you enter the contest? Think about it for just a second.

Now see if this sends you for a loop: as of the deadline, we had only received two entries to the contest.

I don’t know the reason why you didn’t enter. I could guess, but that’d be making the usual error. I do, however, know the reason Amanda didn’t enter. (Until, that is, she had second thoughts after the deadline.)

She didn’t enter because she thought she probably wouldn’t win. It’s like the bystander effect. Everyone assumes that someone else will do it, so nobody bothers.

“I have no intention of submitting a video, but…”

“Am I changing the world, and if so, does anyone even know?”

“If I don’t do anything, how will anyone even know there’s a revolution?”

– Amanda Braman-Ray

Amanda isn’t a biggified entrepreneur like Nathalie and Megan, the other two entrants. She’s just a regular person, living a life that seems relatively ordinary on the surface. But if you watch her video, you’ll see that her life is quite extraordinary. World-changing, in fact.

Perhaps your life is extraordinary, too.

Matt Arnold, after reading our manifesto, wrote, “I already opted out of religion, watching TV, and keeping up with news long ago, and have never been into the 9-to-5 rat race or politics. I only went to public school for my senior year of high school. I didn’t realize I was changing the world! I was just being happy.”

Don’t underestimate your personal power.

Take me, for instance. (This is Pace, in case you lost track.) There’s no fundamental difference between you and me. I’ve just taken more baby steps, that’s all. One day Kyeli and I decided to present a communication workshop to friends, then to an audience of strangers, then turned it into a business, then wrote a book, then amplified our business to become the Freak Revolution. Each one of those steps consisted of a bunch of little steps. Deciding to try it out. Figuring out how to do it. Breaking it down into not-so-scary, doable things. And then doing them.

If four-years-ago-Pace had heard about current-Pace’s accomplishments, she would have been intimidated. She would have thought “Whoa, that’s really impressive, but I could never do that!” But what the past four years have taught me is that I can do it; all I need to do is break it down into little pieces and then take them one at a time. Slow and steady.

You can be as awesome as you want to be.

The Freak Revolution is not about me. It’s not about Kyeli. It’s not about all those other umpty-hundred people on the blog or the newsletter or the forum.

The Freak Revolution is about you.

What are you going to do about it?