Embracing Your Weirdness

[Music]

have you ever felt

like you didn’t fit in have you ever

looked down and thought

how did i get here what am i wearing

well that might not be totally

unjustified

the chances of you existing are

incredibly

slim the only reason you’re here is

because of a precise combination

of four billion years of survival and

reproduction

of every single one of your ancestors

some very smart people have actually run

the figures

and worked out that the odds of your

specific

combination of genetics existing at one

in ten

to the power of two million six hundred

and eighty five thousand

that number isn’t just larger than all

the particles in the universe

it’s larger than all the particles in

the universe

if each particle was itself another

universe it’s larger than the likelihood

of the entire

2 million person population of northern

ireland

all rolling a trillion-sided dice

and each getting a seven basically

the chances of you existing are zero

and yet somehow against all those odds

you’re here what if i told you that this

miracle

of your existence means that embracing

your weirdness

is your duty to yourself the entire

human race

and the universe at large i want to

invite you to believe

that embracing your weirdness will

improve your entire life

competitively socially and spiritually

let me tell you how i realized this and

like all

good philosophical insights it begins

on a reality tv dating show

it’s 2015 and i’m on the south coast of

majorca

looking out across the pool of a

beautiful multi-million pound villa

14 single guys and girls in swimwear are

getting changed ahead of tonight’s party

and there’s a few million people

watching so

obviously as you do i decided

that now would be an opportune moment

to have an existential crisis

i’m on a tv show and for the last few

weeks i’ve been watched by cameras

24 hours a day as the big name on campus

party boy

i thought i was unravels

internally i’ve been a club promoter

model for nearly a decade

so i thought i belonged in this world

but i was struggling to connect

i’d have these weird things i wanted to

talk about that would pop up in my head

like whether robot pets are ethical or

if there’s a version of the simulation

where we’re all made of ice cream

but then i’d remember the club promoter

party boy persona

i thought was me and i pushed those

thoughts away

so i continued to play the role

and as i scrabbled around inside looking

for the person

i thought i was i kept finding

nothing the thing is

when you hide your true self for long

enough you can bury it

under so many personas that you

genuinely

don’t know who you are anymore and i

don’t

think it’s just me maybe you have felt

this

too in my experience many of us

perhaps most of us spend an inordinate

amount of time trying to appear normal

out of sheer terror

that the people around us might realize

quite how

odd we truly are we fear that showing

this

real weird self will be the downfall of

our aspirations

so we round off the edges of our

personality and curb our quirks

until we’ve eroded everything unique

about us away

and the horror is that we succeed

it’s not that we’re bad or deceptive

it’s simply that the thoughts which

traverse our minds

sound absolutely nothing like what the

seemingly sane humans we meet every

day would ever think we live

in perpetual fear that the people who

know our outer voice

would ever get to hear what’s happening

inside of our heads

i want to convince you that your

weirdness is precisely

what you should embrace to become

successful desirable

and fulfilled you are a unique

collection of genetic predisposition

and the way you’ve dealt with past

traumas and the funny way you say the

letter s

and that thing only a few people know

that you like having

done to your feet all

of these characteristics have come

together to make up the unique person

who is

you but if we are so remarkable

why do we hide our true selves well

one reason is competitiveness we assume

that bosses and audiences don’t want

weird they want normal so in order to

succeed in the market

we should conform to their thinking

patterns

and appeal to the widest possible group

upon reflection we all know this is an

error

don’t we by doing what everyone else

does

we guarantee average results

i am astounded by how many people

want to be spectacular in life but also

wants to be normal

by being normal you are by definition

aiming for average normal people

get normal results weird people

get weird results on the 20th of october

1968 a 21 year old won gold

and set an olympic record when he high

jumped 2 meters 24

to mexico city games he was

quite weird he was a civil engineering

student

who missed the opening ceremony to see

the pyramids and sleep in his van

he literally wore odd shoes to jump in

and according to journalists looked like

a two-legged camel

or a guy falling off the back of a truck

his name was dick fosbury and his unique

jumping style known as the fosbri flop

is now responsible for every high jump

world record

in existence rather than trying to

conform

fosbury revolutionized track and field

by

fully utilizing everything he was

as naval ravikant says you can escape

competition through

authenticity because no one can beat you

at being you your unique value

is your weirdness it’s the fact that

your dad left

when you were young and that you cry far

too easily at happy films

and that you are more interested in the

pyramids than the opening ceremony

these things are not weaknesses

they are unique insights if you view

your life experiences with the

perspective

that they give you an insight which no

one else has

you start to see everything as an

advantage

another reason we hide our true selves

is because

socially on the surface the situation

looks even worse for the weirdos

especially in childhood

being different is not highly valued

if you’d look for me on the playground

at lunchtime you would have found me

in my history teacher mrs wilkinson’s

classroom

not doing detention but eating lunch

somewhere

where i couldn’t to be bullied i had

found

more connection in an empty classroom

than a hostile schoolyard because i

struggled to fit in

i want to tell every boy or girl

who has been bullied or felt alone that

all

their quirks are blessings that not

having a local accent might cause them

to be alienated

but in the future it means they can get

a job anywhere

in the world that dealing with isolation

as a child

might hurt but that they’ll be

unbeatably

self-sufficient once they’re an adult

that the fact they’re so sensitive means

they might take things to heart in

school

but that they will grow up to genuinely

understand their friends emotions

even when their friends don’t understand

them themselves

i want to tell them that all their

weirdnesses

are strengths to be embraced not

weaknesses to be embarrassed about

the problem is we map this schoolyard

popularity dynamic onto the real world

and presume that it still works

think for a second about the time that

you’ve fallen in love

just go back to that moment when you

realized it

and consider what you were thinking

was it i just adore how

easily replaceable they are

i’m so turned on by how they’re exactly

like

everyone else what i can’t get enough of

is the way their opinions are so

predictable probably not

our deception detectors are unbelievably

attuned we can tell when someone is

playing a role

even if they don’t know it themselves it

turns us off

admirable attractive compelling people

are the ones who are embracing not

hiding

their weirdness when it comes to being

popular and desirable

the act of embracing

is far more important than what you

embrace

spiritually the stakes are raised even

higher

if you spend your days playing a persona

and hiding who you truly are you will

end up at a place in life

not only that you don’t want to be but

that you didn’t

even mean to get to the persona

is incapable of receiving love

it can only receive praise if you’re

hiding who you truly are

all the success and popularity

in the world will feel hollow

because people aren’t in love with you

they’re just applauding the role you

play

we don’t love russell crowe we love

gladiator

we don’t love chris hemsworth we love

thor

this is how you can feel alone in a

crowd

and hollow in victory i’ve stood on the

door of more than a thousand club nights

and watched a million people go into

them and i can promise you that

even in a crowd of thousands you will

never feel connected

if you’re only playing a role if we want

to have confident faith in ourselves

and love who we truly are we cannot

pretend

to be someone we’re not this doesn’t

mean that we can’t become better

or develop this worldview is entirely

compatible

with a desire for growth and

self-improvement

but the goal is to become the best

version of you

not your version of someone else

your life is your story to write

you are the protagonist the narrator

illustrator

and author and yet

we waste our pages by looking over other

people’s shoulders

to plagiarize a tale that isn’t

even our own salvador dali

is one of my favorite weirdos from the

mustache to the dress ends to the

time he nearly died while giving a

seminar because he arrived in a

malfunctioning deep-sea diving

suit not to be wrenched out of it

mid-talk

if dali hadn’t embraced his weirdness

and created his work the world would

have

never received it as brilliant as he was

da vinci didn’t do dali

and michelangelo didn’t do dali

anything other than the absolute truest

manifestation of dali’s being

would have left the world fundamentally

less

this is the imperative we all have

it is your duty to give the world what

only you can give it

because only you can

remember this number

the chances of you existing are

basically

zero your presence is

a unique miracle if you

don’t paint your darli

no one else will this

makes the act of embracing your

weirdness compulsory you have an

obligation to the universe to do it

during your brief highly unlikely time

awake

in between two eternities of sleep you

have something

to offer the universe in your experience

and your creativity

that no one else has to offer in exactly

that way

which means that if you don’t if you

allow

status games or social norms or internal

fears

to curb your weirdness the universe

will be fundamentally less complex

and beautiful so

learn to be open and honest with your

friends

have the courage to say what’s on your

mind

find people who you can genuinely be

yourself around

and know that your weird input

could be the words which change someone

else’s life

or make them fall in love with you

and if the recipient turns and looks at

you

with wide-eyed shock indifferent

blankness or a

mocking sneer remember that this doesn’t

spell

doom for you and your miraculous genes

it simply means that you haven’t yet

found someone

who is quite your kind

of weird thank you

you