At my local Lululemon store, while shopping with my wife Jen, I saw this quote on their message board and took a picture of it.  I thought to myself…what a profound statement!

In my experiences people have a tendency to want to fit in and follow what the crowd is doing.  The masses are the definition of average and we have plenty of average to go around.  If you do what everyone else is doing you will get the same result as everyone else.

Those who are successful at the highest levels do something different.  It is that difference, whatever it may be, that causes them to stand out and become an outlier.  If you want to become the best it is scary to go against the grain and others will attempt to hold you back, call you crazy, and be negative, but it is the only way to truly get to the top of the bell curve.

Could you imagine if Dick Fosbury trained the high jump like every other athlete of his time?  We would have never figured out that going over the bar backwards was better than forwards.  Certainly people thought he was crazy but it was his difference that won him the gold medal 1968.

People like Dick Fosbury are either “genius” if they are successful or “crazy” if they fail.

Don’t be different just to be different, be different to be better!