Why Be Normal When You Can Be Maverick? What if you were not who you thought you were? What if your habits put you in the path of such a well-defined set of experiences that those experiences came to define you?
Wouldn’t you then be able to simply change the actions that make up those habits, thereby putting yourself in the path of different experiences, thereby becoming defined as something different? What if you still remained recognisably ‘you’ even if you did this?
What would this all mean?
No Quite Normal
A maverick is defined by Judith Germain as being wilfully independent [1]. That can be rephrased as saying, wilfully putting ones self in the path of new experiences and ideas. And yet, the identity of Maverick sticks.
So what if we are not the sum total of our habits, yet we are mostly identified by them? What does this mean? Who are we then?
The Actual Point
What this is all meant to demonstrate is that, how and what we think is actually the basis of much of our experience. So it follows that, if you change WHAT you think about, and HOW you think about it, your experience of the world will change. And what that means is that you have at least a shouting chance of changing your life in any way you wish.
If you don’t like your life, your situation, the situation around you, the way the company is run or what have you, start thinking about solutions instead of problems, start figuring out HOW it could be different instead of only that it is bad.
And then start acting on these new points of view.
Oh wait, that’s maverick.
Pre-Early Adoption
When you do this, you become an originator, a prime mover. That’s a different role in life. Early adopters are lovely, but what are they adopting? Something an originator come up with. And most originators are not special. They are not specially intelligent, gifted, talented or unique. They just stopped following consensus and tried something new.
Oh wait, that’s maverick.
Constructing The Future
If you don’t like the present, the best way to achieve a different future is to stop acting like you are in the present. The timeline will diverge. Better still, influence some people around you to change as well. Give them a good reason, share your purpose.
It doesn’t matter if your options are not perfect, or if they themselves change, as you are changing too. What does matter that you start, that you get moving. Then anything can happen, then things move around you too. Just start
Oh wait, that’s maverick.
What’s Maverick?
The only maverick thing about being a maverick, is doing something new, that you thought of. The rest looks a lot like what you do every day, but you’re pulling away from the herd, in a new direction. All it takes is a small step each day. New thoughts every week, and new habits along the way.
Then you too will stand apart from the crowd, can influence a range of early adopters, can be … a maverick.
[1] Maverick – defined by Judith Germain as wilfully independent since 2005. Short ‘Maverick’ video here.
