I Am Weird. But So Are YOU.

According to this brief, but impactful, book…

Non-apologetic, no negativity* Book Debrief: ‘We Are All Weird: The Rise of Tribes and the End of Normal’, by international bestselling author Seth Godin.

*Humans have positives and negatives, and as authors are humans, so do books! However, I like to focus only on the positives, because what I find negative you may not, and vice versa. There is enough negativity in the world. So, if I don’t find any positives — I don’t appraise it.

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you. But when you share a book, you discover what someone else sees too.” — Inspired by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

I believe in sharing what we learn.

Introduction

I’ve known I’m weird since around 6 years old, when my dead brother started to materialise in front of me.

Granted that was my own fault, as I asked him to.

I was also born and brought up in a war zone, had a narcissistic father, and I developed severe anxiety, including socially.

That all helped seal my weirdness.

So, when I saw this book stating ‘Weird is the new normal’, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

Key Points That Stood Out for Me

1. Some people choose to avoid conforming to the masses.

2. We train students to conform.

3. The freedom to choose to be weird is actually a good thing.

4. We’re not normal. We’re weird. All of us.

5. Weird can mean you’ve stood up for what you believe in.

6. We are all looking to find and be accepted by our tribe. By people we admire and hope to be respected by.

7. The weird aren’t loners or alone, they form smaller groups to belong to.

8. Standing out takes time, money and confidence.

9. There is nothing wrong with variety. Art at the edges is no longer an oddity, it’s the norm.

10. Choice enables well-being.

11. Canny successful marketers monetise weirdness.

12. Fishing for fun rather than work would have been weird to humans thousands of years ago, who fished to survive.

13. If marketers want me to buy from them, they have to acknowledge and respect my weirdness.

14. We’ve been trained since birth to enforce the status quo.

15. Those brave enough to seek weird will thrive.

16. Push the population to accept normal, and they encourage peer pressure to comply.

17. Pushing us to conform is at the heart of the stress we feel at work.

18. The challenge of your future is to be productive and useful with the tribe that cares about you.

19. Normal describes the defining characteristics of the masses.

20. Being normal or weird is subjective. Vegetarians are considered normal in some places in the world for example, but weird in others.

What Especially Resonated with Me

· ‘Weird is what we call people who aren’t normal’ — what the hell is ‘normal’ anyway? My norm is not your norm, and vice versa. And that is okay if neither of us harm the other.

· ‘The simple alternative to our broken system of education is to embrace the weird. To abandon normal’ — mass produced education produces more of the same, not different. We need different. We need weird.

· ‘Don’t waste time and money pushing kids in directions they don’t want to go. Instead, find out what weirdness they excel at and encourage them to do that’ — my father forced my older sister to train as a hairdresser. She did it, qualified, and never lifted a pair of hairdressing scissors again. He then tried to get me to train as a secretary, so out of an act of rebellion I said I was going to be a nurse. “What for?” he said. Confirming my suspicion that he was a narcissist, i.e. someone who ignores the needs of those around them.

· ‘There are corporations who fire employees for speaking up’ — and if they can’t fire them they make their life as difficult as possible, so they leave of their own accord. I have experience of this. Numerous times.

**Final thought by Seth Godin: ‘**If you persist in trying to be all things to all people, you will fail. Be something important to a few people’.

Afterword: I’d like to say “I’ve read this book so you don’t have to”, as I converted 103 pages into a 3-page article, but summaries don’t work that way, because they are always subjective. However, if you like the sound of anything I have written here, it’s likely you will enjoy the whole book anyway.

Thank you for reading. 😊

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