A Letter from Chris Suarez
FIND DIFFERENT
Why do we gravitate towards people that are like us? We often find ourselves in rooms and on teams with people similar to ourselves. Why? Because then it’s relatively easy. There is nothing to understand or figure out. There are no difficult conversations to be had. There are no awkward questions to ask. There is no different point of view to unpackage or think through. There is no challenge. There is just easy.
But easy conversations and easy friendships lead to a boring and uninteresting life.
At times we avoid “different” based on how we were raised or what we were taught from an early age. Think about just this single situation:
Many are taught from a very young age not to stare at anyone that looks different. Our parent’s intent may have been noble. If a man is in a wheelchair, if a woman has no hair, if another child is missing a leg or an arm - we are told that “it is rude to stare.” And so what happens? We look away. Our eyes dart to the left or the right. We think we have avoided making someone feel bad, but sadly that individual becomes invisible to you. And your eyes come to rest on the next person that looks most similar to yourself.
If we are not careful, everyone in your room will look like you.
Chris Waddell is a Paralympian and the most decorated mono-skier in the world. He has competed as a mono-skier and medaled in the ’92, ’94, ’98 and ’02 Winter Paralympics. He competed as a wheelchair track racer in the ’96, ’00 and ’04 Summer Paralympics. He became the first paraplegic to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. And yet he competed for the first 20 years of his life as an athlete with two legs. A tragic accident left him paralyzed from the waist down and with a wildly different perspective on life. He instantly began to feel invisible to the world around him. And so he decided to do incredible things to avoid that.
The reality is no one should need to win Olympic gold to remove a cloak of invisibility. Waddell points out that over 15% of the earth’s population is disabled in some way. But they are almost invisible, because from an early age we are told not to look or stare at them, or ask questions.
No one should need to look like us in order for us to have a conversation safety net to fall into. As a paraplegic he learned very quickly that being on the other end of “don’t stare” actually eliminated visibility.
Go find different. Welcome people into your friend circle, business circle, coaches circle, family circle that think differently, look differently, behave differently. The best business partners are those that cause us to consider a different point of view. The best board of directors is curated from multiple industries and backgrounds. The best backyard barbecue or evening dinner party is made up of different.
My greatest growth has come from conversations with people very different than myself. My business partnerships are with wildly different people. My marriage is a blend of different backgrounds and childhoods and even language. All value and all growth and all beauty shows up in the “different.”
Chris