Finding Joy in Daring to Be Different

Brandon Hardy dresses to stand out in a crowd. He believes God gave him the gift of helping others find the courage to be different and to find true joy.

“Happiness is not measured in materialistic things,” he shares. “I’m not happy; I’m joyful.”

Video Transcript

Brandon Hardy: In Atlanta, everybody’s fresh. Everybody got their own different styles. Growing up, I didn’t have access to a lot of those kind of things. So I got a job at Chick-fil-A, and I started saving money. I saved a lot of money and then it was time for prom. I’ll never forget this. As soon as I put the clothes on, I looked in the mirror, and I was like, “You look good today.”

A bow tie to me means bold. You want to stand out. You want to do something different. It takes a lot of courage to want to be like that. I encourage all of the youth out there in the world to dare to be different, to do something different in the world because we’re looking for those real leaders to step up. I think in a way I can do that here on campus and in the world.

I think God just called me to be that and he put some characteristics in me to understand certain things and how to communicate, how to make people feel happy.

You can have all the clothes you want, all the shoes you want, all the money you want, all of the fame you want, and people are still not happy because happiness is not measured in materialistic things. Happiness is measured what’s in here. I’m happy. I’m not happy, I’m joyful and so every day there’s a need, there’s a purpose. There’s something that wakes me up every day and it’s to keep that going, it’s to keep that life within me.