To keep my mind stimulated and fit I try doing a lot of reading during my spare time , if I can’t read a book I would search on WordPress for interesting reading, listen to an audio book or anything value adding on YouTube. I started this concept called Adding Value Approach in my honours year (2011). Adding value approach is simply an idea that aims to govern your very thinking and help you in making better decisions on how you spend your time; the concept is very simple and easy to apply, in everything that you chose to do, ask yourself a simple question of how this is adding value to my life and to the objectives that I have set for myself. If it does not add any value, don’t do it! Nothing as fulfilling as a value add driven life.

I’m currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, the very start of this book inspired this piece of Genius writing that you about to experience. An Outlier is a scientific term used to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. This term is used in the book to describe the caliber of successful people that he talks about in the book, Bill Gates, Theodore Roosevelt, etc.

The concept of an outlier entails a level of genius that one has to poses, you then start thinking about how can I become an Outlier? Read on fellow wonderer.

The beginning of the book talks of a town called Roseto, the fixation with Roseto was due to how the people who stayed in Roseto would only die due to old age and that was it, the medical world found it a mystery at the time that you would rarely find anyone from Roseto who had heart disease under the age of 65. This was dubbed the Roseto Mystery. No one at the time could explain why that was the case as the Rosetans like other towns drank wine, smoked unfiltered stogies, drank soft drinks and used a lot of fat I n their cooking.

The Rosetans did not engage in any sort of exercise so why where there so few cases of heart attacks in the town compared to other towns? The answer to this question needed a different type of thinking to be able to explain why the Rosetans where favored by the gods.

This is an extract from Outliers regarding the findings.

“Wolf and Bruh had to convince the medical establishment to think about health and heart attacks in an entirely different new way: they had to get them to realise that they wouldn’t be able to understand why someone was healthy if all they did was think about an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation”

You can imagine by this time the last statement send chills down my spine as this highlights the way we all try solve any given problem, we go at it the way we were either taught to or the way it has always been done. In this world you need to realise that logic also is an idea and one can simply defy it as easily as Americans made us believe that they landed on the moon or that when the aliens do finally decide to attack they are going to start in the US.

To answer the question as to why the Rosetans where so healthy, the medical researchers had to look beyond the individual, just like how you would look beyond the problem in finding innovative solutions to it; the way it has always been done does not always work. Don’t you just hate how the status quo paralysis innovation? People become so stuck up on formalities and processes that they end up not thinking. If the Matrix is anything to go by, the concept of making our own decisions will soon cease to exist.

I was at a graduation ceremony yesterday (I was the one graduating by the way, well more of a certification just so I do not sell anyone dreams haha). The key note speaker spoke about the new generation of technology and he painted so vividly how he saw the next 20 years to be like. He touched on how the driving task will be taken out of the hands of humans and put in the hands of digital computers, how cars will have no steering wheels and be able to travel on the highway at about 250km per hour and not have any accident as the cars will be able to communicate with each other. Insurance will no longer be needed and will fall away as cars can no longer have accidents and will be impossible to steal. This made me think of how South African hijackers are so embracing of change that they always find new ways to adapt given improvements in security technology: Bra Mjojo will find a way to write a program to defy the digital computers. Will surely get Bra Mjojo to write a book of the adaptive nature of criminals in SA in the coming 20 years when the driving task is no longer in the human’s hands: I shall call it “Memoirs of a normal hijacker turned digital extremist”_ Embracing change.

Now back to the Rosetans and their mystery.

“…they had to get them to realise that they wouldn’t be able to understand why someone was healthy if all they did was think about an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation. They had to look beyond the individual; they had to understand the culture he or she was part of, and who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from. They had to appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are”

The findings of the medical research where that the Rosetans had lower stress levels, this was due to how the Rosetans where connected, they would do things like cook for their neighbors, their houses where close together, housewives where respected and the elderly where incorporated into community life. The community discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and encouraged them to help the poor. Whenever you would see people walk down the streets in Roseto they would stop, greet each other and have conversations.

“The Rosetans had created a powerful protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world, they were healthy because of where they were and the world they had created for themselves”

Needles to say, soon as those values and culture practices where forgotten, they separated and became more Americanized and with that the heart disease rates rose.

The idea of looking beyond the problem always gives new innovative and proactive ways to deal with problems. Now switch your mind around and think of how one can apply this type of thinking in everyday life. If only people started looking beyond what they see at hand started envisioning things in a different way. “Only the ones crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do”.

The finding in Roseto highlights the importance of showing affection to others, genuinely being interested in people, greeting each other on the streets. In a world where 80 and 6 week old babies get raped you wonder what the hell is happening. Family and friends play an important profound role in your life without you even realising; the very environment you are in directly has an effect on you. Take things back to basics, where culture and respect where deep rooted in us.

Be different! Facts will always be around, but what people care about is what your individual thoughts are? Not what a ‘wise’ guy came up with, the power of independent thinking; it pushes back on the status quo and focuses on the creation of more. When last did you have a conversation with someone who had a crazy fresh perspective? Someone who does not acknowledge limitations, someone who questions, pushes back and challenges? Hang around people who motivate and are just as crazy and driven as you.

Normal is for the birds, what is that one skill set that sets you apart from others? Why should you be the one to wake up in that new Range Sport? What is your genius level? How are you making a brand out of yourself? Do you wake up every day feeling the same? What keeps you going? Be different and think differently.

Oh Hi, I’m Kagiso and the concept of consistent evolving rocks my world, normal is for the slackers.

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