Outlier – noun
1: something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body.
2: a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.
This is in the beginning of a book I am now reading “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, the story of Success.
What an interesting book on how there are so many factors that dictate the success of an individual. From where you are born, to whom you have for parents, from the availability to practice your talent, IQ, and to even the global transformation such as the Technology Era.
Preparedness meets opportunity repeatedly in the lives of our most successful individuals. It seems the whole world was lined up perfectly for them.
They all had 10,000 hours of practice, whether you are playing music like the Beatles or playing on computers like Bill Gates. It wasn’t work they were doing, but what they loved to do for 10,000 hours before actually making it big.
High Intelligence seemed to also need Practical Intelligence as well as parents that were supportive, and then living in the right place doing the right thing in the right era.
I identified with the term Outliers. Outliers from Normal, it seems we too had to have many things line up perfectly. The right set of parents, in the right community, believing in the right religion, right neighborhood etc. the perfect set up for dysfunction.
Amazing when I look at it from that point of view. How so many had to act a certain way for dysfunction to continue!
And the term Outlier also fits for being the one to step out of the dysfunction. Did I have 10,000 hours of practice in? Was I blessed with practical intelligence and more IQ? Was I now living in a supportive home? To reading authors that challenged the way I lived, believed and thought?
As I look backwards, I had been preparing myself totally, and that the Universe seemed to be one with me, all I needed the most I received.
I had the perfect darkness and then had the exact things I needed to transcend that, and now I feel like I am getting all I need at the right time to support me today.
I can see myself more as an Outlier in many places even today as well as in my past.
Being the oldest daughter I was given the task to be the second mother. In so doing, I was not a child among the children and I was not the real mother and I never felt like a daughter to her, but just second in command. I was in a position of being an outlier to each group, a group of one.
My whole past has been practicing to walk away alone, an outlier.
Now I sit in a place of gratitude that I had so much practice.
I just had no idea what I was practicing for!
And even today my story isn’t over, but I am confident that being an outlier I will be different, set aside from the norm, but I am way ok with that. Where will I go and what will I do, who knows, but I can tell you this, I must be practicing for it now!
Practice.
