Embracing Your Weirdness | Chris Williamson | TEDxNewcastleUniversity

[Music] have you ever felt like you didn't fit in have you ever looked down and thought how did i get here what am i wearing well that might not be totally unjustified the chances of you existing are incredibly slim the only reason you're here is because of a precise combination of four billion years of survival and reproduction of every single one of your ancestors some very smart people have actually run the figures and worked out that the odds of your specific combination of genetics existing at one in ten to the power of two million six hundred and eighty five thousand that number isn't just larger than all the particles in the universe it's larger than all the particles in the universe if each particle was itself another universe it's larger than the likelihood of the entire 2 million person population of northern ireland all rolling a trillion-sided dice and each getting a seven basically the chances of you existing are zero and yet somehow against all those odds you're here what if i told you that this miracle of your existence means that embracing your weirdness is your duty to yourself the entire human race and the universe at large i want to invite you to believe that embracing your weirdness will improve your entire life competitively socially and spiritually let me tell you how i realized this and like all good philosophical insights it begins on a reality tv dating show it's 2015 and i'm on the south coast of majorca looking out across the pool of a beautiful multi-million pound villa 14 single guys and girls in swimwear are getting changed ahead of tonight's party and there's a few million people watching so obviously as you do i decided that now would be an opportune moment to have an existential crisis i'm on a tv show and for the last few weeks i've been watched by cameras 24 hours a day as the big name on campus party boy i thought i was unravels internally i've been a club promoter model for nearly a decade so i thought i belonged in this world but i was struggling to connect i'd have these weird things i wanted to talk about that would pop up in my head like whether robot pets are ethical or if there's a version of the simulation where we're all made of ice cream but then i'd remember the club promoter party boy persona i thought was me and i pushed those thoughts away so i continued to play the role and as i scrabbled around inside looking for the person i thought i was i kept finding nothing the thing is when you hide your true self for long enough you can bury it under so many personas that you genuinely don't know who you are anymore and i don't think it's just me maybe you have felt this too in my experience many of us perhaps most of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to appear normal out of sheer terror that the people around us might realize quite how odd we truly are we fear that showing this real weird self will be the downfall of our aspirations so we round off the edges of our personality and curb our quirks until we've eroded everything unique about us away and the horror is that we succeed it's not that we're bad or deceptive it's simply that the thoughts which traverse our minds sound absolutely nothing like what the seemingly sane humans we meet every day would ever think we live in perpetual fear that the people who know our outer voice would ever get to hear what's happening inside of our heads i want to convince you that your weirdness is precisely what you should embrace to become successful desirable and fulfilled you are a unique collection of genetic predisposition and the way you've dealt with past traumas and the funny way you say the letter s and that thing only a few people know that you like having done to your feet all of these characteristics have come together to make up the unique person who is you but if we are so remarkable why do we hide our true selves well one reason is competitiveness we assume that bosses and audiences don't want weird they want normal so in order to succeed in the market we should conform to their thinking patterns and appeal to the widest possible group upon reflection we all know this is an error don't we by doing what everyone else does we guarantee average results i am astounded by how many people want to be spectacular in life but also wants to be normal by being normal you are by definition aiming for average normal people get normal results weird people get weird results on the 20th of october 1968 a 21 year old won gold and set an olympic record when he high jumped 2 meters 24 to mexico city games he was quite weird he was a civil engineering student who missed the opening ceremony to see the pyramids and sleep in his van he literally wore odd shoes to jump in and according to journalists looked like a two-legged camel or a guy falling off the back of a truck his name was dick fosbury and his unique jumping style known as the fosbri flop is now responsible for every high jump world record in existence rather than trying to conform fosbury revolutionized track and field by fully utilizing everything he was as naval ravikant says you can escape competition through authenticity because no one can beat you at being you your unique value is your weirdness it's the fact that your dad left when you were young and that you cry far too easily at happy films and that you are more interested in the pyramids than the opening ceremony these things are not weaknesses they are unique insights if you view your life experiences with the perspective that they give you an insight which no one else has you start to see everything as an advantage another reason we hide our true selves is because socially on the surface the situation looks even worse for the weirdos especially in childhood being different is not highly valued if you'd look for me on the playground at lunchtime you would have found me in my history teacher mrs wilkinson's classroom not doing detention but eating lunch somewhere where i couldn't to be bullied i had found more connection in an empty classroom than a hostile schoolyard because i struggled to fit in i want to tell every boy or girl who has been bullied or felt alone that all their quirks are blessings that not having a local accent might cause them to be alienated but in the future it means they can get a job anywhere in the world that dealing with isolation as a child might hurt but that they'll be unbeatably self-sufficient once they're an adult that the fact they're so sensitive means they might take things to heart in school but that they will grow up to genuinely understand their friends emotions even when their friends don't understand them themselves i want to tell them that all their weirdnesses are strengths to be embraced not weaknesses to be embarrassed about the problem is we map this schoolyard popularity dynamic onto the real world and presume that it still works think for a second about the time that you've fallen in love just go back to that moment when you realized it and consider what you were thinking was it i just adore how easily replaceable they are i'm so turned on by how they're exactly like everyone else what i can't get enough of is the way their opinions are so predictable probably not our deception detectors are unbelievably attuned we can tell when someone is playing a role even if they don't know it themselves it turns us off admirable attractive compelling people are the ones who are embracing not hiding their weirdness when it comes to being popular and desirable the act of embracing is far more important than what you embrace spiritually the stakes are raised even higher if you spend your days playing a persona and hiding who you truly are you will end up at a place in life not only that you don't want to be but that you didn't even mean to get to the persona is incapable of receiving love it can only receive praise if you're hiding who you truly are all the success and popularity in the world will feel hollow because people aren't in love with you they're just applauding the role you play we don't love russell crowe we love gladiator we don't love chris hemsworth we love thor this is how you can feel alone in a crowd and hollow in victory i've stood on the door of more than a thousand club nights and watched a million people go into them and i can promise you that even in a crowd of thousands you will never feel connected if you're only playing a role if we want to have confident faith in ourselves and love who we truly are we cannot pretend to be someone we're not this doesn't mean that we can't become better or develop this worldview is entirely compatible with a desire for growth and self-improvement but the goal is to become the best version of you not your version of someone else your life is your story to write you are the protagonist the narrator illustrator and author and yet we waste our pages by looking over other people's shoulders to plagiarize a tale that isn't even our own salvador dali is one of my favorite weirdos from the mustache to the dress ends to the time he nearly died while giving a seminar because he arrived in a malfunctioning deep-sea diving suit not to be wrenched out of it mid-talk if dali hadn't embraced his weirdness and created his work the world would have never received it as brilliant as he was da vinci didn't do dali and michelangelo didn't do dali anything other than the absolute truest manifestation of dali's being would have left the world fundamentally less this is the imperative we all have it is your duty to give the world what only you can give it because only you can remember this number the chances of you existing are basically zero your presence is a unique miracle if you don't paint your darli no one else will this makes the act of embracing your weirdness compulsory you have an obligation to the universe to do it during your brief highly unlikely time awake in between two eternities of sleep you have something to offer the universe in your experience and your creativity that no one else has to offer in exactly that way which means that if you don't if you allow status games or social norms or internal fears to curb your weirdness the universe will be fundamentally less complex and beautiful so learn to be open and honest with your friends have the courage to say what's on your mind find people who you can genuinely be yourself around and know that your weird input could be the words which change someone else's life or make them fall in love with you and if the recipient turns and looks at you with wide-eyed shock indifferent blankness or a mocking sneer remember that this doesn't spell doom for you and your miraculous genes it simply means that you haven't yet found someone who is quite your kind of weird thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 129,072

Rating: 4.9177766 out of 5

Keywords: English, Idea Challenge, Identity, Life, Perception, Personal growth, TEDxTalks

Id: Murw1YnFfiw

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021