Seth Godin: Unreasonable

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Salaam and Greetings,

An excellent article to wake us up. It is still early in the year. Many more months to get things done.

Whether personal or professional, we tend to be “reasonable”. Well, at least for me. Even though, in my heart, I have grandeur plans for big things, big change, being somebody larger than life.

Unfortunately, to be all that, I need to be unreasonable. But more often than not, my mind takes control and I become reasonable.

When I was in the Army (a life time away), I was offered to enroll in a sniper training. I declined, because the reasonable me said, “since I wear spectacles, I might be handicap”, among other ‘reasonable’ things I reasoned myself, even though with basic shooting training I was with 90% accuracy (FYI, the person who asked me to go for the sniper training is also reading this article. He was sniper trained. It saddens me, I turned him down for an excellent opportunity). I was also offered to take paratrooper static parachute jump. I ‘reasoned’, only “unreasonable” people would jump off a perfectly flying plane. These are only two examples I have reasoned myself out. There are many more, and I will only embarrass myself, if I write more.

Now, that I am older, have a bit more experienced, seen a thing or two, made more wrongs than rights, I truly understand the meaning of being “Unreasonable”. I wish I could turn back time. That is really being unreasonable.

As we move on with life, we experience things, we learn, we change, and hopefully we grow. I learned this saying years ago, “If the student is ready, the teacher is always there”. If we choose to learn, everybody and everything will be our teacher, including unreasonable things.

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Unreasonable
It's unreasonable to get out of bed on a snow day, when school has been cancelled, and turn the downtime into six hours of work on an extra credit physics lab.
It's unreasonable to launch a technology product that jumps the development curve by nine months, bringing the next generation out much earlier than more reasonable competitors.
It's unreasonable for a trucking company to answer the phone on the first ring.
It's unreasonable to start a new company without the reassurance venture money can bring.
It's unreasonable to expect a doctor's office to have a pleasant and helpful front desk staff.
It's unreasonable to walk away from a good gig in today's economy, even if you want to do something brave and original.
It's unreasonable for teachers to expect that we can enable disadvantaged inner city kids to do well in high school.
It's unreasonable to treat your colleagues and competitors with respect given the pressure you're under.
It's unreasonable to expect that anyone but a great woman, someone with both drive and advantages, could do anything important in a world where the deck is stacked against ordinary folks.
It's unreasonable to devote years of your life making a product that most people will never appreciate.
Fortunately, the world is filled with unreasonable people. Unfortunately, you need to compete with them.

Posted by Seth Godin on February 02, 2011

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