There was a time in high school when I considered joining the track team–and didn’t. I knew I was fast enough of a runner to make varsity, one of my best (and one of the fastest runners in the school) friends was on the team already and in foot races I could best him with ease. I’d been watching the Olympics for years and knew all of the rules and regulations for my two favorite events (the 200 and 400 meter dash) and still never made the effort to join the team. I look back at it now and don’t regret my decision as much as I know just how good I could have been. I think many of us share that same experience with our career choices, personal options and hustle possibilities without actually getting to the root of the problem: we fear the consequences of being great.
Not quite Freud but…
We have a tendency to talk ourselves out of chances to see and do something better because it’s foreign and being the creatures of habit we are, we would rather continue down the road we’ve been on already than take a detour that might not pan out a few miles later. We’ve been conditioned to stay the risk and avoid the calamitous by being good little boys and girls; I say you’ll never grow as a person, really and truly GROW, until you explore further than what just works. Calculated risk works better than a blind eye of course but sometimes you have to just put faith in yourself rather than the formula.
Promote your inner track star
I’ve been told time and again that I have a good blog and used to humbly say “thank you” while transitioning the conversation away from the topic. It wasn’t even that I was shy to the praise given; I knew I had much more than simply “good” could indicate and someone else’s opinion of it, while nice to hear, didn’t reflect the monstrous amount of desire to get better gained each time I heard it. How was I to get better at blogging? By more blogging? Not exactly. I decided during that conversation (a real conversation roughly 4 months back when I was doing the 10Facets thing) that I would steer away from the “good” topics that you’d see populate all of the mainstream motivation speakers and author’s sites. Gone would be the generalized accounts meant to inspire as wide a demographic range as possible and in it’s wake would be my own views without apology and inviting rebuttal from readers.
Now, I have no qualms with lacing up my shoes and burning down any track that comes my way. Self doubt is tossed out the window and I am the master of my abilities. Great doesn’t equal conceited or condescending either, it’s just knowing what you’re capable of right now and knowing what you want to be capable of later and working towards it. Great is a journey, a progression that should be, but often isn’t, natural. Great is the kind of motivating feelings that have you up at 4:14am writing a new blog post about being great because you feel great enough to do it.
I’m not the greatest writer, editor, speaker, author, person or personality alive but I am great for the simple fact that I know what I talk about is self-evident and true to my experiences. I try to motivate others through motivating myself and pride myself on that. You might see an expletive on occasion but that is all a part of my greatness!
So the question now is what makes you so great?
