I spent a lot of time on YouTube this week listening to Troy Baker's series "Let's Get Into It." And I greatly enjoyed the storytelling, authenticity, and takeaways. In one of the videos, Troy talks about he used to go into casting calls and auditions, thinking he had to impress the directors. The final decisions weren't ever made based on how badly he wanted to impress the judges for these audiences. No— the core purpose of these auditions was to express the characters and roles in the project. In his video Troy said that "expressions over impressions" at the end of the day were what made him stand out over all the other auditioners.

After watching his series I thought about how it applied to different industries and roles. So many people are looking for coding opportunities to fill the demand for software engineers. The corporate ladder encourages people to stand out above others for their next raise or promotion. Social events and etiquette ask us to care so much about making a “good impression”. We’re not listening. We're not adapting. We don't even see what anyone else thinks.

Despite the limited time we have, we want to share all our wins, our accomplishments, our details in order to impress, not to express. That promotion package, that event, that presentation, that discussion, or that time, wouldn't it have been vastly different if we had put in the same amount of attention to expressing our messages?

I enjoy this mindset because it says we're enough. What we come with and who we are is enough. We don't need to impress anyone. There's a hard line between what we can and can't control, and we can't control anyone's opinions of us. I hope this reminds you to make an impression by striving to create an expression.