The right story isn’t the point. The right change, at the right time, for the right people and the right reason is the point.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

There are products you care about beyond reason, and it’s with this lack of reason that you define yourself.**
(Hugh Macleod)

I’ve just come to the close of a dreamwhispering journey with someone who has discovered, when exploring and articulating her values, talents and most enriching environments, her right story looks weird – that is, when compared with normal.

Hugh Macleod’s opening words are linked to his favourite book We Are All Weird, from Seth Godin. Also one of my favourite reads, I pulled my copy out of my library and began looking through the words that captured my attention when I read it eight years ago. On page 12, I’d noted:

We’re not normal. We’re weird. All of us.^

It’s the truth. Yes, we like grouping people together to make modern life work the way we think it should – the great mass of normal – but reality is quite different. Spend an hour with anyone, ask them a question about what they love, then listen back and enjoy the journey into their weird.

Rory Sutherland concludes his book Alchemy with this aide-memoire:

Remember, if you never do anything different, you’ll reduce your chances of enjoying lucky accidents.^^

We need more happy accidents, more imagination, more possibilities, and they won’t come from normal, they’ll come from weird:

An abundant society can’t be created with a narrative of scarcity.*

How do we know we’ve found our right story as an individual? Those around us flourish. And our right story as a world? Everyone flourishes.

The right stories are not about us, they’re about others.

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s The Right Story.)
(**From gapingvoid’s blog: “We Are All Weird.”)
(^From Seth Godin’s We Are All Weird.)
(^^From Rory Sutherland’s Alchemy.)