If you are reading this, chances are, you are a 'black sheep' in your family.

What do I mean? It means that you feel like the odd one out in the family, the one that doesn't fit in.

For example...

• Everyone in your family loves watching tv at night, but you hole yourself up in the attic reading books
• You rebelled against the family religion from a young age, never quite making sense of it
• Your parents pressured you and your siblings to go into a certain profession (law, medicine, etc.), however you disobeyed and chose a completely novel career path
• You are the only one to go to university in your family; the rest of the family scoffed at you thinking it was a waste of time and money
• Etc. 

You are a black sheep if you've asked yourself multiple times over the course of this lifetime if you really belong in the family or whether your parents picked you up from a dumpster/fire sale somewhere!

If you feel this way, the likelihood is high that you are a black sheep because part of your soul's purpose is to be a transformational agent for your DNA line. You are here to bring in new qualities, gifts and positive behaviors into your family -- new DNA that the family's descendants will henceforth carry as future generations of people are born.

Think about that! A single black sheep can change the course of history for an entire family, potentially impacting exponential numbers of people over generations.

Curse of the Black Sheep

All well and good for the family, which gets an infusion of new higher-vibrational DNA, but usually not so for the black sheep. Being a black sheep is tough -- sometimes downright miserable -- as it can feel that the people you care most about are all against you.

I know of black sheep people who have had to hide their true religious leanings from their families and communities. Black sheep who have to tread carefully when they're asked about their opinions on issues, or what they do for a living. Black sheep who face constant disapproval from their own family because they've decided not to get the job their family likes.

If you are a black sheep, you often feel that you can't 'come out' in some important ways in front of others without the risk of losing it all - family, relationships, money, business, sometimes even your life. This makes you feel alone, cautious, reserved in sharing more of yourself (to the detriment of the world alas!), and you may feel that the people you can truly connect with on the deepest levels are few and far between.

As a black sheep, you are a frontrunner in your family and...as a wise friend often reminds me, the frontrunners of anything in society always have it the hardest because the support structures for you to do the new and innovative thing you are trying to do are simply haven't been built -- yet.

As a rule, whether in the realm of technology, markets, ideas, etc. the innovators and early adopters of anything often pay the highest price and fail the hardest for trying new stuff. But, once they succeed, they pave the way for everyone else to follow in their footsteps in time to come. They are the agents of transformation in societies who prove to others that new things work and change is actually possible.

Scant comfort perhaps, if you are the black sheep in the family who is the first to face the firing line, but perhaps this message will comfort you -- YOU ARE NOT ALONE, there are many of us out there!