Dancing to a Different Beat!

Are there true benefits of being an individual and not wanting to be just like everyone else?

The simple and most straightforward answer is to embrace all of the wonderful differences and diversities that surround you with kindness, understanding, and love. Just be yourself.

“Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.”
Bernard M. Baruch

“A weed is but an unloved flower.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It has been said that an emotionally healthy person feels as if they add a certain amount of value to their environment. The benefit is that other people will perceive them as being more valuable as well. Uniqueness and independence seem to go hand in hand.

In my two satire novels, The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude and Babes in Bucksnort, my characters are definitely individuals. They offer insight into our world today along with well-placed laughs and chuckles for an afternoon of fun entertainment.

Confidence is essential and helps you to stand out, but it’s more important to have a sense of humility and willingness to learn from yourself as well as others. Sister Mary Olga would be the first to tell you to focus on the strengths, not weaknesses of others. She would want you to increase your awareness and learn as much as you can about all the diversity and wonderful people around you.

With the positive aspect of confidence, there must a delicate balance against arrogance, jealously, and the “I” ness that it can transpire. Have the confidence to do what you want to do, but not at the price of others.

I can hear Sister Mary Olga telling you not to always go with the flow, but rather do something different. Dancing to a different beat can have many amazing gifts that will catch on to everyone one around you.

“Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
Mother Teresa

“Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe