CHAPTER 6
The Courage to be Unpopular

There is nothing innovative about following the crowd.

One does not evolve through mediocrity.

You could make an argument—not always true, but often enough—that popularity and mediocrity meet at the same point.

After I wrote the article that became this chapter, I went to another blog to write a run-on sentence using film titles. It’s a silly thing I do on Fridays. It’s something people had never seen before, and it became the highest-viewed content I had written in five years.

I have people, on a somewhat regular basis, send me messages about how something I wrote changed their lives. Yet the silly run-on sentence is what gets the views.

This is not a complaint. It is an observation of results.

The best I have given thus far has been unpopular and changed lives.
Stupid bullshit goofing off draws a crowd.

Look at the results, not the numbers. One life changed changes the lives around them. None of us ever truly knows the ripple effect. I never set out to be the kind of human people tell, “You changed my life.” It just happened while I was busy being me.

I am one of the most hated people on LinkedIn in some circles for being me.
I am one of the most loved people on LinkedIn in some circles for being me.

Both sides will tell you it’s my honesty that is why they either love or hate me. The ones who hate me might also have some creative names for me.

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A leader who makes enemies by being honest is followed by an army that goes unseen but not unheard.
A leader dares to take an unpopular stand and stands their ground.
A leader is there to lead,not to be popular.

While it is possible to be a leader who is both liked and respected, it’s the times they hate you that are exactly why they respect you. You dared to take the stand that needed taking, the one no one else would take. You stood out front and took the heat, knowing you had no backup, and did it anyway.

It might not ever make you popular. But it will never go unnoticed by all the right people—the ones who will follow you whether you ask them to or not.

If one is to dare to evolve, one has to be willing to be totally different on the other side of that evolutionary step. You cannot cling to the approval of the old world while trying to build a new one.

Escape mediocrity by going against popularity.

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This courage is not recklessness. It is the opposite. It is the calculated result of the previous chapters.

You have done the internal work (Balance). You can manage your reactions (Neutral Gear). You can feel the room (Empathy). You have synthesized your insight through study and experience (S+L=U). Now you see a truth that the consensus does not see, or does not want to see.

The courage to be unpopular is the willingness to speak that truth when it matters, knowing it will cost you social capital. Knowing you will be labeled arrogant, disruptive, or a “crackpot.” This is where the “hubris” of the un-evolved is separated from the conviction of the coherent.

Hubris speaks to make the self seen.
Conviction speaks to make thetruth seen, regardless of its effect on the self.

This is why the androgynous view, the elimination of control, the empathic instrument—they are all essential training. They clear out the personal, fragile ego that needs to be liked. What remains is a function: a conduit for a understanding that is bigger than your personal reputation.

When you are that conduit, you are free. The boos and the cheers become the same noise—data about the audience’s readiness, not a verdict on your worth.

The goal is not to be hated. The goal is to be indifferent to the verdict, so you can do what is right for the sum, not what is safe for the some.

Popularity is the territory of the crowd.
Impact is the territory of the leader.

You must choose your territory.

CHAPTER 7
The Discipline of Patience

When you most want to speed up is the exact time to slow down.

One who is patient in thought becomes diligent in action and accomplishes great things. My students and clients have heard me say often: Patience exercised is patience cultivated. It is a muscle. The more you use it correctly, the stronger it becomes.

Understanding can breed patience, or it can bring your patience to an end. By “understanding,” I mean looking at the big picture and why you are either choosing to engage patience or toss it aside. There are times when losing your patience is exactly what is needed to create change. Our shared history is littered with transformations born from people who finally lost their patience with an unjust “what is” and took action, often fueled by a healthy rage.

But rage is never healthy—at least, that’s what all the most popular people on social media say.

Repressing healthy anger, however, is a harm you do to yourself. It is the things that piss us off that we become the most motivated to change. The things we have no patience for are often the things doing the most harm, personally or to others.

We are emotional creatures; we will get angry. What we do with that anger tells us how much patience we have. I often recommend taking time alone to vent that anger verbally. Listen to the words as they come out. Once you have purged the raw emotion, repeat to yourself why you became enraged, as if you were hearing the story from a stranger.

This exercise tells you whether you experienced a healthy emotional signal or an overreaction. If it was healthy, you can then calmly look for solutions. Sometimes, those solutions require confrontation. Talking to the person who triggered you, explaining calmly why it was an issue. It is of utmost importance to be calm and reserved during this discussion for it to be productive.

In the work environment? Handle it in private. The worst thing you can do is gossip. If in doubt, talk to HR. But first, talk to your own patience.

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Patience is not inactivity. It is active energy management.

This week, for example, this chapter is my first blog post. Here’s why: I’ve been doing work for a client that shifted my focus from me to them. Some free time opened up today while I wait for their next move—a holding pattern. Instead of chafing at the delay, I used it to write this. I gave myself something productive to do that is part of what convinced the client to hire me in the first place: my writing.

This is a productive pause. It is patience as an active state, using the friction of waiting to polish your own gyre instead of letting it grind you down.

Now, apply this to innovation.

When seeking new innovations, there is often a rush to get them to market. The Motorola RAZR phone is a prime example. T-Mobile USA had the first shot at carrying it exclusively. They passed because the phone did not meet their quality standards.

The RAZR was released anyway. It generated more consumer complaints than any other phone in its time and became the first major dud Motorola sent to the marketplace. Their lack of patience cost them a fortune in replacements and incalculably more in consumer trust and loyalty.

The brutal irony? Motorola was the company that developed Six Sigma, the famed methodology for quality control and process discipline. That result shows two failures: too much patience for a theory proving itself wrong in practice, and a total inability to exercise the humility to change course.

Patience without the courage to pivot based on evidence is just stubbornness.
Action without the patience for quality is just reckless speed.

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Patience breeds quality. It may not be cost-effective in the immediate quarter, but it can save millions—or make billions—over time. It is the discipline that ensures the “courage to be unpopular” is applied to a finished product, not a half-baked idea.

The next time you are in a hurry to bring something to market, to implement a change, or to confront a problem, take a beat. Exercise the discipline of patience.

Make sure you are bringing your best, not just your fastest.

This discipline is what allows you to hold the “comfortably uncomfortable” state long enough for the right action to emerge—not the first one that offers relief.

CHAPTER 8
The Operating State

The secret to endless growth is a simple, paradoxical state: being comfortably uncomfortable.

It’s when we are uncomfortable that we are most aware, most noticing. Discomfort challenges us to accept or deny, stay or run, speak up or stay silent. Choice always has another option. Even deciding to do nothing is a choice. How do we wisely use this ultimate power when faced with what makes us squirm?

It depends on the exact situation.

I have irritated, annoyed, and flat-out pissed people off with that sentence. Usually, it’s because they are selling some cookie-cutter, catch-all approach that never accounts for every possible scenario. The comfort of their one-size-fits-all answer is gone, and discomfort sets in.

That is exactly where the opportunity to grow and learn lives and breathes.

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To navigate this space, you must internalize a law that shatters a thousand excuses: Intent and results are two different things. The former does not determine the latter. No matter how well-meaning your intent, you can still do a lot of damage.

Look around social media. You’ll find countless people with no business giving life guidance. When challenged, some say, “I just want to inspire people. My intent is good.” As if that doesn’t matter if they get it wrong and hurt someone.

Bullshit.

Your intent does not remove the responsibility for the results from your shoulders. This is an uncomfortable truth we must accept. Denying it allows people to behave in harmful ways, shielded by a lack of forethought and real study. Leaders look at potential results, regardless of their intent, to minimize harm. They ensure they are correct, or they phrase it as “I think,” “I feel,” “in my opinion.” They do this to avoid leading people astray.

When giving guidance that changes lives, the most important thing is to be correct. Anything less is irresponsible.

This standard comes from a life of constant study. At age four, my dad caught me watching public access television broadcasting an advanced economic theory lecture. What shocked him wasn’t that I was watching, but that his four-year-old could explain the concepts in detail, in my own words. I wasn’t repeating; I was demonstrating understanding.

I know how rare that is. I also know how uncomfortable it makes some people to accept it.

If that’s you, ask yourself: Why is this hard to accept?
Is it because you can’t conceive of doing it yourself?Because you’ve been programmed to only accept such information from an established authority, not from the person who actually did it?

This is the pattern. It’s intimidating to meet someone whose capability exceeds our own framework. Our discomfort reveals the boundaries of that framework.

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This discomfort is the forge. The most telling test is how you handle public correction.

On social media, when someone corrects you publicly, you have a choice. You can see it as an opportunity to publicly show your ability and willingness to grow, or you can get so scared of losing social status that you go “apeshit.” Typically, people get defensive and try to discredit the corrector to save face.

In an office, this behavior costs companies a ton of money and can cost people their jobs.

The best showing of leadership in thought and action is to let other people get right, to let them prove you wrong, and gain a trust and loyalty that money can never buy.

To get better, we must first be uncomfortable with where we are.

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I live comfortably uncomfortable. It keeps me in the mindset of looking for the potential to learn and grow in every breath. I’ve called it the Student/Teacher mindset over the years.

Always be looking to learn. But never be too humble to think you have nothing to teach. The “student-first” approach keeps you humble, requiring fewer of life’s brutal, humiliating reminder lessons.

This is the operating state that synthesizes all the previous chapters:

· From Hubris to Humility.
· From Control to Curiosity.
· From needing to be Popular to seeking Impact.
· From Impatience to Strategic Calibration.

It is not a destination you arrive at and rest. It is a dynamic equilibrium you maintain—a gyre spinning steadily in the constant crosswinds of challenge and change.

When you are comfortably uncomfortable, you are done “working on yourself” in the remedial sense. You are now operating from your coherent self, tuned to the frequency of growth, ready to engage the world not from a place of defense, but from a platform of perpetual, peaceful evolution.

This is the human instrument, fully tuned. Now, we connect it to other instruments.

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