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I have never really thought of myself as unconventional, a contrarian nor a non-conformist type – and whilst I am certainly not a wallflower, I hate being the centre of attention (unless in a very small group of people I know very well) and I hate standing out from or in front of the crowd.

And yet if I look back over some of the decisions I’ve made in my life and some of my (admittedly quite contrarian now that I think about it) views, a clear pattern emerges…

At high school, I chose to study German rather than French as the main 2nd language – mainly because everyone else chose French. At university, I chose to work for my year overseas instead of doing a university exchange – mainly because everyone else chose the university exchange programs (plus I thought a year of work experience would look far better on the CV than a year spent drinking beer at a German university).

And about having kids…I have a theory that many couples have kids because it’s the next natural thing on the list to do…go to university (check), get a good job (check), get married (check), buy a house (check), have first child (check) etc. etc.

Having recognised the pattern – and got halfway down it myself one of the reasons becoming pregnant was such a shock to us, was the conscious decision we’d made about not having our own children, simply because it’s what everyone else does at our stage in life (that plus we didn’t think it was right for us at the time – obviously, we’re adjusting that assumption now!).

Besides, being adopted I’ve always thought I’d adopt too but now that our original plan has gone a bit wrong I can already feel myself leaning towards the non-conformist, more unconventional (in the sense that they’re not the mainstream) methods of raising and educating a child.

But I have still always wanted to fit in – and certainly never wanted to stand out from the crowd too much. I’m far too shy for that.

Yet here I am now living the most unconventional of lifestyles, writing on a blog for a few thousand people and most definitely not fitting in with the majority of my family and friends.

Living an unconventional, non-conformist kind of lifestyle* requires courage, tenacity and faith – and from a practical standpoint, a whole raft of tactics to help you stay true to your course without alienating yourself from the rest of the world or those nearest & dearest to you.

*This doesn’t have to be anything as extreme as being location independent, in many cases it can simply mean doing something different to what the majority of people around you do – like running your own business, home-schooling your kids or choosing to eat only organic food.

Here are 4 of my favourite tactics:

Understand why you don’t fit in

Our decision to become location independent was the most logical sane answer for us and our situation at the time – everyone else thought we were crazy. Of course the reasons they thought this were because:

1. No-one else they knew had done it nor was doing it
2. They couldn’t imagine themselves doing it nor wanting to
3. They didn’t know how it could be done even if they wanted to

People will come up with all sorts of reasons why not to do what you’re planning to do – the trick to dealing with them is to understand where they’re coming from. Point #2 is probably the most common – most people poo-poo things they just couldn’t imagine doing themselves whether it’s right for you or not.

When you’re with them, live in their world

If you do live a non-conformist lifestyle, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the phenomenon that is the blissful ignorance and disinterest in your lifestyle from some of those around you.

I am pretty sure that many of my friends and some of our family still don’t have a clue what business we run, how we earn an income and what our lifestyle is really like – and nor do they seem too interested to find out.

At the same time, they expect you to be interested in what’s going on with X, Y and Z in their lives and are quite happy to rattle on for hours on end about it.

Whilst it can be frustrating at times, if you’d rather not rock the boat and stand out from the crowd – this really does work in your favour and can be far more preferable to the negative comments, questions and vibes that come your way if you do happen to talk more about your unconventional lifestyle.

Surround yourself with people more like you

There’s only one way to feel more like you fit in and don’t stand out even when you do…and that’s to surround yourself with more people who do what you do.

Fortunately, whilst there still aren’t loads of people who live our nomadic kind of lifestyle, we share a very similar mentality to the thousands (millions?) of online entrepeneurs and small business owners out there – who not only “get” what we do and why we do it, many of them want to do it too.

Build up a portfolio of case studies & examples

When we first started our nomadic, work from anywhere lifestyle, there weren’t too many others doing it – or at least doing it and blogging about it. That made it quite hard to convince friends and family that it could be done and was already being done successfully.

Thankfully that’s now changed for the location independent lifestyle and there are a number of people not only living a similar lifestyle to us but blogging about it too.

Personally, I’ve been busily building up my portfolio of case studies and examples of people who travel frequently/permanently with babies and children – although all our family seem pretty ok so far with the fact that we will be taking off again once the mini-me is born (let’s just see what happens once she’s here though!).

Living an unconventional, non-conformist lifestyle does not have to mean fighting against the mainstream mob all of the time – nor does it have to mean standing out from the crowd and not fitting in. Or does it? What do you think?

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