Blog 2: On Being Weird

March 1, 2023



Somewhere along the way i have come to recognize i am weird.  But now i recognize this weirdness is OK.  i’ve given myself permission to be weird, just as i have given myself permission to be an achiever.  And i have the work of James Clear and Craig Groeschel to thank for this growing confidence in my inherent weirdness. 
Some 15 years ago i stumbled over the Enneagram and identified myself as an ‘achiever’.  This self-identification was empowering for me and it came on the back of having done some genogram work to recognize the impact of an over-critical and emotionally absent father.  i recognized that deep within me was a little boy saying ’look at me, Daddy’, crying out for recognition.  The accolades i didn’t get with Dad were sought after in others.  Inherently i was driven to achievement to gain those accolades.  The Enneagram helped me to identify that i was wired as an achiever and that this came with strengths and weaknesses.  i needed to reign in the achiever to harness these strengths for the good of others while not allowing this inherent drive to get out of hand and cost my relationships. 
So while i was a fastidious planner (for example I always planned tomorrow today and could always be captured with a coloured piece of paper full of ‘to dos’), i developed strategies to reign the achiever.  i expected less of myself.  i was OK.  I didn’t need your accolades.  But within this balance was still maximizing the habits (such as daily planning) that allowed me to serve my passion – to help others up.  i observed myself and others around me.  i knew there were many others more talented than i, but i knew i understood myself enough to maximise what i had.  It felt like others were using 40% of their capacity whereas i was using 80% of mine.  And that made the difference.  Donald Bradman’s comment that there were others more talented then he, but his discipline was the significant factor in his success inspired me to lean into the disciplined habits and rhythms of life i continued to embed.  Then i noticed these habits paying off for me in a few significant events.
i completed a doctorate.  i chose to undergo the thesis as i received a difficult diagnosis with my knee and expected to be fairly incapacitated for quite a few years.  My kids were entering their senior years of school and i knew they would be completing further study at university.  i thought i could study alongside them. i am no academic writer and the exercise took me eight years.  i completed 26 edits of some chapters.  But i was disciplined with my time, knew what times of the week i would write at my best, when to edit and when to write.  i was dogged and relatively efficient.  My habits and rhythms got me home.
Then i had a complicated knee replacement that became infected after three months.  i had to recover twice.  Again i applied myself to habits and disciplines that would slowly but surely repair the knee.  Today i can walk, swim and cycle further and faster than anytime in the past 30 years.  But it is testimony to the daily disciplines of implementing physio, of being willing to be coached by the physio and implementing his advice.  After eight months the physio commented that while i reached the semi-final for how dire my situation was (with the infection), i won the grand final for recovery and jokingly offered me a job at the clinic. 
In my time as a Principal I identified that implementing a series of rhythms and habits built around Paul Browning’s thesis of trust in ‘Compelling Leadership’ made significant improvements to the school.  i broke down Browning’s 10 trust elements into daily habits i could implement and monitor.  i would often comment to others that it was the impact of the rhythm of habits that manifest in high trust, effective opinion scores and improved results.  i’ll spell these habits and rhythms in a later blog.   
And then i come across Atomic Habits by James Clear.  A thesis that resonated with my own journey, particularly the impact of the preceeding three events.  i recognized a strength in Clear’s thesis and gained confidence in my application to engaging and maintaining habits.  Others, upon reading Clear’s work commented that they could identify my actions in the book.

Which brings me to a recent podcast by Carey Niewhioff & Craig Groeschel (CNLP 553) where i have identified my ‘weirdness’.  Groeschel identifies the implementation of these habits as having an appearance of weirdness but endorses that it is a hallmark of success . . . and that success is embedded in weirdness.  Bradman threw a golf ball at a galvinised iron water tank.  My relentless application to ongoing habits realise resilience, persistence and discipline.  There is nothing flash about me, but i know i am dogged.  And i rest in that confidence as I apply myself to helping others up.  As Groeschel quips “If you’re not doing something that other people call odd, you probably won’t do something a lot of people call great”. That’s weird . . . your life caddy.

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