But Why?
As a person of questions and an entrepreneur at heart, I have always questioned the route many take and believed it could only lead to a mediocre life. I always pondered over it and wondered how anyone be satisfied by mediocre life, let alone aspire to have one. Because a ‘normal’ life to me was a life of no excitement or success.
And after all, you only have one life.
From this actually came the name for this site; One Life Success. Because I believe anybody can achieve some greatness in their lives and that they should, but surely this cannot be achieved by traveling down the well-worn path like everybody else as described above?
Take a Different Path
I broke the mould, even in school. Pupils would follow the path of the ‘norm’ going from year to year, grade to grade, until they reached the end and moved onto the next pre-set track for their life. But nobody ever travelled on a different path to ‘norm’ or went for extraordinary achievements on it. I decided to go against this once I’d reached sixth form.
To suit me and the huge goals and ambitions I had for life, I took a completely different path at 16. While all other sixth formers in my school did the pretty standard A Levels in things like English, Maths, Sciences, Geography, History and the like, I was a bit different and took a slightly different route. Taking on a media A Level at my original school and an Economics AS Level at another, I also completed a Level 2 AAT Accountancy course in a college night class.
But that’s not all, I did all of this within a year and went to the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy for a following year at the age of 17, gaining me an extra 3 A Levels in Enterprise & Entrepreneurship and more vitally more of the skills and knowledge that I would need to be great in my ambitions.
These steps may seem small and insignificant, but all steps count if they are steps towards your success.
Steve Jobs on Difference & the ‘Norm’
Speaking at the Academy of Achievement many years ago, Steve Jobs spoke a lot about change and going off of the well-worn path. He spoke about how being innovative in your mind and abilities is one of the biggest attributes to have as a person who wants to create and change things, and how challenging the status quo is a must.
He went on to speak about how the basic path through school can be good, but how gaining other valuable experiences is necessary. Whether that’s going to Paris to be a poet for a year he says, or going to a third world country and witnessing the horrific conditions and misery to be seen.
And as a person who wants to create and change things, I too have always aimed to challenge the status quo and make my own path at every level; such as the taking of my different path through education to as to gain the variety of skills, knowledge and experiences that I felt I would need to be innovative and different in my life, and to inevitably achieve the greats that I want to achieve.
Conclusion
I sincerely believe that to gain a different and extraordinary result for your life, you to have to take a different path in it. And as I have, you should to look to make a conscious effort in making your path different and extraordinary, yet still precisely focusing it to the aims and goals that you have.
To recap! Don’t go with the flow, and take a different path and innovative approach, but don’t forget to ensure that it suits and fits your needs. Being successful, is being different, and getting every experience and opportunity you can in life, even if they aren’t part of the ‘norm’.
Wrote by Joe Brown
