Ep 188 | Are You In the Majority?

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about a quote from Mark Twain, and that quote goes, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, It is time to pause and reflect. One more time. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. This quote of Mark Twain's suggests taking a, a critical perspective on conformity. It is about having independent thought, the importance of independent thought. What Twain was encouraging is for individuals to reconsider their beliefs or their actions when they are too closely aligned with the majority. Now, I don't necessarily think this means that if you find yourself sided with the majority, you are by any chance wrong or inaccurate. That's not always going to be the case, but it's simply a call to pause and reflect. If you find yourself thinking and acting and behaving like others, maybe take a step back and assess why. This quote implies that being part of the majority might lead to complacency. It might lead to a lack of critical examination. And as human beings, right, like it's our human— it's human nature to play somewhat of a social game, a tribal game. I mean, that is in our DNA. We're a tribal species and tribal. Like if you go back in history, there was benefit to getting along, to, to being along with everybody else, to conforming. Well, as the world's evolved, we've had the opportunity to not just have independent thought, but even display independent thought, take a stand, not always follow the tribe or the group. Right? And so what Mark Twain's talking about here is just simply taking a step back and challenging your beliefs. By pausing and reflecting, Twain urges people to think independently and not merely just go along with the crowd. So let's talk about how this might apply in, in real life or in business or wherever it may be. There are lots of people I think we can look at that, that did not conform, that, that did not follow the majority. The first one come, uh, that comes to mind for me, actually, I have her picture on my wall. Uh, that's behind me here is Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who played a huge role, a pivotal role in, in the civil rights movement here in America. And she's best known for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, which I, in the mid-'50s, I think it was 1955. At that time, racial segregation was pretty deeply entrenched in the Southern United States. There were actually laws requiring African Americans to, to give up their seats to white passengers. So the norm was to give up your seat and many chose not to take a stand. In other words, the majority abided by these rules. Rosa Parks, however, saw herself on the side of majority. Took a step back and reflected. And as a result, chose to resist this rather unjust practice by refusing to move. And, and her civil disobedience sparked an entire bus boycott. And it was a significant event in the civil rights movement. So her decision to defy the norm of her time and take a stand and suffer the repercussions of that. It really kind of reflects the spirit of Mark Twain's quote. You know, another, another good example, uh, Malala, who many of us, you know, may have seen or read the book, uh, is another really good example of someone who honored the Twain quote by challenging the majority and standing up for what she believed in. As a matter of fact, Malala, who's a Pakistani activist, uh, for female education, She was the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate. So in Pakistan, the Taliban had imposed a ban on girls' education. And despite the majority just, you know, accepting this oppressive, you know, rule or decree due to fear, more oftentimes than not, or maybe it was just complacency, like it had always been the case, so they just accepted it. Malala, even as a young girl, spoke out against it. And she continued to attend school and she became an advocate for the right to education for all girls. It was a rather courageous stand, a stand that clearly few would have taken. And she refused to accept the status quo. She challenged the prevailing norms, which kind of leads me to the last example I want to give today. When you talk about challenging the status quo, I think about Apple, the company Apple. Apple's mission has often been associated with challenging the status quo. And more specifically, what do they say? Thinking differently. So Apple was not explicitly stating this in a mission about status quo, but it was, it was, it was their call to arms. It was their call to action. It was their stand against the majority. They even had a Think Different campaign that they launched sometime in the late '90s. That captured the essence of the company's approach. The campaign actually celebrated individuals who had challenged the status quo and changed the world. The people like I just mentioned in Rosa Parks and Malala, but they focused on Einstein and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. The underlying message for Apple as a brand was that they dared to think differently. And as a result, they brought about positive change. Thinking differently by definition is going against the majority. So, you know, I quote today that this Mark Twain quote, quote, which I'm going to read one more time. The quote was, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. I talked to you about this today because I think we've all found ourselves, ourselves aligned with the majority. And that's not always a bad thing. I don't mean to say it is, But if you find yourself aligned with the majority, it's probably good to take a step back and reflect. How did you get there? How did you get there? Was it a conscious decision that you made? Were they actual— were they actual action steps you took to get there? Or did you just go with the flow? Did you conform? Did you follow the tribe? Did you follow the group? If in fact it is that, you know, if you did follow the group, I would challenge you to think a little differently, challenge the status quo and discover if maybe a different path could, could be right for you. So the focusing question today, when have you found yourself on the side of the majority and should you, or could you today pause and reflect as Mark Twain suggests, and might that prompt you to take a different course of action? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off, uh, No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.