Normal is the thing many don’t notice.

Until it changes. And then we can’t unsee how much we had failed to pay attention to.

Who’s on the short list for consideration, who is given the benefit of the doubt, who gets a head start…

We begin to notice the people that are artificially selected to seem like the right ones, who are then supposed to be better and anointed as normal.

I was thrilled that Unilver has decided to get rid of the word ‘normal’ on their personal care product labels. Because when it comes to people, normal is an artificial construct, the center of a statistical bell curve but not a standard that we ought to seek to achieve, even if we could.

Normal is a distribution, not a person.

*Originally published on sethsblog.

Seth Godin has written eighteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything.

Image courtesy of Alexander Suhorucov.