"Own your future. Before someone owns it for you." - Futurist Jim Carroll
Groupthink. Committees. Consensus. Buy-in. Harmony. Concurrence. Unanimity.
Conformity.
These are the words, ideas, attitudes, and cultures that kill great ideas.
They are also the words and phrases that can kill your uniqueness, which is not a great thing. After all, your uniqueness - your ability to be different - is what can best give you the initiative you need to move forward into the future. To try new ideas, chase new opportunities, and pursue new challenges.
These words, ideas, and cultures are the very things that can crush your ability to be different - and you need to do your best to battle back against them.
After all, YOU are the owner of your future. ‘
Why would you let others define it for you?
Being different matters, because being different will allow you to be innovative, and if you can be innovative, you can take the initiative you need to launch yourself into a better tomorrow.
And the first step in doing that is to understand that you are in a battle - a conflict against conformity - so that you can ensure that you can be your own best self.
Think about it - you need to be unique and to do that, you are in a battle that ultimately will control your destiny. In this battle, you can’t let others beat you down, wear you out, tire your initiative, challenge your belief – because you know, deep down in your heart, that you are on the right path.
And even if you aren’t, at least the failure will be yours to own – and yours to learn from.
You need to understand what you are up against.
That's why you need to OWN your future.
By being unique.
Futurist Jim Carroll is slowly writing a book on "being unique." This post is from the first chapter of that project. He uses Apple and Linux-based products, so isn't much affected by today's global outage.