I saw this quote this morning over on Doc Searl’s blog:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Great quote, is it not?
It got me thinking…how does being unreasonable lead to greatness?
Think of greatness any way you like. I’m looking at greatness as being a forethinker; someone who looks at a problem and finds the solution that few – if no one – is considering.
History is full of people who have done unreasonable things that have had great affects on our world. Think of Jesus, Ghandi, or Einstein. How did their radical thought change the world? Even business owners like Henry Ford or doctors such as Joseph Murray have had dramatic impacts on our lives simply by thinking differently.
Each of these men were unreasonable. Meaning they didn’t settle for what was reasonable at the time. They pushed beyond. And from that, great things happened.
How are you unreasonable with your business? Your life? Your parenting? Your spirituality? Where do you not settle for the norm? And how does/can your unwillingness to be reasonable changing the world?
Hey there, Dawud. Your post really got me thinking, because in my work people claim all the time that the other person’s being totally unreasonable…and that’s a “bad” thing. You’ve reminded us that in some ways, unreasonableness is highly contextual.
At the same time, Ghandi espoused highly reasoned and reasonable approaches to being unreasonable1!
What a great perspective.
Reason can be relative because what is reasonable to you will not be reasonable to me.
According to my children I was never reasonable. By being unreasonable I was able to raise responsible citizens and give them a sense of decency, honorable morals, and accountability as they kicked and screamed all the way to graduation.
Thanks for putting this in the context of business. I’ve held many of the folks you mentioned as personal role models, but, your post made me realized that I have tended to put their actions in a totally separate realm from “work.” When, in reality, what were they doing if not “great work?” I’m certainly striving to live into a space of doing “great work.” So I guess it’s time to start getting a bit unreasonable!
Tammy,
Exactly! Being unreasonable is subjective. What’s reasonable to one person may not be to another. But just because we appear to be unreasonable, doesn’t mean our thoughts and opinions should be devalued. And often the contrary. It’s our being unreasonable with the status quo that can lead to change…and growth.
I’d love to hear more about your work and people seeing others as unreasonable. And is there a way to reframe unreasonable as a positive?
Carma,
Yeah, exactly! We don’t always appear reasonable to others – especially our children. Yet I think trusting ourselves – our hearts – can help us see when our unreasonable-ness (new word) is for growth and evolution or if it’s our egos just being difficult.
Thought?
Edward,
I hear you. ‘Greatness’ doesn’t happen following the status quo. What I’ve seen is that if we want to ‘be great,’ we have to be different – we have to be unreasonable.
How are you seeing your business becoming unreasonable?
Great post, Dawud. (btw, it’s “Gandhi”…)
Marty Neumeier, author of “Brand Gap”, recently came out with a second book, called, “Zag” (because when others ‘zig’, you ‘zag’, according to Marty and lots of other wise folks).
He talks about the same sort of idea; that “best practices” are usually “common practices”, and following the reasonable course usually leads you right where just about everyone else goes — into the pool of anonymity.
Zagging/Being unreasonable is a great way to stand out, make a splash, and from my perspective, have a lot of fun in the process!
Changing the world? I agree with Gandhi, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” When I teach classes I present ideas to people, but I don’t try to change them. I know at least one person will get a lot out of the class, and that person will be me. One of my main reasons for teaching is it keeps me practicing what I preach.
In practice, if I talk about something that is changing my life, it usually connects with a few other people.
Being different from the norm? That’s me, with bells on. I was raised in an environment where women’s primary role was in the home. If they did work it was as secretaries, nurses and teachers. I was the first person in my family to go to college, and I won a scholarship to Stanford and majored in physics.
Another norm I broke was that physics majors didn’t take time out to attend one of the overseas campuses. It would mean taking all physics and math courses your senior year, too much of an ordeal. You either changed your major to something easier, or you stayed home. I went anyway. The emotional appeal of the role model I wrote about in my comment to your last post was much too strong not to go.
As for my senior year, it was only one year and I was still young.
The next norm was if you had a talent for physics you got your Ph. D. I went to graduate school for one semester, and decided other things were calling me. When I announced my decision to leave the head of the physics department tried to talk me out of it. In his mind the best course was to hang in there and get my Ph. D., but at least stay long enough to get my master’s. I still appreciate his concern, but I left anyway. I got a job developing software for scientific research and saved up some money to do more traveling.
In the meantime I got engaged and when my husband got his Ph. D. we lived in France for 13 months, using our home as a base for exploring Europe on weekends and holidays. We then spent another two months coming home the long way.
I went back to scientific programming when we got back to the states, then when my daughter was little I took ten years out to stay home with her and to do volunteer work. During this time my father died, and when I went back for the funeral one of my mother’s friends semi-sneered and said, “Too bad you didn’t do anything with your education.” Another friend of the family, who knew me when I was little, said, “You were such a smart little thing. It’s too bad you never did anything with it.” As if raising a child was a complete waste of time. Sorry, I didn’t bother to answer.
Another big norm in our society is that if you’re not paid to do something you can’t be very good at it. I’m a volunteer at heart, and I’m now back to volunteering on a full-time basis. What does all of this have to do with greatness? Greatness simply isn’t a term that’s relevant to my life. One of my favorite stories is of the Jewish rabbi Zusia. One night he dreamed he was called by the angels to account for his life. As he told his followers:
“I have learned that the angels will not ask me, ‘Why weren’t you a Moses, leading your people out of slavery?’ And I have learned that the angels will not ask me, ‘Why weren’t you a Joshua, leading your people into the promised land?’ They will say to me, ‘Zusia, there was only one thing that no power of heaven or earth could have prevented you from becoming.’ They will say, ‘Zusia, why weren’t you Zusia?'”
Well, for better or for worse, no one can accuse me of not being Jean Browman.
‘Unreasonable’ is so subjective as to really BE unreasonable. It’s a concept born of fear, I think; fear that change will destroy the comfort zone. It’s that “we’ve always done it this way” mentality that would have us still traveling on horseback.
Nothing against horses, but you can count me among the unreasonable.
Jean,
Sounds like you’ve had an interesting life. I can relate, having taken a similar journey. I was once a promising baseball player who chose a Bio-Medical Engineering/Pre-Med program at Purdue. I had my life planned – Med school, dual doctorate program, surgeon.
But it didn’t go that way. Before my freshman year of college, I got into alternative medicine. What I quickly realized was that modern medicine was missing a huge part of the natural healing process of the body. And that reducing our incredibly complex systems to a bit of biochemistry and what I call “auto-mechanic treatment” (most surgery) was mostly an ineffective way to help people be healthy.
Two years of college was enough for me. Instead, I set out to find more about alternative ways of healing. That’s lead me on an exciting journey which I have no regrets.
The funny thing is I can relate. My family, almost 20 years after leaving college and deciding not to continue my baseball career, still don’t get it. My mom feels I should be just ending a pro career. And other family members tell me that “I should have got into computers.” Huh? Let’s see, I help small businesses build their business using the internet. Sounds like I’m into computers to me.
So it’s been a fun ride for me too. Not always easy. But nothing in life that’s worthwhile is. I continue with alternative medicine, though I don’t practice on clients anymore. But that’s another story for another time.
Carolyn,
Me too. One of my favorite quotes (and I have tons) is Whitman…“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
If you look through time, it’s always been those who are unreasonable that make change. Change, itself, is unreasonable to most people. We like the status quo – even when it’s painful. Often we’d rather have the comfort of our pain then the uncertainty of change. Odd, isn’t it?
Dawud,
I’d love to hear the story of how you stopped practicing alternative medicine with clients and started helping small businesses.
This conversation reminds me of another quote:
“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson
I suppose the story of my life is mostly about keeping my soul alive and still connecting with other people and making a contribution.
Jean,
Boy, that’s a bit of a story. In a nutshell, I found working with clients on their health to be daunting. Not so much from my skills or training. But rather from watching how few people really wanted to change. The only people who really wanted to change were those either in too much emotional/spiritual pain or those facing life-threatening diseases. Most other clients just didn’t have the motivation to change their lives. And healing means change. So it got difficult to want to take people’s money when they weren’t deeply committed to using our treatment as a means for changing their lives.
What I learned is that people have to take absolute responsibility for their lives. If they don’t – beit to their doctor, healer, accountant, dentist, spouse, etc – then no real change can happen. Yet most people are too wounded inside, it seems, to really take responsibility for their life. And the new age and pop-psych movements have given them plenty of strategies to avoid what really ails them.
So I had to step away from healing because I just couldn’t, in full integrity, continue to offer ‘healing’ for people who really didn’t want to heal.
All practitioners face this. And most come to some conclusion internally that they can help the few they can help. I just couldn’t in good faith. So I moved on to helping small businesses utilize the web to grow their dreams. Sounds like a departure, but it’s not. I simply bring my healing and consciousness training to work everyday for my web/business clients.
That makes me the rarest of web/business coaches/consultants. Not only can I help you grow your business through the internet, I also have the patience and training to help you get through the issues that hold you back from success – whether they’re physical, mental, emotional and/or spiritual.
So now I just do what I do for my clients and rarely talk about the internal process. But all clients go through it. It’s just a natural process for starting and growing a business.
Being unreasonable is often being different.
Comparatively its like moving away from a cattle herd!!Thus achieving something new!
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