When have you heard someone wish they would be just average? Who yearns to be middle of the road? What stories have you read or movies watched where the protagonist lives a normal life, a 9-5 job as an accounts payable clerk with 2.4 children in public school, a partner, and 15 pounds of excess weight?
Unless on the left side of the bell curve’s mean, there is nothing appealing about average. Think about it, do you really want to be average in all aspects of life? To strive for mediocrity?
How about this: do you think you’re an above average driver? Chances are (as study after study show), a majority of you/us think so, so at the very least our self-perception is that as being above average.
So for most people, this notion of trying to be the best, wealthiest, or some sort of positioning above the average is yearned.
But how can one be different or better than the average if he or she just does what society tells him or her to do? The definition of “society” can be construed as the weighted average of what everyone does. If you do those things, you will have an average life.
In order to break that mold and be on the positive side of the bell curve, one has to do things that others haven’t. Human nature is designed to do what it has already done, to repeat the familiar because that has enabled the person’s survival thus far.
To live today = to repeat yesterday.
How do you break that endless cycle?
The answer is risk.
It is once one has stepped out of comfort and into a risky situation that he or she makes great changes. The attainment of something no one else has is a huge motivator. Does it motivate you?
It is at this point where the human is tested, where failure is waiting for those to overcome and win.
Where one’s perpetual drive, one’s motivation, defies the biological resistance to change.
Motivation is like a nail. It is the mechanism that holds the wood in place to build the house.
But without the ability to use that nail, without a hammer, the nail is useless.
And purpose is that hammer.
So I ask, where is your hammer? What kind of purpose does it bring for you? Does it have enough motivation to make you take risks? To aim for more than just average?