Photo by madmannequin; creative commons license.
One of the reasons I feel so happy these days is that I’m fulfilling my life purpose, particularly the part about celebrating being different. I have always thought “differently,” which has the propensity to get one humored at best and ridiculed or cast out at worst. It’s hard growing up in a world that tells you to be yourself but don’t color outside the lines.
Part of the reason I excelled in my Defense Department career as an acquisition reform “change agent” in the 90’s, before the term “thinking outside the box” became popular and then cliche’, was that I still thought differently about things. The problem I ran into with my bosses was that they expected me to think outside the box to come up with some new efficiency to be used at work and didn’t realize that I thought outside the box in all areas of my life, not just one tiny project. Let me tell you: talking about anything mystical in science-based bureaucracy or wearing something bohemian in a cookie-cutter-suit world will get you noticed by …
Thanks for reading! The complete version of this article is now included in The Long-Awaited, Honest-to-God Secret to Being Happy.
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