Rocking The Boat

"If anyone's going to rock the boat, it's not going to be me."

This, according to "A Bridge Too Far" (shown on TV on Sunday as a mark of respect for Remembrance Day, and watched for the same reason), was why the person responsible for checking the radios needed in the 1944 attempt to capture Arnhem didn't tell his superiors that he believed they weren't fit for purpose.

With the battle under way, the radio communications failed. It turned out that the radios all had the wrong type of crystal (a vital part of radio construction at the time), and the commanders had no way of making contact with each other.

Worse still, they couldn't even tell the pilots of the incoming planes that they were dropping their much-needed supplies and ammunition over an area that hadn't yet been taken... a free gift for the enemy.

The radios were not the only thing that went wrong that day, and it wouldn't be fair to blame them for the whole disaster, but their failure played a major part in it... and more than 8,000 people, both combatants and civilians killed in the reprisals, lost their lives.

It's easy to criticize, and not even very fair. Rocking the boat can take a lot of courage.

It can be hard to stand out against what someone in authority's expecting you to say. It must be even harder if you're in the military, and much more used to taking orders than trying to make your senior officers listen to something they don't want to hear.

All sorts of things go through your mind. You might be jeered at as a crank, a negative thinker who doesn't see the bigger picture, someone who's scared to take a risk, someone who's "not one of us".

It might not sound like much, but that one hurts. Being accepted by our peers is one of mankind's deepest needs. It goes right back to prehistoric days, when someone cast out by the tribe or family grouping faced a slow starvation.

It can take a lot of self-belief to stand your ground.

Sadly, there are many, many people so inhibited by social pressures that they're unable to assert themselves in any way. They feel obliged to do everything the way they think that others will expect of them.

From how they dress to where they live, from what they eat to the candidate they vote for, every aspect of their lives is governed by the perceived need to fit in, to be part of the crowd, to be what others think appropriate - to be accepted.

It doesn't need to be that way. Things have moved on a little since the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

You aren't going to starve if someone doesn't like your hairstyle. It's not a sin if you prefer a style of music that your friends don't like. There's no law says you have to live in one area rather than another, or change your car more often than you want to, just to show your colleagues or your neighbors that you can afford it.

Most importantly of all, no-one on earth has any right to tell you who you are - or who you're meant to be.

If you'd like to have the confidence to let your light shine, visit Supreme-Success.com and find out how you can most easily project your real, dynamic self.

You may not need to save 8,000 lives - but you'll transform your own.