I am sure that in the last couple of years this question has crossed your mind more than once.

Today I’ll try to explain my view on this, but in order to do so, I need you to think back to a very special time in your life… I promise it will make sense in the end. Let’s go.

Do you remember high school?

It was that time of your life when you felt like you were walking on egg shells all the time. You felt like your every movement was closely watched, analyzed and judged. Anything that you did those days could have endless consequences, and most of the time, these were not pleasant.

Unless…

YOU were part of the cool kids in high school.

Everyone watched them in admiration. They had this particular aura that made them different and special. Everything seemed easy for them. Life seemed smooth and enjoyable for them while the others seemed to struggle all the time.

For me, it was not high school but primary school that had a feeling like that. I remember I was the strange-looking girl because I was red-haired, pale-skinned and had freckles in an area where everyone would be tanned and dark-haired.

Now, in hindsight, I look back at that time and I find it really silly. The same way you probably look at your high school years now. We outgrow all that and we can even say it makes us stronger. By high school I had learned my lesson and I found my own group of cool kids who loved rock music and I didn’t care about the real popular kids. None of those in my friends group cared about being popular at all.

We felt we were actually cooler like that and we didn’t envy them at all. We didn’t want to be like them. But still. Everyone else in high school knew them and admired them. Nobody knew us but we were truly happy like that.

So… where is the connection between our school/high school days and the people who run the world?

Actually, it’s still the popular kids who run the whole show. The world is all about who you meet, who you know, who you please, who likes you and who you help get where they want.

Think about it: have you noticed everywhere you go you’re in high school all over again? In your workplace, in your family, even in your neighborhood and the building you live at. In your city, in your country and so on. There’s always this group of people who resemble the popular kids in your high school years. They might even BE the same people still.

Wherever you are, there is always this sort of informal hierarchy. And you have probably realized that there is a group of individuals that you can never get through to. They are “unreachable” but mostly because they want to keep it that way, just like the “cool kids” you used to know.

Companies, associations, group of friends and even governments are run by the cool kids

Look at the similarities of the cool kids in high school and the rest of cool kids in your life right now.

Their rules are the ones that prevail. They are secretive, like part of a cult or a secret club and they are constantly making you aware you don’t belong. Being invited to parties (or meetings in an organization or gatherings with acquaintances), being told important information (or strategies in a business or news about people), etc. If you’re not part of the group, you won’t have access to those.

Sometimes the way to let you know that you don’t belong is simply by ignoring you. Some other times by giving privileges to those close to their circle but nobody else. You’re obviously excluded.

They might smile and be nice to you, but it is all part of the act and the role that they play. In order to keep being the popular kids, they need to be admired byt the rest. And that means they have to be nice, but not too much.

They mostly rely on alliances. Like in high school: it’s who you are, who you know, whether they like you and what they can do for each other. Somehow, it’s like they live in another level of reality where the rest doesn’t matter because it’s really foreign and insignificant to them.

However, like in high school, there are ways to “cope” and deal with the cool kids.

I once heard Tony Robbins say that everyone has a need for significance. BUT this significance means different things to different people. For some, it means they want to be admired by millions or they want to be in power and control everything. Others feel significant doing something they love. Others feel significant when they help those around them or when they feel needed by their loved ones. The popular kids are the first ones.

So how do you deal with the cool kids running everything?

You have basically two options. You can either join them and become one of the cool kids or you can find your own group of cool people and live your life ignoring them like I did in high school.

How you can deal with the cool kids

You can find your own sense of reality in your own cool kids group. Find the group you belong to, and create a better happiness than that of the popular kids. Once you have that, think that the popular kids need “normal people”:they need someone to look up to them, or else, their superior status wouldn’t make any sense.

If you decide to take the first option, and become one of them, you have to be ready to play by their rules. Be aware that you can be popular one day and thrown out by them the next day for unknown reasons. The way I see it, authenticity doesn’t lie with the cool kids. Authenticity lives everywhere else.

This is why things are so volatile everywhere that decisions are made. The popular kids will always behave like the popular kids. Alliances could change from one day to the next. Anything could be the spur of a moment. Popular kids can be fickle people, because they think they are entitled to everything at any cost. Anything could happen in the places where decisions are made. Therefore all these places are unstable, and the world is an unpredictable place.