Learning to fit in is something we learn at an early age. Conformity is how societal structures are formed and what it demands. At its core, it is a survival instinct.
Back in the hunting and gathering days, no one picks the funny looking berries to eat because it’s probably poisonous. You follow the group instead of wandering off on your own so you don’t get eaten by a mountain lion.
Today’s 1st world country is no longer littered with the dangers of mortal peril. Our conscious brain however is still in survival mode and is really bad at assessing true risk. People die all the time taking selfies in dangerous places. They have irrational fears of sharks when they’re wading waist deep in the ocean.
So when we see something out of the ordinary, most likely the immediate gut response is rejection.
Of course, the variables are vast and each of us has our own tolerance level of “weirdness”.
I challenge you as a daily practice to expand your mind and try to find something that you think is slightly out of the ordinary. It doesn’t have to be crazy. It could be finding a new Oreo flavor like carrot cake. Maybe you think the combination is an abomination. But to tell your mind that maybe this isn’t for you but it is there for someone out there.
But the act of finding differences in things will retrain your brain to reach out of it’s comfort zone. Take you out of the ordinary and into the realm of extraordinary.