you are beautiful

“What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.” 
― Scott Westerfeld, Uglies

I was part of the KickStarter for A Decade of You Are Beautiful book. My book came last week, and it is awesome. It came with 2 big packs of you are beautiful stickers. Fun!

There are many wonderful parts to the book, but my favorite chapter is chapter nine titled, Be Open and my favorite bit starts on page 92…

"I was attending a leadership conference to hear Seth Godin speak. Sitting among 7,000 people, with over 150 thousand teleconferencing worldwide, I was rather excited. Seth was speaking on the subject of gifts when I unexpectedly heard him say, 'Matthew Hoffman put an idea into the world.' My mom, who was sitting right next to me, gasped out loud. (Yes, I was there with my parents).

Pictures of my work and You Are Beautiful installations began to stream across the massive projection screens. It was the first time I had ever been publicly linked to the project. I realized I had just been outed by an idol." 

Amazing! 

Here's what Seth Godin said that day:

"Giving gifts. Going to someone and saying I am doing this for you, I am doing this with you, hoping you will spread it. Matthew Hoffman put an idea into the world. A very simple idea. Suddenly, it started spreading, it started changing people. And if you can give something to people to believe in, just give it to them, magical things start to change." 

Matthew Hoffman has done a beautiful thing with his stickers, and the final page of his book brought tears to my eyes…

Check out You Are Beautiful and Matthew Hoffman; you'll be glad you did.