I grew up in one of those little towns in America where, if you’re not remarkable in some clear, school-approved, kid-friendly way, then your options appear limited.  If you’re not good at football or basketball or soccer, in short, then you’re on the periphery.  I was out there:  the periphery.

Of course, I wasn’t the only kid out there in peripheryland – there were a fair number of us.  But we didn’t know how to unite in our aloneness, and so we remained isolated.

There was only one safe space in that little town, and I ended up there.  I went to the library.

Over the course of my pre-teen years, I read all the books in the children’s section of the library.  Every single one.  All the Hardy Boys, all the Nancy Drews, all the biographies and science books and books about Africa.  Everything.  Then I started in on the grownup books.

At some point I ran across Tolkien in the grownup section and read the Lord of the Rings.  A dozen times.  Once I memorized Tolkien, or almost, I moved on to other grownup books, and I mostly likely would have finished the entire library had we not moved away to Godforsaken, PA.

I was still carrying Tolkien around, which accounts for the nickname bestowed upon me by a bemused football player at the high school in Godforsaken, PA:  Frodo.

That and a sense of being an outsider were the legacy of those pre-teen experiences.  I thought there was something wrong with me.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized that my outsider’s perspective was the basis for all the coaching I’ve done since.  I’ve blogged before about some of the other experiences that pushed me in the direction of coaching, but it began, in some sense, with an outsider’s perspective.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t a good feeling at the time.  If you are there, on the outside now, here are some of the things I wish I had known to increase your power and connection, things I’ve learned the hard way over the years.

1.Use your otherness to see through other people’s eyes.  Don’t try to fit in.  Go with the loneliness, but use it to imagine what other people’s lives and perspectives might be like.  Wear your loneliness like the badge of honor it is – and gain understanding from the perspective work.

2.Ask for help. The next step is to ask those other people for their help.  It took me years to figure out that asking people for help makes them feel good because it allows them to do a good work and to feel powerful themselves. They won’t always say yes – don’t let that get you down.  But they will help you more often than you might think.

3.Learn something thoroughly.  One of my first private sector jobs after leaving the academic world was in a tech company that had a bewildering array of products. I was in the PR department, and didn’t know anything about anything.  Not much use, right?  So I asked for, and received, every single printed piece of instructions, tech manuals, and spec sheets for every single machine that company made.  It made a huge printed pile on my desk (they still printed things in those days).  Suddenly, I was in my area of expertise: a library.  I read through everything and was astonished to find that, by the time I was done, I knew more than virtually anyone else about the products the company made.  I quickly became a go-to person in PR and Marketing for questions about the products.  And when a round of layoffs hit, a couple of months later, I was one of the few not terminated in PR, because I had expertise.

4.Search out others and build your team.  Find your fellow misfits and make friends of them (see no. 2).  They are more numerous than you might think at first, and more open than you might expect.  Use your otherness skills to figure out what they care about and where your interests overlap, then connect with them on that level.

5.Demonstrate your passion. Few things are more contagious – or powerful – than genuine passion. One of the advantages of being Other is that you have the time to figure out what you’re passionate about, since your social calendar isn’t overfilled.

If you already belong to everything, then you can’t possibly imagine how it feels to be Other.  If you are Other, then know that you are not alone.  Find your passion, learn something, get perspective, ask for help, build your team, and you’ll end up creating connection and power.