WEEK 52
Day 358: On Acting Differently From Others
Unless you think that the majority of people are living successful lives, chances are that at some point you will have to act differently from those around you. Success can take many forms and it is often about standing out from the crowd or being above average, spotting when the crowd moves one way and making sure that you move the other.
It takes guts to stand out from the crowd and move the other way when, deep down, you know that it’s you who’s right and not everyone else. Even if you’re a self-disciplined, mentally tough person, it’s still hard to go against the crowd.
For this reason, one of the most powerful exercises you can do to improve your chances of acting differently from others when you know that you’re right is to practice holding your ground. If somebody tells you to do something in a given way but you don’t understand why, ask them to explain their request. If the explanation isn’t sufficient, suggest a different way of doing things that you think might be better.
Note that this isn’t about confrontation for the sake of confrontation. It’s an exercise in questioning doing things in a given
way just because “that’s how they’ve been done until now,” but nobody knows why.
This way, you get to learn (on a small scale) how it feels when you’re opposing the current, and this experience will help you hold your ground when the stakes are higher.