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 goals into 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.