Getting Discomfortable with World Domination Summit

World Domination Summit (or WDS) is an inspiring conference that brings together 1000 open-minded misfits from around the world under the slogan, “Living an unconventional life in a conventional world”. I first heard of WDS because my boo Brené Brown (who I’ve never actually met) spoke there in 2012 and I’ve had my eye on the conference ever since. Last year, I finally had the chance to attend for the first time.

I have to admit, while I felt immediately connected to all the interesting characters I met at WDS, I was pretty skeptical at first about the conference itself. I didn’t really get what WDS was even about and its excentric creator and host, Chris Guillebeau, came across a bit like a cult leader. The “core principles” of WDS are “community, adventure, and service”, all of which I value, but I wasn’t sure what that had to do with dominating the world? Over the course of the weekend, however, all of the quirks and curiosities of WDS started to grow on me.

This year, when I returned for my second WDS, everything that I was skeptical of the first time felt charming and familiar the second time around. If WDS is a cult, I was certainly drinking the Kool-Aid. But more important than the actual conference itself (or perhaps as a testament to it), it was the fascinating misfits and weirdos I met that really made the experience memorable and worthwhile. 

Ever since I wrote that sitcom during Remote Year, “Excess Baggage“, I’ve been looking at my life in a slightly new way. I’ve realized that the characters who make a sitcom or film interesting and hilarious are the ones who actually drive the story forward. They create the humour, the conflict, and the drama. But in “real life”, those are the people I usually find annoying, or weird, or “extra”. It wasn’t until I started writing a sitcom based on real people, however, that I started to appreciate how little story there would be if everyone just got along and acted exactly like me. Life would be boring. So I started to really appreciate that the people who I used to think were annoying misfits, or trouble makers, or provocateurs, were actually the ones making my life interesting all along!

And WDS is full of those kinds of misfits and weirdos. It’s basically a conference dedicated entirely to the best characters from the sitcom of life. The people who don’t quite fit in, or don’t want to fit in. The people who step outside of the cultural norms that shame enforces and instead pave their own more honest, more authentic, more unconventional path. The people who bring the interesting.

In fact, I’m just now realizing as I write this that the slogan of WDS, “Living an unconventional life in a conventional world”, is a perfect encapsulation of overcoming shame!