Read this with me if you’ve never felt quite yourself when joining the “common sense” of the majority.
In business we’re told affiliation is everything. Join the right networks. Be part of the tribe. But the most original thinkers? They rarely belonged to a crowd. If anything, they built their own. Even if it's just in their head.
In New Scientist, psychiatrist Rami Kaminski introduces a term for people like this:
“Otroverts is the term I use for those who don’t feel the obligation to merge their identities with others. We are all born as otroverts, before the cultural conditioning of childhood cements our affiliations with various identities and groups.
When you don’t belong to any group, you aren’t subject to the group’s implicit rules or swayed by its influence. This confers two beneficial traits: originality and emotional independence.
Being outside the hive, so to speak, allows you to think and create freely: to come up with unique ideas, untainted by groupthink or by what has come before.”
If you’ve ever felt like a misfit because you don’t naturally “fit in,” and belonging doesn't ring a bell for you, maybe you’re not broken. Maybe you’re an otrovert.
And so if you do believe that you might be “one of us”, otroverts,
There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a whole bunch of us. But since we aren’t driven my groups, don’t see us creating one anytime soon.
If you are one of the otrovers - The upside: you might end up doing something remarkable, shaping the thinking and life of crowds you never joined, The downside: it comes with a cost of being a misfit, an outsider, of being not understood, of having more solo time and carving out your own path.
Otroverts.
Don’t unite 🙂
Embrace who you are.
The one who stands out and walks the untravelled path. More alone than together. The one who makes new paths for the rest to discover.
And if you live with, love, or lead an otrovert, don’t preach team-building, parties, or belonging. Connection, yes. But conformity? Not our thing.
That’s also why I never enjoyed “teamwork” unless I was in the coach’s seat. Teams need outsiders - people not blinded by the group’s opinions. Otroverts see what the hive can’t.
So if you’ve always felt like an outsider, ask yourself: are you willing to embrace it fully? To trade belonging for originality? To choose emotional independence over fitting in?
That’s the otrovert’s path. And maybe, it’s yours too?
