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Defy Conventional Wisdom - VIP Commentary

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to the commentary. So let’s talk more about this idea of defying conventional wisdom. So, again, ‘to defy’ really means to like break a rule on purpose. It means to willfully break a rule, to go against something. Usually it has the idea of going against authority, going against rules, that kind of thing. I don’t know. I just like that word. I like that idea.

But you can think of this in another way, which is just, be creative. Another way to say this that is maybe more positive or might sound better to you if you’re not anti authority is just think of being creative. Because conventional wisdom, this idea of convention and conventional wisdom, conventional beliefs, conventional ways of doing things, they’re often just kind of habits that are not necessarily good anymore just because a lot of people do it.

A lot of times things that are conventional are chosen or they happen simply because they are we use the phrase ‘lowest common denominator’, which comes from math oddly, but lowest common denominator. It‘s the idea that it’s sort of the lowest most basic idea that everyone can accept. It doesn’t mean it’s the best idea, it just means it’s the one that we can all agree on. So, usually the beliefs and the methods and the strategies that everybody can agree on or most people can agree on are not necessarily the best ones.

The best ones are usually maybe more bold. They’re riskier. They require more energy.

They require more motivation and so a lot of people are scared of them or don’t like them and so, therefore, those do not become the conventional wisdom. Instead, conventional wisdom is really more about what most people agree on. We can see this in politics all the time, right? The people who get elected they’re probably not the brightest, smartest, most honest people. We all know this, it’s true in every single country, but they’re like the least worst is the way to think about it.

They’re the ones who manage to say nothing honest at all and basically say nothing at all. They’re really careful about the way they talk and they try to avoid making anyone angry. This is what most politicians do, right? So they may get elected, but it’s not because they’re the smartest, boldest, most incredible people in the world. No, because the smart people, the bold people, those kinds of people they make a lot of people angry sometimes. Some people love them and other people hate them and this is kind of the same idea.

Let’s say in your job or business, that job search idea, most people when I tell them that strategy a lot of people will say no, I don’t want to do that because they’re worried that they’ll make the employers upset, that they’ll bother them, that they’ll get annoyed.

They’ll get upset because they’re receiving all these letters, especially if there’s no job advertised. I just picked places. I didn’t even know if they had a job opening. I just ah, I’d like to work for them so I’m going to start writing them letters. I tell people this and a lot of people say no, no, no, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to make someone angry, but the truth is that most people don’t get angry.

In fact, the first time I used this was in South Carolina where I was living. I was unemployed, I had no money and I was really desperate. I was getting really desperate and I needed a job. I was a social worker and I just couldn’t find any jobs so I started this approach and one of the people I was writing all the time they didn’t have a job, but because I kept writing them they were like wow. Well, this guy is different. He seems quite motivated and so the place I was writing told someone else.

Basically what it was is it was one department of a hospital I was writing. I think it was the cancer department because I thought they needed social workers and I thought that would be an interesting job. They didn’t have a job, but the supervisor of the cancer department gave my letters to the emergency room social worker, the guy who was the boss of the emergency room social workers. He said well, I don’t have a job, but he gave it to this guy. He said you should look at this guy. He’s been writing me letters. He seems like he’s motivated. I know you need somebody. So that’s another advantage of having this kind of different approach. You get noticed and people will maybe share your letters with other people. It’s just one small example of the benefit of doing things in a different way, in a creative way.

We’re often scared to be different because we think we’ll be criticized, we think we’ll upset people, but as long as you are basically kind and you’re honest most people will not be upset and, in fact, by taking a different strategy you really will help your chances to succeed. So, go ahead, steal my idea. If you need a job, try it. I promise you it works really well. Try it in other areas of your life too, that’s going to be step two. So in step one I said think about a couple areas of your life where you want to improve something or accomplish something. I said the first step was just to identify what is the normal way of doing it. What are the normal beliefs about it? What’s the conventional way?

So, again, the first step if we looked at job hunting we’d say okay. Well, the conventional wisdom is that, first of all, be careful. Don’t make any mistakes. Be kind of conservative.

That’s a usual belief, at least in the United States, that you only apply for jobs when there’s an opening, so you only look for advertised jobs. Like in my example you might go to the hospital and you only apply for jobs for where they actually have an opening.

You don’t contact people where they haven’t advertised an opening. That’s another conventional idea.

Another conventional idea is if it’s a big company that you always apply to the human resource department. ‘Human resource’ that means people, but it’s kind of the hiring department. I didn’t do that either. I sent letters directly to the bosses of the departments because I knew they were the ones who would interview me and I knew they would be the ones who would actually eventually hire me. Human resources, they just do the paperwork. So I thought well, they don’t know anything about social work specifically so why should I talk to them, but that’s conventional wisdom. What I used to do, I would go to the human resource department and fill out applications and then never hear again.

What is some more conventional wisdom? The conventional thing is, you know, resume, cover letter, all those things I mentioned already.

So that’s the first thing I just kind of identified. Ah, I realized well that’s the conventional way and then the second step now is to think, what could I do differently and just have fun with it? It doesn’t matter. No one is going to chop off your hand if you make a mistake or something. Just deliberate break those rules and deliberately try out different beliefs and ideas related to those things.

So for me with the job hunt I specifically broke those rules. I said okay, I’m not going to go to human resources. I’m going to contact the individual supervisors in the hospital.

I’m going to go around human resources. Human resources hates that, but it worked. I decided I was not going to just write one boring cover letter and a resume. I would write a series of letters like an ad campaign. I actually did lots of other things that were different too, which I’m not going to talk about, but in every way I tried to be different in a positive way, in a way that would be helpful and beneficial to the company or to the person who might hire me and, like I said, it worked very well. I’m sure it still would work well, so if you’re doing a job search do it.

If you’re not focused on job searching then, whatever it is, think about what is the conventional wisdom and then step two I really want you to think deeply. Start writing out, just brainstorm. Just think of any crazy idea you can. Crazy, not crazy, it doesn’t matter. Just think of different ways of doing it. Don’t even think about will it be successful or not. In the beginning, right now, I just want you to think of how I can do it differently. You’re trying to, I don’t know, get stronger and healthier. Look at what’s the normal conventional wisdom and then start looking at other things you might try instead that are very different. The same is true in business. The same is true in relationships, lots of different things.

So, step two, just start looking at different ways. You can, as I mentioned in the main lesson, look for other people who have succeeded at a high level and try to see how are they breaking the conventional wisdom? What are they doing that’s different from most people? Because anyone who’s got a lot of success in some area, most of the time they’re doing something quite different, several things quite different than the usual, than the average person is.

So look at that and then you could maybe try some of those things as well and then, as always, get onto our website and share your ideas. This one could be really fun because I would love to see how you are breaking the rules and I’d love to hear about the different approaches you are taking to problems and goals that you have and I’m sure other members would love to hear that too. It will be fun to read what other people are doing. We can all kind of trade ideas and help each other out.

You can steal my idea for job hunting and maybe you have some great health idea that I might try that will work for me or that other people might try. Maybe you have some cool different way of remembering English or speaking better that you could share. I don’t know. What I want you to do though is to just share your ideas and share your experiences on our website and then we can all encourage each other to break the rules and to do things in a creative way.

That’s it. It should be fun. Have fun with it. It’s not so serious. Smile and have fun while you’re doing it. All right, I will see you again. Have a great day, bye-bye.