There is no greatness without MADness

3 min. read or check out the vlog version of it. If you are a fan of motivational quotes, then you have surely heard of this one. "No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness." A wise thought supposedly once expressed my Aristotle, a Greek philosopher and scientist. But what does this actually mean?

Let's start with the question 

how we interpret madness. For us, the word madness could be also replaced with different. "Crazy" or "abnormal". In short: A person who does not think and act like the majority of us.

As such a person disrupts our safe and known life concept and gets us out of our comfort zone, we tend to use labels like Freak, alien, weirdo. I am not 100% sure but I assume that this is kind of a semi-conscious self-defense mechanism. Anyway,

In a second step, 

let us find out whom we label as a "great mind". A classic example could be

Leonardo Da Vinci

A well-known polymath. His interests included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. Yep, pretty "abnormal", isn't it?

Now imagine how the world would look today if Leonardo had stopped working on his masterpieces after being told that he is a freak and that he should act in line with what people expect him to do.

There were many other "weird" geniuses like that. Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla are further examples. But...

What about modern examples for great minds?

Hm. I decided for Richard Brandson or Elon Musk. Why? For me these two gentlemen are two examples for people who fail themselves up to success. They think and act out of the box that society created for them. They face their fears on a daily basis without caring about being judged as "crazy".

So what do we learn?

 Madness is nothing we should be ashamed of. We should embrace our uniqueness and "weird" thoughts, especially when they aim at making this world a better place.

We should also guard our tongues when we meet people who work, think and act differently than we do and ask questions. There is always something we can learn. Maybe these people will inspire us to make that jump into madness as well.

Come jump with us!