Outliers

Outliers are people or statical anomalies that either exceed or underachieve by large amounts. In focusing on the positive, outliers are the exceptional athletes, founders of companies, billionaire creators, and the heroes we look up to. They are the people we believe achieved because they “are who they are.” In our minds, they succeeded because they are outliers themselves. This view of an outlier is a basic and bland perception. Anyone has the capacity to be an outlier and anyone can work to become different.

In breaking down why we view successful people as outliers I am going to refer to the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. The book, funny enough, spends its entirety speaking about outliers and the circumstances that really created outliers. Each chapter has a different story and hones in on the environments and circumstances that each outlier was formed under. There is an overwhelming amount of Canadian hockey players in the NHL that are born in the first couple of months of the year. Coincidence is not the reason. The reason is the age cutoff for travel hockey teams favors those born closer to the new year. Older boys typically are more developed from a maturity and physical standpoint so they are able to make better travel teams, be exposed to better coaching and competition, and fast-track their hockey careers.

Another chapter speaks about Bill Gates and how Bill Gates became the Bill Gates we know today. Bill Gates absolutely had a commitment to knowledge, coding, and a drive to succeed. He was also born in the perfect window to be young enough to start coding and working with computers at a young age. He was also granted access to countless hours with a computer in a time when access was expensive and not easily accessible. He spent his high school and college-aged years working on devices hardly anyone had access to. Coupling this with his ability and drive, there was no doubt he was going to be successful. Outliers are all around but there are reasons for their successes besides their natural ability or “luck.” The book has a general theme that all outliers were helped by others based on circumstance or opportunity in one way or another. Outliers do not do it alone.

I mention this “back to Earth” discussion about outliers to show that people are not who they are because they are innately better than us. They have simply combined talent, dedication, and commitment with environments that fostered their passions. We are capable. We can succeed. We should accept the advice and help of others and lean into opportunities that present themselves to us. We can be outliers too.