🥷The Unusual Paradox Of Fitting In
I used to think that life was forward, but it’s backward.
Alan Watts wrote: “Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure”
He called this the backwards law.
The backwards law states the more we pursue something the further away it is as the pursuit of the thing highlights our lack of the thing.
It’s cause and effect.
For example:
The pursuit of wealth makes us feel poor
The pursuit of relationships makes us feel lonely
The pursuit of purpose makes us feel aimless.
Sidenote:
This does not mean we shouldn’t ambitiously go for goals, it’s the understanding that things often get worse before they get better.
For example:
We must suck at something before we get good at it
We must experience cringe before we experience success online
This is a hard but necessary pill for all multipotentialite perfectionists to swallow.
By accepting and preparing for this reality, we can temper our expectations, reducing the likelihood of giving up when an idea doesn't produce immediate results.
Backwards Law
The backwards law explains the paradox of fitting in.
We create personas to fit in and avoid rejection from the tribe. However, we can only do this by rejecting parts of our true selves.
To avoid rejection from others we reject our true selves.
Why?
Because we mask our weirdness to fit in.
Our weirdness is who we truly are, it’s the essence of our individuality as creative beings.
The irony of creating personas and being accepted by the tribe is it further reinforces the insecurities we hide from the tribe.
For example, the desire for acceptance increases our fear of rejection.
We are not the architects of our shame but the custodians of it. The more we hide our shame, the more we empower it.
The paradox of fitting in is it creates acquaintances but prevents true connection.
Why?
Because…
We want to be truly liked by everyone
We want to be loved truly by someone
But we can’t truly connect with anyone if we’re hiding parts of ourselves behind personas.
This is backwards law 👇
The more we pursue fitting in, the more we feel left out.
Weirdness is Our Strength
It’s our weirdness that makes us stand out in any industry.
Every major record label in the UK passed on Ed Sheeran.
This was despite his obvious talent because he was a chubby white dude with ginger scruffy hair.
Ed didn’t look like a pop star.
He looked Weird.
But it was his chubby white ginger looks combined with his talent that made him go super viral on SB.TV
SB.TV is an urban rap YouTube channel where 99% of the artists featured are black.
So having a white chubby ginger bloke rapping with a loop pedal and a tiny acoustic guitar made him stand out.
It was Weird.
The video went super viral with millions of views because of the combination of:
Weirdness + Talent = Attention
Two things happened that changed the course of Ed’s life that fateful day because of his weirdness.
The famous UK pop/ rapper Example saw Ed’s viral video and offered him the main support slot for his sold-out UK tour
Ed’s self-released EP went from obscurity to the top of the iTunes UK Album Charts.
This was a first for an unsigned artist.
The same record labels that rejected Ed because he looked weird, entered a bidding war because Ed Sheeran had leveraged his weirdness + talent to get attention.
As a recovering multi-platinum artist manager, one of the ironies of the music industry is talent is the least important quality in a hit artist.
You need enough talent, but talent without attention is futile.
The most important thing in any market is attention.
To get attention you need to stand out.
To stand out you need to be weird.
So stop trying to fit in.
This applies to any industry.
Fitting in with the status quo is accepting mediocrity. Hiding your weirdness is costing you clients and limiting your earnings.
Because fitting in means you don’t stand out. It means you don’t share your contrarian ideas.
It means you don’t combine your related skills to create a niche for one.
It means you stay in your lane.
It means you don’t take risks. It means you’re invisible.
Embracing our weirdness is difficult but liberating.
This is niching up, and not down to stand out and get noticed.
Conformity crushes attention, while weirdness amplifies it.
If you want to stand out and make more money you need to…
Stop fitting in, and Be More Weird!
✅ 1:1 Sessions
If you want to get more clients, get clarity on your big ideas and have more impact, you can book a session to niche up your related skills to create a niche of one here! 👇