{"id":4201,"date":"2011-01-21T16:16:52","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T20:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/?p=4201"},"modified":"2011-01-21T16:16:52","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T20:16:52","slug":"how-to-stand-out-in-a-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/how-to-stand-out-in-a-crowd\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Stand Out in a Crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Since each of us is one-of-a-kind, the market, for all its
\nsupposed predictability, is actually vulnerable to
\nfalling in love with any of us at any time.
\nJulia Cameron<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long time since I was in high school, but one thing hasn\u2019t changed much: adolescents still want to be like everyone else. Teenagers dress alike, listen to the same music, love the same movies. Being different is a surefire way to become unpopular, the most dreaded horror of teen life.<\/p>\n

While conformity is comforting in adolescence, it only serves a purpose in human development if it\u2019s treated as a stopover in the journey. Unfortunately, many adults suffer from arrested development and spend years trying to conform.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s going to notice a conformist?<\/p>\n

On weekends when I have an out of town seminar, I often pick up a copy of People <\/em>magazine at the airport. Even though the cover of the magazine usually features a celebrity, I find that the stories I enjoy the most are about people who aren\u2019t famous, just fascinating.<\/p>\n

One memorable issue included a section called Starting Over and featured six people who had made dramatic life changes. Four of the six of them became self-employed.<\/p>\n

One of the others, a former chef in upscale restaurants in New York and Washington DC, reached the point where (in his own words) he\u2019d, \u201cBeen there, saut\u00e9ed that.\u201d Wanting to do something more meaningful, he now cooks upscale cuisine in a soup kitchen.<\/p>\n

The other person, Omar El Nasser, abandoned his cubicle in a windowless office in Buffalo and now works as a cowboy in Montana. When an ex-colleague saw a picture of Nasser on horseback, he hung it above his own desk and labeled the image, \u201cOmar\u2019s Cubicle.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all of these people, Starting Over was about putting themselves on The Road Less Traveled.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Danny Meyer. In his late teens, Meyer spent a year and a half in Italy filling journals with notes on restaurants he visited there. Besides taking note of the food, he sketched light fixtures he liked, flooring that caught his fancy, and studied the ambiance of various establishments.<\/p>\n

Today he owns popular restaurants in New York that include Union Square Cafe, Eleven Madison Park and Shake Shack, places that regularly top the Zagat survey. In addition, he\u2019s revived a neighborhood near his businesses by spearheading such things as a year long outdoor produce market that serves the residents and restaurants around Union Square.<\/p>\n

As a television piece pointed out, he\u2019s created his own village within New York.<\/p>\n

His passion and philosophy of making a difference right where he is makes him a standout.<\/p>\n

If you want to stand out from the crowd you first have to leave the crowd.<\/strong> It\u2019s a message philosophers have espoused for centuries, but only the most determined among us has paid attention. \u201c<\/p>\n

In this age,\u201d wrote John Stuart Mill more than a century ago, \u201cthe mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.\u201d<\/p>\n

While we can be inspired by the Danny Meyers of this world, we fail if we try to duplicate their path. It\u2019s only when we can revel in our uniqueness that we start making the real contribution that is ours to make. Not only will that lead us to optimal joy, it might even bring the media to our door.<\/p>\n

Imagine your story in People<\/em> magazine (or some similar story-filled publication).\u00a0What would you like the headline to say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since each of us is one-of-a-kind, the market, for all its supposed predictability, is actually vulnerable to falling in love with any of us at any time. Julia Cameron It\u2019s been a long time since I was in high school, but one thing hasn\u2019t changed much: adolescents still want to be like everyone else. Teenagers…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[779],"tags":[791,27,216,789,790],"class_list":["post-4201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review-rewind","tag-danny-meyer","tag-growing-a-business","tag-julia-cameron","tag-stand-out-in-a-crowd","tag-uniqueness","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4201"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4211,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions\/4211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}