Our Thoughts

Living the uncommon life

Posted by Patrick Manyanza on Sep 13 2012

It’s quite interesting when you think about it that 97% of the world population controls about 3% of the wealth. It’s sad but most of our university educational systems set us up to compete for 3% of the wealth. The rich 3% live on a philosophy that says, “Observe the masses and do the opposite.” In other words successful people don’t follow the crowd; they tend to question what’s common and mostly do just the opposite. They tend to do what’s uncommon and therefore also live an uncommon life.

Uncommon people understand that trying harder isn’t necessarily a solution to achieving more. It may not offer any real promise for getting what you want out of life. In fact, sometimes, it’s a big part of the problem. They believe it’s more worthwhile spending more time developing your strengths rather than spending more time improving your weaknesses. We all have weaknesses but uncommon people tend to manage their weaknesses, and then continually develop and master what they are good at. They believe that you cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are. In other words, working and building our strengths tends to give us the best return on our investment.

Most people operate with a mindset that assumes success comes one step at a time. Uncommon people view this as a trap to be avoided. They believe that they have the capability to take explosive jumps in their personal performance that puts them far beyond the next logical step. However, they understand that the key in all of this lies in radically changing their habits. They understand that it is sometimes necessary to contradict common sense in order to take huge quantum leaps towards success. They see that trying harder often leads to incremental gains but not quantum leaps.

The uncommon life is often lived and experienced by the 3%. It is worthy living, and we can all experience, it by choice. Here is a formula we need to follow in order to make that happen:

“An uncommon mindset + Uncommon behaviors = An uncommon life.”

Now here is a question for you, “What two uncommon behaviors do you need to develop right now in order to move you towards the uncommon life?”

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