I decided not to come up with an intro to this post and go into some clever definitions and orientation. The concept is ambiguous in my view, and ‘correctness and cleverness’ will not bring value to the reader. Subjectivity may. (Going so far with it that I do give my own personal definition of an outlier at the end).

Do these resonate with you?

I am trying to give some reasoning so that you can decide whether you agree or not.

• “I feel (or used to feel) sickened by the unconscious and vicious way we, humans, live. I do not want to take sides, but I feel morally sickened. I wish we lived differently. Starkly differently.”
  • Outliers actively get away from the current systems governing our lives.
• “I like thinking in systems. I enjoy understanding things on a system level.”
  • Outliers are actively working on figuring things out. And so they are abstract thinkers.
• “I am looked at as a weirdo or as a ‘not-so-important’ person at work, in my family of origin, and at other social circles.”
  • This is also one of those ‘suspicious’ ones. Weirdos and ‘not-so-important’ persons do not belong that strongly to groups, or they belong uncommonly. But this is also true for many other people; for instance, for people who have relationship trauma.
• “I don’t necessarily look for the company of other outliers.”
  • I think it may be because a lot of outliers are at the stage of separation and independence in their personal development.
• “I do not have many close friends.”
  • Outliers can be brutally honest with themselves, and this is also true for how they define friendship.
• “Outliers don’t stand out for things. They are always in the background.“
  • Untrue. They choose much more carefully what they stand out for. And I am not implying that this is always a good thing.
• “I chose to be an outlier.”
  • Then you are not an outlier. One doesn’t choose to be an outlier.
  • You may have some traumas, challenging life situations, you may be deeply interested in self-development, or other areas that aspire to change the status quo, but that in itself doesn’t make you an outlier.
• “It appears to me that I have chosen this path some time back.“
  • My personal experience about outliers I was lucky to meet: When they look at their life so far, they find they were just as unconscious for a while as anyone else. At the most, a bit more self-aware than average. And then something changed. Gradually for some, suddenly for others.

How others look at outliers

• Trained eyes recognize outliers.
• Untrained eyes see surface-level attributes. In other words, outliers are many times put into cliches that don’t tell much.
• Many people are afraid of outliers. An average response is ridicule; a harsher one is an attack.
• Most organizations can’t tolerate outliers.

My personal definition of who an outlier is

An outlier is a person who is consciously seeking individuation.