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Be a Positive Outlier and Change Your World

Written by: Dr. Vincent Kituku

Article Overview: When you think of it, George Washington was an outlier and so were characters such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Galileo, Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Nelson Mandela. Are you a positive outlier? When an outlier is removed from a set of data, its influence is gone. In your sphere of life or work, can your absence be noticeable? Would people wish you were still available to affect their work or life in a positive way? You don't need talent to be an outlier. You need vision of the future you want, decisions to get you started on a path toward your vision and actions that bring you results.

Be a Positive Outlier and Change Your World

Be a Positive Outlier and Change Your World

An outlier is a character, not from the average, that influences the outcome of a situation. The first outlier I witnessed was my father. This was before I was a graduate teaching assistant of statistics at the University of Wyoming, where I had in-depth lessons on how a single character or a small part of a large population can create havoc in studies.

Dad demanded the best of my brother and me. When he knew we would be late arriving at school in the morning, he went to the school office and asked the teacher on duty to cane us. If we were not among the top students, he did the spanking himself. For the record, he spanked me when I placed 6^th in a class of 120 students.

He never bought us long trousers or shoes until we were admitted in government-aided high schools. His thinking was that such luxuries would distract us from the task at hand, preparing for a better future. He owned and operated a small clothes shop-selling the items we couldn't wear.

Our home, it seemed, was a test site for young people's ability to do manual chores. We worked hard,even during some public holidays. Dad believed you couldn't have the strength to attend the festivities that were part of the holidays on an empty stomach. So you had to earn your keep.

What Dad demanded was different. You must be different to make a difference. My uncle, cousins and my best friends had shoes and long trousers. They worked, but we worked harder. We were, to the best of my knowledge, the only ones spanked for mediocre performance.

Dad was nicknamed Ian Smith, the last colonial ruler of what used to be Northern Rhodesia because of what seemed to be his unreasonable expectations. Without details, I'll just say that only my brother and I, in that group of uncles, cousins and primary school friends, were admitted at the university after passing exams that terminated the futures of thousands.

Here are key aspects of a positive and effective outlier, if you are to influence people for success in any endeavor in life.

• You must be inspired by two passions, love and hate. You must love the future you want to have regardless of what others say and/or do. You must also hate the status quo, mediocrity, and complacence.

• You must see things differently and act differently. An outlier can never settle for what the average masses accept.

• You must inspire people to focus on their long term goal. My father inspired us by promising to provide watches, suits and even cash if we were to be admitted at the university. When I achieved Upper Second Honors, he bought a new graduation gown for me. I kept it.

• You can never second guess your decisions and actions if your conscience is clear on the socio-economic benefits of your vision.

• Learn to move forward as naysayers busy themselves with what they think you can't achieve.

• Keep rejuvenating your enthusiasm by learning new strategies to turn your goalsinto reality.

• Remove bitterness from your heart. The best revenge is to do what your critics said you couldn't.

• Outliers do not sit and hope things will change. They get up and create the change they envision
  
  When you think of it, George Washington was an outlier and so were characters such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Galileo, Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Nelson Mandela.
  
  Are you a positive outlier? When an outlier is removed from a set of data, its influence is gone. In your sphere of life or work, can your absence be noticeable? Would people wish you were still available to affect their work or life in a positive way? You don't need talent to be an outlier. You need vision of the future you want, decisions to get you started on a path toward your vision and actions that bring you results.

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Article Tags: actions, attitude, influence, leadership, motivation, performance



Related Forum Posts
Re: Don’t worry, Enrich your life and Be happy - [quote="lisa":1rc4ik2q]Start saying positive things especially about yourself. How you communicate to yourself affects your thinking and your emotions, as well as your self-esteem.Change your mental pictures. What and how you see yourself and your surroundings make a difference to your thinking.Read more. Read about how those people who fought fear with courage and succeeded in life. Through reading, you will gain new knowledge and understanding and it will help you clear whatever is blocking your thinking and create more ideas. [/quote:1rc4ik2q] Lisa is right about this. Positive self talk can really make a difference. When you catch yourself saying something negative (whether verbally or just thinking it), turn it around and make it into the opposite. You have to remember to do this continually until it's just habit that the positive thought/saying becomes the first thing you hear instead of the second. It becomes automatic.
Name for website - Hmmmm Authors World Authors Network Authors World Wide Weblog World Wide Authors Arboretum (or some other alliterative word) WritertoWriter Writer to Reader WritersWorld WritersConnect AuthorsandtheirReadersBlog
Re: What can You Learn from a Jobless and Homeless Woman? - Positive thinking and a desire for success are fundamental qualities of an entrepreneur in my opinion.
Re: What inspires you? - Put a Visual Board of your dream and look at it for 10 days. And see the fun. Another inspiration thing is to have "Constant Positive Affirmations". This really shifts energy towards your goal. Say it in the morning and before bed. Robert
Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri


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