Are You In or Out?
I have been thinking A LOT about how different, or what is seen as different, is interpreted as deficient or disordered in some way. Highly Sensitive Children are intense (different than the majority) and thus ‘extra’ to parent, but, in many cases, they are diagnosed because of it due to a lack of understanding. (That is not to say that diagnosis is not real in some cases.) This really concerns me as, on some level, society is saying that different = disordered. But, don’t we actually need different, out-of-the-box ideas for healthy progress?
I am going to stop there and let some creative disrupters that definitely lived outside of that box have the floor.
For an amazing summary, look up Apple’s “Think Different” commercial from 20+ years ago.
Greta Thunberg
“Being different is a gift. It makes me see things from outside the box. I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things. If I would’ve been like everyone else, I wouldn’t have started this school strike for instance.” BBC interview
Albert Einstein
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Bill Gates
Articles and movie “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” highlight specifically how his brain works differently
Maya Angelou
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
Temple Grandin
“When I was young, I thought everybody thought like me. I am learning more and more that minds can be different, and how they solve problems.” VCU Speech
Stephen Hawking
Renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist that studied black holes, while living with ALS for over 40 years
Richard Branson
Champions disruptive leadership and openly talks about how his dyslexia made him feel different while growing up
Marie Curie
Pushed the envelope by even attending university and then developed a novel idea regarding “radioactivity” as she dubbed
Malala Yousafzai
Stood up even though she felt fear all of the time. “You must have the confidence to say that this thing is going wrong, and we must raise our voice. At that time, I wanted to live my life as I want.” ABCNews
Steve Jobs
Thrived after dropping out of college AND being fired from his own company
“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Commencement
Frida Kahlo
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Proposed a project that combined hypertext and the internet. The end result was the World Wide Web we know and rely on today.
Kacey Musgraves
“I remember being repelled by some of the stylistic norms that were expected around then for a female in country music – subject matters, style choices, things I didn’t find myself being inspired by. I was thinking, I’m not going to do this if that’s how it is.” The Guardian
Martin Luther King
Refused to accept the way things were and led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s. His “I Have a Dream” speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.
Stephen King
American author with millions of copies sold. Interviews cite that he felt like an outsider growing up.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
One of only nine female students during her time at Harvard and championed a better legal foundation of women’s equality. “She Persisted”