Personal development

Have you got the guts to be different? Have you got the guts to stand out from the crowd, to stand apart from your own little herd? Have you got what it takes to set yourself apart from all the sad, pathetic people that you hang out with? Yes, normal people are sad and pathetic, and most of us are normal.

Seventy years of psychological research proves that most normal people are crazy, and that the normal mind is actually out of control, preferring to accept instructions that dictate our behaviour, reactions and lives, based on key events in our formative childhood years, rather than actually take real action of a kind that will achieve real and exciting results.

Unfortunately, however, you are probably afraid to be different; you are probably afraid of what people will think of you. I have met many people over the years who have told me that they could not be super-successful because they would be afraid of losing their friends.

More often than not, the very same people, years later, have come back to tell me that they felt liberated by the fact they no longer spent time with some of their old acquaintances! It turns out that normal people hang around with other normal people as part of some bizarre support mechanism. Normal people like to form their own little victim support groups!

However, hanging around as a herd actually does you no good at all. In fact, it sucks the very life out of you. Herd-behaviour is bizarre. Herd-behaviour is positively dangerous to both you and everyone else in the herd. Once the herd agrees that some bizarre behaviour is alright, anything goes.

You are not even aware this tacit agreement is being made because it is done either subconsciously or by omission, in other words, no one’s man enough to say “there is something wrong with that!” Some years ago, this was proved in frightening circumstances by what has subsequently become known as the infamous Stanford prison experiment, so-called because the experiment was carried out by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in California, involving student volunteers from that university.

The volunteers were divided, randomly, into two groups. One group were assigned the role of prisoners for the duration of the two-week experiment, whereas the other group of student volunteers were allocated the role of prison guards. The two-week experiment had to be stopped after six days; the prison guards had become obscenely violent, the prisoners totally submissive.

The key point here is that the prison guards simply found their outrageous behaviour to be normal within the context of their role. What started out with minor acts of bullying ended up becoming major acts of physical and psychological violence. Little by little, all the members of the herd agreed, either by act or omission, that their behaviour was acceptable.

This is an extreme example of the effects of group behaviour. It is not, however, an isolated example: similar experiments have led to similar findings. The truth is that all normal people behave inappropriately. They are incapable of behaving in any other manner because they never behave with a clear and focused mind that is fully acquainted with the actual facts of what is going on in the here and now.

Instead, normal behaviour is dictated by the subconscious mind, which is generally focused on our negative experiences from our formative years, alongside what we consider acceptable around us. Normal behaviour can never be appropriate because it has nothing to do with the reality of the present moment; it is the result of group hypnosis.

We all know of extreme examples of herd-behaviour, whether it be cases of ethnic cleansing in West Belfast or the Balkans, ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan or Darfur or, on a more ordinary level, the behaviour of unions and employers, or even cases of bullying in the schoolyard.

Inappropriate herd-like behaviour is endemic. And it is squeezing the very life out of you because it is directly and adversely affecting your ability to achieve happiness and the kind of success that you really want. The “normal” mentality is stopping your from doing what your heart really desires, because being happy and effortlessly successful requires you to be abnormal.

By abnormal, I mean that you have to use your mind differently, you have to learn how to focus your mind on what is actually going on, not what the herd agrees is going on, and learn to take appropriate action rather than simply submit to what the herd agrees as action (which is, of course, the only reaction, which generally tends to make things worse).

By abnormal, I mean you have to learn to develop the focus and presence of mind that abnormally successful people employ in their daily lives. This is not just something the elite class can practice; it is an innate and natural ability we all have, and which was instilled in us as children during our formative years, when we were all effortlessly focused.

To be blunt about it, you need to forget about the herd. Once your back is turned, many of them will forget about you anyway, so start putting your own quality of life first. Step away from the norms of herd behaviour; you will be amazed at how liberating it really is.