BANGALORE : Rousseau wrote, “Take the course opposite to custom, you will almost always do well.”
The brilliant ads for Apple computers inspire us to 'Think Different'. Or as I tell audience at my leadership speeches, “If you follow the crowd, the place you will most likely end up at is the exit.”
To live a richer, more rewarding life, it is essential that you run your own race. Stop being to the demands of social pressure at the expense of your uniqueness.
When you study the lives of the world’s most enlightened and effective people, you will see that they did not care about what other people thought of them.
Rather than letting public opinion dictate their actions, they had the courage to let their hearts drive them. And in taking the road less travelled, they found success beyond their wildest dreams.
One of the best quotations about the importance of being unorthodox comes from Christopher Morley, who said “Read every day something no one else is reading. Think every day something no one else is thinking. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
And perhaps the very best one comes from Emerson: “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
Over the next month, rethink the way you do things. Don’t just do things because everyone else does them.
Do the things that are right for you. Being different for all the right reasons is a wise way to live.
Just ask Einstein, Picasso, Galileo or Beethoven.