The Attitude That Stops People From Taking What They Deserve

"If you want to succeed you need to stand out from the crowd".

This is the attitude that is so often replicated in our culture on what it means to be truly successful that became the motto that is shared by all the role models and stars in the world. It is so ingrained in us that many times we identify "followers" as "losers" and will label them with the most despicable words for not bringing forth their own creativity.

It wasn't long ago that many people would speak about China for example, and how most of its products are a pure "copy" of the western world. They would compare them with other countries and mark them off as unoriginal, that struggle to keep up with the really innovative forces and having no opportunity to enjoy a similar level of prosperity out of their inability to create their own stuff.

"Until the early 19th century, China’s economy was more open and market-driven than the economies of Europe. Today, though, many believe that the West is home to creative business thinkers and innovators and that China is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners" -- Regina M. Abrami

If we were to look into the story of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, we would take their whole journey and dissect it on the differences. We would look where they decided to diverge from the previously established norms, where they found that little window to go through when everybody else was following conventions and we are only going to appreciate those as the only characteristics that actually made the difference.

If we were to put the current mindset of success in bullet points they would be like this:

• Find a need people have that nobody else has noticed so far.
• Create a product to cover this need that nobody else has created.
• Promote it to the world for its unique, exclusive characteristics and the point of differences with the competition.

All good rules that push technology and innovation further. Yet what has happened, for the most part, is that these attributes that are so heavily praised by everyone, give the wrong impression that they are the standard way of success and following their path is the only chance to make it.

The issue here is that this notion has multiple problems in it.

For one thing, this model came alive with the internet, and the new platform that allowed multiple new types of companies to come forth by taking on the new space that was suddenly available and nobody had anticipated till then.

Generally speaking, the invention of internet was like discovering new land where all people rushed through to get their hands on as much as they could with the limited amount of time they had before someone else made it before them.

That means that this disruptive opportunity of the new platform defined our mindset as if the same rules were governing everything else in our lives when in reality this was only an exception that could only take place sparsely and last for a few years.

The second thing is that it doesn't take into consideration the fact that most of the businesses that made it to the top, took a massively different route before making it, than people might think. They set their base by following the existing patterns in their environment and they adapted based on the people's requests and demands, shifting towards a more successful model.

It is mostly this kind of reciprocating relationship with their audience that actually made them successful and their ability to adapt to it and not the fact that they "differentiated" from other companies. Their purpose was not to diverge but to accommodate the next need their customers had till they reached a point that they had a product that was totally different than their competition.

The problem with this pattern is that many times it is obscured and distorted by people that have a totally different image of what happened in reality. Cultural values are shaped in different areas of life like what we look out on a partner or how we learn.

When taking on the path of music, for example, both Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar were massively influenced by Dr. Dre and based their initial learning curve on his patterns before they drifted towards their unique ways of creation. Yet what most people are going to focus on is the fact that their current stuff are radically different than the rest of the world and they have their unique fingerprint in music.

Any writer that started his career always got his influences from greats the likes of Charles Dickens and Stephen King before moving on to discover their own style. It is simply a necessity that you need to start from the well-established people before you divert to something of your own or you won't have the chance to advance much further in the first place.

In some aspect, it could be said that living in a period where the internet bloom influenced all areas of life, from our personal values to the way we think about anything and the fast swift ways of succeeding in the business world became our aspiration on how to achieve anything. Being absorbed by the quick paths of all major winners, we re-assessed our values and positioned individualism higher than the collective, and praised creativity only to the degree it leads to innovation and fast money.

This reality is not very far away from the magic pill where everybody hopes to attain some fast way to attain his goals without spending the time and energy required for him to do so. We are constantly in the hunt for that idea, of that opportunity, or chance to make it big without all the necessary work and this has influenced our ways of thinking as well, dreaming about the wrong things that are destined to be futile.

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