Being an Outsider Is a Superpower

Embrace your eccentricity - it's what makes you you

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Have you ever felt like you don’t fit in, like no matter how hard you try, you never quite click with the rest of the world? I have for most of my life.

For a long time, I thought being an outsider was something I needed to fix, something I needed to outgrow or get over. Instead of seeing it as a strength, I saw it as a problem.

If you don’t feel comfortable with yourself, not fitting in can be brutal. It can feel lonely and even humiliating. It’s like you’re standing outside a room full of people, watching everyone else connect while you’re pressed up against the glass, hoping someone will let you in.

That feeling followed me for years professionally, creatively, and socially.

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I rarely felt like I belonged anywhere. When I moved to New York, I found myself in friend groups where everyone seemed to get each other, but I never fully did. I spent twenty-five years in the food movement and still felt like I was on the outside looking in.

Looking back, I think a lot came down to not knowing who I was yet.

Back in the 1990s, I worked in the music industry, part of it at an indie label. I remember being at a dinner once with a table full of very cool indie people. They dressed cool, talked cool, and knew all the right music. The woman next to me asked what I did for work. At the time, I was between jobs and told her. She made a sound, turned away, and didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the meal.

And I took that as proof that I wasn’t cool enough.

Now I see things differently. I spent a lot of my life trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be. I bent over backwards trying to be accepted, so I would contort myself into someone I wasn’t.

And I think people sensed that. At some point, I also realized that I wasn’t very interested in myself. I guess it’s more accurate to say that I didn’t even know who I was.

If you’ve ever been in a room full of people and thought, I don’t fit in here, you probably know what I’m talking about.

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So how did I take that awkward, ill-fitting version of myself and stop seeing it as a flaw?

A lot of it came down to getting to know myself and learning to believe in who I am. I’ve done decades of therapy and healing, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my insecurities, my anxiety, and my quirks.

In the last few years, I’ve gotten better at accepting them, and that’s changed everything.

To give you an example of one of my quirks, for years, I couldn’t walk into stores, small ones especially, that I’d never been in before. I lived in the East Village in Manhattan, which are all small stores, so it was a bit of a pain in the you-know-what.

I don’t know where that fear came from; maybe it’s from a fear of being seen, judged, or maybe I felt a sense of danger in a new environment.

I found that talking about it and not making a big deal out of the issue has helped immensely. Today, if I feel uncomfortable going somewhere, I simply don’t go. I found that the more I stopped obsessing over my quirks, the less power they had, so I stopped seeing them as defects.

I also learned that the things we think make us outsiders are often shared by other people. We just don’t talk about them. I recently mentioned my store issue to someone here in Santa Fe, and she said the same thing happens to her, and she thought no one else would ever have the same issue.

You’re rarely as alone as you think.

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Another habit I used to think was weird, but I now find kind of sweet, is the dishwasher. I can’t load a dishwasher without making sure that each utensil has a friend. And if I get a fork, knife, and spoon together, well, that’s a family. I know! Jung or Freud would have a field day with that. But I don’t care anymore because it calms me. And like I mentioned, I now find it kind of cute.

There are also upsides to not being part of the pack, like you see things differently and you observe more. If you’re creative, that’s an enormous asset.

You also notice people’s patterns and energy. For a writer, that’s a goldmine. I find it fascinating to watch how people’s energy bounces off each other.

And honestly, do you really want to follow the crowd?

I obviously want to feel like I belong, but I never want to disappear into sameness and cookie-cutter boredom. I mean, do you want your life to be beige?

No matter what you think is odd about you, I guarantee you there’s a community like you somewhere out there. They’re only a click or two away.

The major superpower from being an outsider is that when you embrace all of you, and you dance forward as you see fit, other people are drawn to your energy and what you do. Rather than pushing out and trying to find others, you’ll find that the right people will show up in your life.

So go out there and be the you that you were meant to be! That’s my 2026 intention.

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