Eccentric and Unorthodox and Quirky! Oh My!
Let’s face it, eccentrics are the people who see problems from new and unexpected angles; whose very oddity allows them to conjure innovative solutions. They are the visionaries who make giant imaginative leaps. I’ve actually blogged about this before in Leading With A Touch Of Quirkiness. Ingrid Fetell Lee told us to quit being bound by convention; our quirkiness brings joy to the world. We need to celebrate creativity.
I was reminded of this when flipping through the channels (do we still call them that, or am I aging myself?) after the NLCS game last night and coming across Night Court. Night Court, ran on NBC from 1984 to 1992. Harry Anderson starred as the young, unorthodox, and magic-trick performing Judge Harry Stone presiding over the anything-goes atmosphere of New York Municipal Court’s night shift. I had forgotten about this great show so stayed on the channel and watched some of it. Harry was up on insubordination charges and was described as being eccentric. It was said by the presiding judge that being eccentric is how we become effective and get things done to help others. Long story short, the case was dismissed.
As a person who resembles being eccentric, unorthodox, and quirky at times, this really got me to reflecting on why so many see this as a bad thing and so few dare to be eccentric; when really it isn’t such a bad thing after all David Weeks, psychologist, did some research into the eccentricities of 1,000 subjects. Weeks found eccentrics to be highly creative and that they tend to be optimistic people with a highly developed, mischievous sense of humour, childlike curiosity and a drive to make the world a better place. It would seem to me that we need more of this. Just saying!
Weeks found the study subjects to live slightly longer, suffer less from mental illness, have very few alcohol or drug abusers, and visit the doctor less. Therefore, if we eliminate the struggle to conform we probably suffer less stress. Again, as we learned from Ingrid Fetell Lee, a little quirkiness will help bring joy into our lives. And…into the world.
So, go ahead and don’t be ashamed to be curious, creative, and a little quirky!
Joyful
Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In this book you will learn how to find joy and bring joyfulness into the lives of others. We learn to not feel bound by convention; break the mold & bring joy to the world through quirkiness. Even a touch of quirkiness can help everyone relax, be less anxious, and feel joyful. We also learn in this great book that playful design increases joy. The second benefit to playful design: it makes designers more innovative. This book will certainly help you to be more joyful.
~ Dr. Byron Ernest
Leading With A Touch Of Quirkiness
I finished the awesome book Joyful: The Surprising Power Of Ordinary Things To Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee yesterday evening. It is such a great book that really opened my eyes as to the ways I am already creating joy and need to continue, and the external environments I need to be creating to give rise to inner joy for both myself and others. Two parts of the book had a big impact on me: the idea of playful design bringing joy and not being bound by convention brings joy. Those that know me very well at all know that these are two things that I put into practice almost every day.
Ingrid Fetell Lee taught us to not feel bound by convention; break the mold and bring joy to the world. I believe it is about being a divergent thinker; the ability to generate novel ideas and conjure up multiple solutions to a problem. This is about being creative and thinking outside the box. This celebrates creativity. I have watched this way of operating bring joy to groups doing the divergent thinking and have felt the joy myself when conjuring up new and exciting ways of doing things. I believe we are very guilty in education right now of promoting the idea of one correct answer. This is really promoting when using high stakes summative tests. I get that at some point there has to be convergence of ideas but I believe we take the joy out of learning by not allowing for enough divergence – both in our educational systems and in the workplace. We tend to reward the students who work hard, like learning, are rule followers, but are not going to break any molds or create anything wowful.
Interestingly, childhood creativity has been shown to have a higher correlation to adulthood success than IQ. So, maybe we should create systems in our organizations and schools that value creative, interesting, and innovative answers, rather than the “right” ones. I also believe this mold-breaking thinking allows us to better question ourselves. This gives us the opportunity to be more comfortable with the idea that what we thought we knew could be wrong. This kind of thinking can position us well in our learning, work, and personal lives.
We were also taught in Joyful that being a little quirky and even bring joy. I proved this yesterday when I emceed our Impact Georgia back to school event. I wore my white linen suite that is a little out of character for me. I must say I was looking pretty fly. The look was just enough different from my usual that I believe it brought joy to others which made me feel joyful as well. I also added to the quirkiness by asking a teacher to come up on stage, and I quote myself here, “Take a selfie of us. Make it look like I am holding the camera.” This was of the things I really learned from the book is that joyfulness can be found in some of the most obscure and little things.
I even think about a couple of weeks ago when we were in Alberta, Canada and went to see the worlds largest dinosaur in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. It was super quirky, but the quirkiness made it so much fun and it brought so much joy that it keeps bringing joyfulness when we look at the two pictures included in this post.
Go ahead and embrace your quirkiness and celebrate creativity!
Byron's Babbles 
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