“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
That’s the essence of standing out. I couldn’t have put it any better myself. Being audacious, driven, bold. We’re not called to just sit in the slow lane of life, passively observing and merely commenting when things go wrong, rather than bringing solutions. But how do you go about doing this? Where do you find the courage to stand out?
The number one killer of life is trying to please everybody. It is impossible to have the whole world admire a celebrity who’s done charitable work, let alone your latest hair style. The best option is to ensure that you are happy with who you are before you allow others’ shaped opinions about you to hinder your progress. If you want to make an impact, self-confidence is absolutely essential.
Once you’ve built up your confidence, you can proceed to focus on your destiny and purpose; this can be discovered by planning a vision for your life. If someone asked you where you wanted to be in ten years time, would you be able to give a comprehensive answer? Your vision should reflect your long and short term goals. It is key to bringing you out of mediocrity. Even if you have no idea what you want to do in ten years time, make a five year plan, one year plan, or even a monthly plan. Once it’s clear to you what you want the end result to be, you can easily isolate yourself from those leading a copycat lifestyle. It shouldn’t matter what the Jones’ are doing, you don’t need to keep up with them.
Now that we’ve discussed not conforming to this world, let’s proceed to the second part – “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” How do we renew our minds? Well, you’ve got to be careful of the things you feed it. For example, regularly indulging in music that degrades women, encourages sexual activity and drunkenness and places a higher value on money than life itself will not benefit you in the long run. The grime artist Maxsta recently tweeted: “you wouldn’t let someone babble constant nonsense to you in a conversation… so why would you listen to a song with no meaningssss (sic)” The same goes for movies and television. I doubt that watching daytime television on a daily basis will encourage you to break out of the pattern of normality.
Feed your mind with inspiring, encouraging things, but obviously this does not mean you should turn a blind eye to reality, or look at life through a rosy pair of specs. It is important to realise that standing out means that you must change yourself from within before attempting to make a difference in people’s lives.
“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change.”
Written by Chinazum Ukata
Tweet Me @chinny___