While listening to one of my local radio stations, which I do on a rather regular basis, one of the DJ’s uttered a phrase which was so grossly inaccurate that I simply cannot resist the urge to talk about it. In all honesty I think he only says the things that he does to make people like me find the nearest soapbox.
He said, and I quote, “you have to do what everyone else does to be successful”. Even though they kept on talking, all I heard was an echoing silence and then a little voice in my brain started screaming. And so here I am.
The ‘thing that everyone does’ and all the ridiculous trends, were started by one person at the very dawn of their emergence. It is not as though hundreds of thousands of people simply begin doing the very same thing at precisely the same moment.
The people who started it, they were doing something different.
Oh sure, once the masses decide that they like something it tends to stick around for a while and all the copycats get their five minutes. That being said, eventually it dies out and the only ones that are remembered are the ones who stood out from the crowd.
Do what everyone else does if the only thing that matters to you is immediate acceptance and a little bit of peer approval.
If you’re made of more solid matter, do what you do, and do it well.
It’s the ground-breakers and the entrepreneurs that can change the world. It is new ideas and new technology that make a difference.
If we all did what everyone else does we would still be living in little caves with clubs and greasy hair – and I would have been eaten by a wild animal because I wouldn’t have been able to see it sneaking up on me! So please, whatever you do, don’t always listen to the voices on the radio. For my sake, as well as yours.
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