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CHOOSING BETWEEN BEING A GAME-CHANGER OR AN ORDINARY PERSON.


Who are game-changers? Are you a game-changer? In my view, game changers are those people who seek to shake up the status quo to operate outside the familiar norms and routines. Many game changers will be found among creative innovators, prophets, implementing visionaries, musicians, academicians, scientists, researchers, artists, and go-getters from all walks of life among others. These are usually a courageous lot who don't fear risks and embarrassment associated with being different. 

These are people who easily climb to the top of society by working hard. They hate shortcuts. They desire to try out new and better ways of doing things. The interest is in making greater impact and appear unreasonable if not a little bit crazy, and indeed by normal standards, they are. Why? They often operate against established and dominant values, traditions, systems, and practices in society. great men and women and women in history who left a legacy sought to fearlessly operate outside societal confines in pursuit of their conditions.

Ordinary optimists will argue about a glass of water being half full. Pessimists will see it as half-empty. Engineers will argue that it is that is oversize, cut down its size and the same amount of water will fill it. Instead of joining the intellectual dispute, an opportunist will grab the glass and drink the water, thus ending the argument. However, a game changer will come up with more superior thoughts by suggesting they all go to the spring, the source of the water, and fetch it to their fill. Game changers will not only think outside the box but will also ask why the box was necessary in the first place. They will work neither inside the box nor outside the box. They will prefer to work without the box.

In other words, most successful people are innovators, continually inventing better ways of doing what they do to attain better results. They know that it would be crazy for one to do the same thing all the time, the same way all the time, and expect different results.

All progress and inventions are associated with people who appeared unreasonable after breaking through existing norms and myths to operate outside familiar parameters. Think of explorers who launched into the deep seas. These are people who dared death itself. They were warned that they risked losing their long-term friends and relatives back home, and by traveling far and wide into the unknown, they would probably never make it back.

Yet at the bottom of their hearts, their people knew that their sons and daughters lived worthwhile lives and in the process, they left behind a legacy of courage to inspire generations to come. All this was possible because they had courage.

If you have to fail making history, then fail forwards not backward. You fail forwards by drawing lessons after failure and going for it again, this time more wisely. According to Einstein, anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Overcome the fear, launch into the deep.



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