It suddenly hit me yesterday after a conversation with a manager in a shop: I'm a misfit. I don't fit in. There is something seriously wrong with me. He suggested that I am alone in the world. I am an unusual being. I am so different to anyone else.

My Crime?

I don't have a mobile phone!

According to him there is something deeply wrong with me. I am an unusual being who doesn't fit in with, in his words the "normal world". I am useless. I am a person with confused ideas and incapable of serious thought otherwise I would be doing what everyone else is doing.

His tone was that I am an inferior being. I am living in the wrong epoch, I don't belong in this world. I am lacking a key ingredient to good decision making and survival in this post modern world. Without a mobile 'phone I am no one.

My initial reaction was to explain why I don't own these toys. Then I remembered something I had read in Carlos Castaneda where Don Juan suggests that in every explanation there is an apology. So if I continued with this explanation then I was basically apologising for my shortcomings and suggesting that he was right.

This got me thinking about what he was saying. He is basically saying because I don't have the same toys as other people. Because I don't follow the crowd then I am a misfit.

But, isn't the fact that I don't follow the crowd a benefit? Or have we reached the place in society where if someone is different from another person then there is something wrong with them. Surely it's a benefit! If we were all the same and liked the same things then society would stagnate and the mobile 'phone wouldn't have been invented. What is creativity if it is not the ability to see and express things in different way?

Because I don't fit in, because I don't follow the pack that's a bonus. Isn't it?

What differentiates the successful from the followers is the fact that they are different. They follow a different star. They get bored and feel uncomfortable doing what everyone else is doing.

The point is, if you feel that you are unusual in any way.

If you feel that you are being squeezed into the wrong shoe size just because everyone else is wearing it in your place of work.

If you don't fit into the same thought pattern as others in your department. If you don't fit in with the current way of thinking.

If you are not a member of the right "club".

If someone has told you that the problem is that you just don't fit in.

If you feel it is difficult to adjust to the environment or circumstances around you.

If managers and others are suggesting that you are disturbingly different from the others.

Don't get angry. Don't get frustrated. Don't hide yourself out of harms way. Don't punish yourself and feel empty inside.

Remember what Harry S Truman said:

How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached is he had taken a poll in the land of Israel? What would have happened to the Reformation if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn't polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong and leadership.

You see you are not a follower. You have special gifts. You are a leader.

Now just go out there and lead.