Raise your hand if you want to be the Sheepdog amongst a herd of Sheep..

It has been said that there are 3 kinds of people in the world...wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. Most people are sheep - and there's nothing wrong with that. They love peace and quiet, and they are not likely to rise to the occasion should violence strike, in other words, they wouldn’t be the first to take a risk or experiment or go for an adventure.

Another kind of person is a wolf. Wolves can be vicious. They will attack a person just because they want their wallet, or choose to rape their daughter. They are evil. They are irrationally aggressive.

Fortunately, there is a third kind of person in the world: Sheepdogs. Sheepdogs love peace, too. However, they are aware that there is evil in the world. They know the wolves prowl about. They do not crave violence, and wish the world was free of its wars and riots. But they know that heaven with its glory has not yet arrived. And until it does, the sheepdog will take his/her stand against violent people (wolves). They are aware of what needs to be done and when...they wouldn’t back down to do what it takes to achieve goals.

Now that the kinds have been established, the choice of what to be should hopefully be apparent by the end of this article.

People, for a while now, have been focussing too much on money/instant gratification right at the beginning of career or any project they take up. The focus is more on the “End” than the “Means” to reach it. Excellence is left behind and a mere tag line of ‘success’ has become the norm; a success that has been defined and approved by the Society – a high paying job, which now-a-days translates to a career in the Software or Medical industry. There are a few who are opting beyond these two career choices, but there are many who are yet to realize that there is much to learn and opt from.

This pre-defined limitation put in place by the Society has created a dearth of real Talent in either Industry, because a majority of high school graduates are being told time and time again to focus on numbers/scores/grades. This has lead to the dangerous Herd Mentality - paving way for countless Chatur Ramalingams than the much needed Ranchos (Movie reference – 3 Idiots). Herd mentality discourages ‘Standing out or being Creatively different’. Anyone who has chosen to go that way is often condemned or ostracised. This has instilled a fear for the unknown/uncertainty, a fear of being wrong or going against the norm. Hence, there is hardly 1-2% of the population who actually follows their heart or ‘gut feeling’.

That 1-2% of people who followed their gut feeling and have dared to defy the Societal norms are your Jean Batten (107^th Birthday today – New Zealand Aviator), India's first women fighter pilots- Bhawana Kanth, Avani Chatuvedi and Mohana Singh, Indian Paralympic’16 Medal winners, P V Sindhu, Deepa Karmakar, people running successful Start-ups.

In startling contrast, it is profoundly sad to see Engineering Graduates (or any Graduate for that matter) by the truckload repeat the same mundane goals/ideas over and over again. There is hardly any self-differentiation; nothing to set one apart from the next. This reminds one, through no offence, of a mindbogglingly enormous herd of sheep, following one another blindly and without an iota of thought.

This is a result of always going along with what the majority of the population is doing.

 

If you observe this picture closely, you will find that there is no fencing to contain the sheep in that particular area...just a single, unattached gate. This is your example of Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning – despite the temptation (of stepping out in a different direction through not having a barricade), one is conditioned/trained to behave with the Crowd, to not deviate from the general flow. This is both achingly sad and stupendously hilarious. 

In order to counteract this epidemic, one of the most Creative and successful entrepreneurs of the world, Elon Musk of Tesla/SpaceX has commented about ‘Unschooling’ his kids so that they learn what they like and how they like, rather than putting them through the mind-numbing rigor of a regular school’s herd-mentality propagating education. Unschooling is a way of making sure one is completely able to express him/herself without irrelevant and potential-suppressing influences from the society. This can ensure self-expression in a way that differentiates one from the next. 

‘To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong; of uncertainty’.

One should not fail to focus on the things that actually matter - Innovation, Making a difference, Revolutionizing a particular category, or just plain making someone's life better in some way. Most people who do make it big focus on these things so much that a lot of them don't even have a business model to start with. It doesn’t matter, just strive to stand out and be heard. Ultimately, the loudest are the first to be heard/noticed and the smartest are the ones who sustain. Be a Sheepdog instead of a sheep.