A story about THINKING.

I want to tell you a story about THINKING. (I don't know if adults can teach themselves to become smarter, but they could certainly attempt it.)

In college -- long ago, before computers -- I was in a Road Rally sponsored by a popular bar. There were two people in each car -- the driver and the navigator. "Bill" was the driver and I was the navigator.

We drove around upstate New York in a manner similar to a Scavenger Hunt. We had a printed Scavenger Hunt Sheet of the things that we were supposed to find. We were judged on how many items we successfully found, how long the journey took, and our best estimation of the EXACT mileage of the journey (keeping in mind that we frequently had to backtrack, to find the items, thus adding and subtracting odometer mileage). It was great fun!

There was a clue that read, "In what year did Robert Barston die?" (name has been changed)

While driving down the indicated road, we approached a cemetery. Many of our fellow ralliers' cars were parked there, and we could see the ralliers milling about within the cemetery, so we figured, "we're looking for a headstone".

We parked down the street, and as we walked toward the cemetery, we passed Sean the Bartender's corvette, top down. Right there on the front seat was Sean's Scavenger Hunt Sheet. I told Bill, "Hold on a sec," while I quickly perused Sean's sheet to find the answers to any items that Bill and I had been unable to find. (This Scavenger Hunt was not an easy assignment.) Normally, I would call that "cheating", but in a competitive game, this was more akin to "resourcefulness" than "cheating".

As we continued walking toward the entrance to the fenced cemetery, I came to understand that Robert Barston was nowhere to be found within the cemetery. Otherwise, there would not be so many ralliers still stuck in one location along the journey.

Then I glanced across the street, where I spied a large memorial that was the focal point of a manicured park lawn. I told Bill, "Go on inside the cemetery. I'll catch up with you."

I walked over to the memorial, which turned out to be a war memorial, and I immediately found Robert Barston's name on the plaque. I wrote down the year of his death, then casually strolled back to the cemetery.

Upon arriving in the cemetery, I looked at headstones, pretending to search for Mr. Barston, blending in with the crowd, while making my way over to Bill, at which time I said, "Found it. We can leave."

Bill and I came in second in the Road Rally, two days in a row, and I received a trophy with a sports car on top. I loved that. (This all happened WAY BEFORE "everybody gets a trophy".)

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I frequently tell people, "The Crowd Is Always Wrong". It's my life's mantra. If you are confronted with a prevailing opinion, and people ridicule you for daring to step outside of that boundary of popular opinion, that right there should be your motivation to step outside of the boundary and seek the truth.

Just pause, step back, and say to yourself, "Is it possible that the truth is not widely known? Where can I find the truth? Where do the falsehoods usually come from? Who do I know who marches to the beat of a different drummer, who's quite used to finding unusual solutions and moving forward, ahead of the pack?"

Brainstorm with people who are different from the pack. You have good ideas, but life has taught you to discard your good ideas and instead "go along to get along". By brainstorming with "different" people, you'll get some good practice at THINKING, you'll receive encouragement for ideas that you might have thought were too offbeat, and you'll become more brave. Bravery is the key to most good things that we accomplish in life, because the good stuff is never easy to obtain. You've got to be brave enough to do the hard work to reach for the good things. Then pick yourself up when you fail, and keep reaching.

Seek truth. Use wisdom. Be brave.

And always, walk away from The Crowd.

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Crista Huff is an equity portfolio manager and general partner at Freedom Capital Management LLC. She got there by walking away from the crowd.