Normal: The Killer of a Would Be Maverick

Let us begin this hub with a question: You are waiting in an airport for your flight, you find out that its cancelled, but you need to go to your destination by today, and it cannot wait another day. What would you NORMALLY do? you would probably:

• protest to the ground staff to get a refund.
• request them to find another airline heading to the same destination and put you on board.
• and finally if none of the first two options are possible, request to be put in the waiting list for tomorrow's flight and request a one night stay at the nearest hotel.

These are all the solutions anyone would take. Do you know what Richard Branson did when his flight got cancelled?

He hired a private jet, held up a sign in the airport stating that he has an airplane ready to take off to the destination that he and many other people intended to go and charged the people who, after reading the sign he was holding, came up to him and asked to be put on board on his flight. He basically made his own airline company there and then! As the private jet landed one of the passengers told him "sharpen up the service and you might be in the airline business one day." That is how the idea of Virgin Airline was born. Richard Branson is someone who I admire very much and I have cited him many times in my hubs as an example of success.

What Richard Branson did was not normal. What he did was outrageous, risky, and just what many people would call crazy or out of the box is a more polite way of putting it. But if he did not think of doing that we would not have Virgin.

Let's think about this for a minute, how many majorly successful people we have heard of that has not done anything crazy? Right now if I told you to devote your time to writing a book about a boy and his friend who attends a wizard school and let us call this school, oh I don't know, how about Hogwarts? You will straight away question my sanity. But you need to be insane if you want to be one of the greats.

You need to spend hours in your dad's garage trying to built a revolutionary computer, you need to hire a private jet and make an airline then and there. When people start calling you crazy chances are you are on the right path to success.

The reason why it is crazy is because it is a path that has never been paved. You are paving the way for it. If you go hiking you will follow the paved path that many people have used, people will discourage you for going astray to unmarked territories.

What makes it so crazy is the fact that no one knows whether it will work or no. J.K. Rowling did not know that Harry Potter was going to be such a huge success, Richard Branson did not know that Virgin Airline is going to revolutionize the airline industry, The Beatles did not know that they will be THE greatest rock band in history. Not one of the greatest, but THE greatest.

Paul McCartney at this moment is the undisputed most successful singer in the world. The single he wrote for The Beatles, called Yesterday, is the most covered single in the history of popular music and has earned a Guiness World Record for it.

Is your life movie or book worthy? can it be made into a memoir, or a biography great enough that Martin Scorcese decides to adapt it into a movie?

Instead of questioning people's crazy decisions, may be it is time that we question our normalcy. Why are we so normal? why are we so accustomed to follow the norm, when did we loose our edge? when did we get conditioned?

I am pretty sure we were not like this when we were babies, babies are wild, unpredictable, they are the kinds of people who will take a dump in their own pants and not care. Should we blame our parents? our teachers? Perhaps, but most of all we should blame ourselves.

I am sure I am not the only one here who has come to realize that the people who are ridiculously famous and successful at the moment took a crazy decision and did a crazy thing worth writing or worth making a movie about, but the difference is what we do once we have realized this fact?

Either we become bitter that so many authoritarian figures in our lives have told us to embrace normalcy and caged us, or we can decide to now be more brave, explore unknown territory, try new thing, talk to strangers.

There is no point in getting bitter toward what they did for us in the past, whatever they did, they did for the good. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Since we were small we were told to not talk with strangers, maybe this was a great advice when we were small and could barely defend ourselves, but many of us seem to still take this advice to the heart until now.

We are grown up, we have become much smarter than when we were kids, we are more capable then when we were small. In fact, in the world of business and career, you should talk to strangers! You get exposed to a lot of people you barely even know.

In some cases you don't have a choice, you have to talk to strangers. What then? There are somethings we were taught when we were small that really should not be applied to as grown ups. avoiding strangers is one of them. Are we that bad in deciding when we should avoid them all together and have our mother or father answer the door?

I recently came across an article regarding a study a couple of scientists did, based on the fact that so many people always say "my god how fast time flies!" and these scientists tried to figure out why do we feel so.

What they discovered was astonishing.

They discovered that this is only felt by adults who has grown accustomed to their routine that they are living, for most of the time, on autopilot.. It is only when, for a brief moment, they are not on auto-pilot that they realize how "fast time flies"

You never noticed "how fast time flies" when you were a child, because children learn and do and observe something new everyday, they are naturally pro-active, they are not on auto-pilot mode the way their parents are. For them the world is a new place full of possibilities.

It is only that as we grow older that we start realizing this.

So the best way is to once in a while go out from your routine and do something different, take a leap into the unknown will awaken your consciousness, because there is no way you can go on auto pilot when you take a leap into the unknown.

You cannot go on auto-pilot on the first day of your new job, you are very conscious of the people around you, you study them, you take notice of your new surroundings, etc, etc.

Ever notice how when you felt love at first sight that time seem to stand still? That was because you were totally conscious of what or who you were looking at.

Many people are not happy with the state of their current lives, they want to find something new, they are bored of their current life, they want to get better results, etc. But they keep doing the same thing day after day. How can you expect to get different results if you keep doing the same thing? It is impossible. If you keep planting orange seeds, you will always get an orange tree, there is no way you will get a mango tree.

Go ask billybuc, he likes to grow things, he will tell you!

So what you should do is always be ready to do something different whenever you find the opportunity to do so, never be afraid of changes. Never be afraid of some slight discomfort or having to do some extra work.

If your 9-5 job is not paying you enough, try to look for some earning opportunities that you can do after 5 o'clock. Changes will only happen if you change. Not before that. Richard Branson won't come knocking on your door offering you Virgin's shares.

We should take the middle path. While we have a 9 to 5 work and we have a family to support, we should always be ready to take a leap to the unknown when we are faced with an opportunity to do so. You do not have to quit your current job, because no matter how normal or how dull it may be, it is what is supporting you and your family right now. But whenever you get an opportunity to do or try something new never hesitate in taking it.

Not taking this opportunity will only make our lives more dull and we will never be able to find bigger and better opportunities that can enhance our lives and the lives of the people who depend on us. All our greatest opportunities lies in the unknown.

Every great people that has walked on this earth, from artists, to entrepreneurs, they all did not know that their idea would be a success. How many musician's interviews have you seen where they said "I never knew it was going to be this big of a hit at the time of making, I was pretty surprised when my manager called me and told me that it has reached no.1 in Billboard!"?

They did not know, they just took a leap into the unknown. No body knows. If you get success great. If you don't it will be a valuable learning experience, that will make you a better and stronger person. So if you don't succeed get up, brush the dust of your knees and...

Go crazy.