A Blank Page

Not Like Anyone Else – Part 7

Do what most won’t.
One of the fundamental practices you must master to be apart of the no-longer-common community is to get comfortable doing the things most won’t do.  In order to be different, you must do what’s different.  Successful people are different.  Bottom-line.  Those who have happy, lasting marriages are not like everyone else.  They are different.  It’s impossible to be the same as everyone else and have different results.  There must be something different.  People who have purpose and know their direction are uncommon; not normal, not ordinary and not common.  

This by far has to be my favorite talk to give.  
If you’re looking for a way out of your current situation to get into a better one…
If you are looking for a way to get out of  debt…
If you are looking to finish that degree that’s taking you forever…
If you are looking to start that business that your thoughts can’t shake…
Then you need to “start with a blank sheet of paper”.  Start with a blank page.

Why start with a blank page?
Being ordinary is a trap that prints its rules on the pages of your life.  Ordinary living has an imprint on your existence that’s extremely hard to erase.  This is why I suggest you start with a blank page.  Get rid of the teachings and learning you have accumulated thus far.  Get rid of the ordinary teaching.  Put it a side, unless you desire to remain mediocre.  Unless you desire to remain average.  Unless you desire to remain like popular culture.

After the toughest times I’d experienced in life, I decided never again to repeat that cycle.  I needed to change everything. So I started with a blank sheet of paper.  When I would attend church, I’d go as if I knew nothing about the scripture. When I would come home, I put my old habits off and started new one.  One the most life altering exercises I did was change my signature.  I refused to look at anything that kept me common. I wanted to give God a new canvas to work with.  I started with a blank page.

When you start with a blank page, that means you stop doing it the way you’ve found to be “common”.  You think about it, evaluate it and for me I’ve found a better alternative.  I’ve decided to be uncommon.

Go into it as if you know nothing.
Act like you don’t know how to do anything, so that you can learn it a better way.  Stop and research it if you have to.  Be intentional about being unlike the rest.  (I think you need me to go to the left a little.)
Common will set you up  to fail in life: drop out of school, lose a home, or hide yourself.
Common will cause you to look for the worst in everyone you meet, learn very little if anything from people you encounter, or cause you to miss out on the career you always wanted.
Common will create selfish motives for yourself instead of showing concern for others.
Common will keep you from being promoted on a job because you refuse to grow.

What would happen to you, if you started with a blank page?  Started with no preconceived ideas or notions?  What if you go into it as if you know nothing?

What you’d do is ask the questions you need to know.  You’d get rid of the distractions that’s blocking you from learning.  You’d find the answers that you truly need.  The point is to get rid of the “common” assumptions and be willing to ask the right questions so that you can find the answers ordinary people are unwilling to find so that you can be uncommon.