erik wahl

I am not a follower. I was not always that way. As a kid I was a follower. Quiet, introverted, and not as bold about who I was or who I wanted to be in the world. Over time that changed. It was never about trying to be someone else, but more about being present for who I am, using my voice, and being direct about what I wanted. It did not come easily to me. Our world does not always reward someone for standing out, often we are rewarded for following the lead, marching in a single file, and following the rules.

That does not mean that I do not follow principle or what is right. I still find it important for following certain paths. Take driving for example. If I decide that I get to obey my own laws, then others could be hurt, killed, or I could be hurt or killed. There are many, many things in life that following the rules make our life work together cohesively. Yet, there are many things in our world that following others mean that we are not thinking for ourselves, we are just following the leader.

Recently I blogged about the book: “Unthink” by Erik Wahl, and found this quote was a great reminder of how easy it is for us to do “what everyone else is doing.” This quote that Wahl shares is from Alan Ashley-Pitt:

“The man who follows the crowd, will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before…You have two choices in life: you can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct you must be different. To be different, you must strive to be what no one else but you can be.” page 197

How often do you just go with the status quo, and how often do you make choices that mean you step out of your normal day-to-day and think differently? The harder road is to veer off course, to the bumpy road, the road less traveled, and find your niche. You can pave your own way to be bold, beautiful, and of course if I were involved a little bit sassy. I mean why not?

I am not getting old, or maybe I am. This book has reminded me to be a child again. As always I have been reading like crazy. I just finished “Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius” by Erik Wahl. A book that has opened my ideas to how much and how often we try to fill in the blank, find the easy answer, and not use our brains. Early on in his book he explains this in such a succinct way:

“The short story goes like this: Our education taught us to memorize the predetermined answer or study the predetermined method in order to deliver the predetermined solution. There was nearly always one right way to one right answer, and an A+ job meant finding and then following that path repeatedly. There was rarely if ever room for what we so fondly call ‘thinking outside the box.’ You and I were rewarded for—often literally—making a check mark inside the right box. We were taught to be art critics but not artists. To think but not to unthink.” Page 17

How true is that? We were taught to score well on the SATs, to do well on standardized testing for our states and counties, because that is what determined if we were learning in school and if our teachers were doing a good job. Did it teach us how to think creatively? Did it teach us to solve problems? No, it taught us to fill out the correct answer on the scantron test and accurately use our #2 pencil in the oval, being sure not to color outside the lines. So how did we learn how to think outside the box?

I cannot remember when I started to think differently. At a certain point I think it happened in college when I got so sick of the status quo. A part of it had to do with being a woman and yet not treated fairly as a woman. It made me think I am going to do better than a man can do, I am going to learn what I can so that I can never be in a situation where I get stuck or cannot do something I cannot handle. I think it also was being so clear that I do not want to live how I grew up, that I wanted a better life. That desire and drive taught me that I do not want to live inside the right box. At a certain point we end up stuck in our ways, or our routine causes us to not take risks or live life differently. Which is why I love this quote that Wahl shares from Anais Nin:

“Older people fall into rigid patterns. Curiosity, risk, exploration are forgotten by them. You have not yet discovered that you have a lot to give, and that the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself. It amazed me that you felt that each time you write a story you gave away one of your dreams and you felt the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love…You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.” –Anais Nin page 183

Aw man does that resonate with me. “…the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself.” We cannot give when we check the right boxes, when we fill out the scantron test. We give when we live outside of ourselves, and when we are raw, authentic, and real. Stop caring about the A+, and think like an artist…outside the box.