Be Your Weird Self
"Weird is a side-effect of awesome."
- unknown
"The most important piece of advice I can give you on the path to happiness is stop being yourself... and start being your weird self."
So says entrepreneur and angel investor Chris Sacca in a commencement address to graduates of the University of Minnesota.
"It takes too much energy to be anything but your weird self," Sacca continues. "We spend too much of our lives trying to live up to the expectations of others. We buy things we don’t really want with money we don’t really have, to impress people we don’t really care about. Forget that. Forget what other people think. Everyone is weird. Admit it. We each have our quirks. Celebrate those. Be goofy. Tell corny jokes. Dance awkwardly. Express your half-baked thoughts. And laugh about your failures."
And what does a venture capitalist who invested in early-stage tech companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Kickstarter say is the secret to success?
"Quite simply, success is happiness. It all comes down to happiness.
Happiness is success because happy people get jobs.
Happy people create.
Happy people win.
Happy people fall in love and raise families.
Happy people lead and change the world.
Happy people get what they want because often happy people are the ones who realize they don’t actually need much more than they already have and they appreciate what they’ve got."
And happiness and weirdness go hand-in-hand. Weirdness is what we adore most in our friends. It's what bonds us to our colleagues. It's sets us apart and makes us interesting. It's how we make an impact. Weirdness lies in the heart of happiness... or maybe it's the other way around. But either way, there's no better time to start being happy. And no better time to start being your weird self.