Friday, July 30, 2010

To Fit or Not to Fit in

I don't think the idea is to fit in. I think it is to stand out.


Remember when we were teenagers trying to find our place in life? We wanted to be different (at least my generation did - and the one before it, come to think of it)? Now, here I am grown up and I've forgotten that. Trying to fit in was painful when we weren't accepted, but being different carried its own kind of pain. We suffer when we try to hold to the world's standards of what it thinks we should be.


Even my business coach last year and all the business education I took reminded me of that. You don't get anywhere in life "fitting in". My coach said, "Try doing something exactly the opposite OR take what they are doing and improve on it", but the message was always, "do something that differentiates you from the next guy".


People grasp this concept for a while, then forget about it. Did we stick to the ad campaign, "Dare to be different?". It came and went like every other fad in advertising because after a while you can't hold people's attention saying the same thing over and over unless they have a vested interest in your message. An emotional investment that benefits them in some way. Something else I learned in my Law of Attraction: Black Belt in Excellence training.


The Black Belt course proved it as one of the laws of the Universe.  "Fitting in", or aligning yourself with others gives your power and energy over to them and you just fade away into the background, into the ether. "Nice women rarely make history", or whatever the saying is. A variation on that in one of my favorite Doctor Who Big Finish audio productions was spoken by Rassilon, the greatest figure in Time Lord history. He said, "One does not make history in a shed at the bottom of the garden".


In other words, don't hide if you want to get noticed. Don't blend in. You will be doing yourself - and the world - a disservice, denying it the beauty that is you.

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