httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARFGYKJFSuk
As a kid, I was teased a lot.
People thought I was weird.
I was fat. Part African. Part Japanese. With a miracle maker for a father. I loved Jazz. I was obsessed with self-help/spiritual books.
That was not a good recipe for popularity when you are 10 years old and living in one of the toughest neighborhoods in South London.
I was laughed at. Teased a lot. Outcast. And ridiculed quite a bit.
I wasn’t normal. I didn’t quite fit in with the group. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I spent a lot of time in my room alone. It was difficult being a sensitive kid in a sometimes harsh world.
The world is sadly full of amazing people that have made normal their religion. And accepted the limitations that come with that.
What is normal really anyway?
And who decided what normal is?
Is normal staying in a relationship with someone you don’t love because that’s what your family expects of you?
Is normal settling for working in a respectable job you hate just to pay the bills and to keep up with those around you?
Is normal abusing your body with all sorts of artificial drugs and beauty procedures to fit what media deems as beautiful?
Is normal postponing happiness until you retire?
Is normal chasing money at the expense of your health, then eventually spending your wealth to chase the health you lost in the process?
It takes courage to stand in your truth when those around you speak otherwise.
It takes courage to listen to your heart and follow your truth, even if it means being different from your family and risk being outcast.
It takes courage to love fully, in a world where there is so much pain.
Few people have the courage to step out of the herd mentality, and stand in the conviction of who they really are. This takes courage and is the journey of being authentically alive.
It takes courage to be who you really are in a world that bombards you with messages of who you should be. And there’s no shortage of people in life who will tell you who you should or shouldn’t be.
You can spend your time listening to their negative voices and let it drown out the fire in your soul. Or you can step up, find your own wings and fly.
You are a unique expression of the Divine. Yet we spend so much time from childhood trying to fit into the group and blend in with the crowd, in an effort to gain love and acceptance.
You may succeed in gaining acceptance from the world. You might attain fame, money, popularity. But the validation you gain from being what you think you need to be in order to be loved, isn’t real love. It’s counterfeit goods. And it will never be truly fulfilling since deep down you will know the price you had to pay was yourself. And that was painfully way too expensive.
So what did they tell you that you should be more like?
Be more quiet. More well behaved. More educated. More skinny. More like your sister. More outgoing. More pretty. Be a good girl or boy.
Be more normal.
I say that Normal is overrated.
No one that impacted the world was normal. They dared to be themselves fully. They risked ridicule. They faced rejection. They didn’t let fear stop them. They were even considered crazy at times.
Nothing great was accomplished by living safely or timidly. Living fully is a risk, but what’s the point of living if you aren’t going to live fully. You are alive, and the point of being alive is to live, not put your life on layaway for some potential future promise.
No one that impacted the world accepted the status quo. They even shocked the future with the boldness of their creativity, innovation and courage.
Gandhi. Picasso. Bob Marley. John Lennon. Maya Angelou. Richard Branson. Martin Luther King. J.K. Rowling. Nelson Mandela. Elvis Presley. Muhammad Ali. Elon Musk. Pharrell Williams. Bruce Lee.
They are game changers that dared to transcend ‘the norm’.
So celebrate your craziness. Embrace your weird. Love your uniqueness. It makes you unlike anyone else ever born.
The greatest gift you can give the world is the gift of being authentically you. Everyone else is taken. The more YOU you become, the more you give others around you the inspiration and permission to be fully themselves.
Every single experience of your life, positive and negative, makes you uniquely you. To deny your full expression is to kill off a part of yourself. When you suppress a part of yourself, you dampen your aliveness.
Give yourself permission to be you. If you don’t, who is going to give it to you?
You are living art. Art isn’t just for special museums where it hangs on walls or exhibitions. You are art and your life is your art. What will you create?
When your life is over, you won’t care about the face you saved by trying to fit in, but the joy of expressing yourself authentically.
When your life is over, you won’t care about the times you saved yourself from heart break but the times you dared to love fully.
When your life is over, you won’t care about fame and adulation of the masses, but whether you were able to look yourself in the mirror and feel peace.
So when they tell you who you should be and they say to you, “Why can’t you be more normal?”
Kindly tell them with love and a big smile on your face:
… Fuck normal!!
Love.Now
Kute
P.S. If you are ready to catapult your life to the next level then join me on www.boundlessblissbali.com, July 4-15th in 2015! Apply now for an interview!
P.P.S. I would love to hear your comments below!
18 comments on “F*ck Normal: Be Yourself. Everyone else is Taken.”
BIG HUGS KUTE! I’M LAUGHING! Thank you x x x
Big hugs to you Flower!
love it!
yeah! totally agree! f*ck normal!
let s shine & express ourselves!! risk to be happy! we are happy being us!!!!
Yes Laura!! Keep on shining!
I like your take on things, very inspiring.
Thanks Dawn. Much love to you!!
After a lifetime of pretty intense critiqueing it is hard to change I am doing it tho- letting my wonderful self be a bit of a dork-
Said F**k it many many times :))
Yes Naida!!! Free yourself… You are unique and magnificent!!!! Show that to the world!
Got iT! Hey Kute, Come February, you might be saying that a lot! How does one channel that unique insanity to work in the world? Big hugs. So not normal!
Big hug to you Caren!
This is one of your best videos/blogs ever…
Thank You So Much!
LOVE
Ann-Kristin
Glad you liked it Ann-Kristin!!! Much love to you.
I REALLY LOVE this video, Kute you PUBLICLY opened up a part of you that takes courage for most of us to get out even in private. From childhood’s painful memories to the GREAT guy we all admire today!? you did a Good job on yourself Man! YES “Fuck normal” I always did in private but it feels even better to fuck normal in public not in a silly and scandalous way but as a soul rebel that inspiring me to be bold and love when it’s hard to love because our loving is changing the world.
Respect michele and well said.big up..class act you sound
Great thoughts and wonderful perspective. Can I add an extra flavor? You have so much going for you as self empowerment guru. Really awesome. Can I challenge you to find a way to do it without the childish rebellion message? “F*ck normal” is certainly powerful but essentially passive/aggressive..and I think you can do much better.
I’d love for you to come up with a way that you can provide someone a ‘key’ like that but is truly an ‘enabler’ as opposed to a ‘dismisser’ as your current subject title.
Catchy and immediately identifiable though..very well done.
But..in the end..not empowering as needs be in the world for most. People need a way to JOIN the herd on their own terms..not disdainfully dismissing the herd’s terms as all out bunk.
Think about it.
Thanks!
Thanks Kute !
You Rock !!!
I tired once to be a normal..those two minutes was awful!
F*ck normal <3
On October 3, thirty high scoohl students from Mount Si’s Key Club visited the homes of two elderly folks in North Bend. Armed with gloves, garden tools, and determination ..they set out to offer assistance to these homeowners where the labor had simply become too big an obstacle. The students split and stacked firewood, trimmed overgrown bushes and hedges, brought garden beds back to objects of beauty, raked leaves, and filled an enormous trailer with discarded and rotting lumber that was taken to the dump. The best part of this endeavor was the smiles and hugs given by the homeowners to these high scoohl Key Clubbers. That so many showed up at their homes to Pay it Forward was overwhelming and one of the most heart-warming experiences I have seen. Way to go Mount Si Key Club!
Well said cute and some very profound insights . How many of us won’t make the concentrated effort that it takes to build a life So we can honestly say with our hand on our hearts
my life is extraordinary!!!