In my life I have met a few peo­ple who have said the words (and I’m paraphrasing):

“I like being aver­age.  I strive for medi­oc­rity and that’s my right.”

The thing is, if you think like that you’re just plain WRONG.  Imag­ine (if you will) a world that had noth­ing but aver­age peo­ple in it.  JFK would have made a speech about the moon pro­gram that went:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,… Oh wait, this isn’t going to be easy?  Oh crap.  I’m bored now.  Has some­one invented XBox yet?”

Now, you may say that’s not fair — we can’t all be Pres­i­dents and great lead­ers, or influ­encers who change the world.  I’ll con­cede that in part. Keep score if you like.  My response is that you are already chang­ing the world, just by being in it.

Every­thing you do, every­thing you say, some­body is watch­ing.  And the funny thing about we humans is that we copy each other’s behav­iour.  Some­times obvi­ously, some­times very sub­tly, but we all do it relent­lessly, with­out even think­ing about it.  We’re wired that way from birth.  It’s how we learn, and learn­ing is 90% of what our brains spend their time doing.  Acci­den­tally swear in front of a 2 year old and you’ll know what I mean.

Another thing about we humans that bears some con­sid­er­a­tion is the fact that we all must die. Now don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger on this one.  I’m not just try­ing to be mor­bid.  Bear with me for a minute.  I’m say­ing that we share a tal­ent for ignor­ing our own mor­tal­ity.  That par­tic­u­lar tal­ent allows us to con­vince our­selves that being mediocre is a life choice. WRONG.  Humour me and think about your own death for 10 sec­onds.  Imag­ine you will die in 3 days.  Imag­ine that your time is limited.

Okay it’s time to stop imag­in­ing.  You don’t need to. Your time is already lim­ited, really, truly, with­out exag­ger­a­tion, no imag­in­ing required. If you expect to live to age 75, you have a total of 2,366,820,000 sec­onds of exis­tence to play with.  If you’re age 25, you’ve already used up 788 923 149 sec­onds doing what­ever it is you’ve been doing.  Each day you lose another 86 400 sec­onds.  By the time you’re 50 you’ll only have another 25 years left.

It’s time to pon­der. How quickly did your first 25 years pass? What did you get done?  How quickly do you think your last 25 years will pass?

What are you going to do with your time now?  I’m not say­ing you need to go out and save the world.  I am say­ing you need to savour this moment, right now.  It’s all you’ll ever have.  Do you want to spend it being mediocre, just aver­age?  Or do you want to make a dif­fer­ence — to the 2 year old who now says f*&ck because you did, to your neigh­bours, your work­mates, your customers?

We’re all going to die any­way.  Make the most of it, take a chance — what’s the worst that could hap­pen?  Oh that’s right! That’s already going to hap­pen, so stop wor­ry­ing about it!

What oppor­tu­nity do you have right now to be more than average?

Related Posts:

• Why The Hard­est Things Should Be The Easiest
• Think­ing Like an Employee Should Get You Fired
• Overde­ter­mi­na­tion
• You can’t lead from sec­ond place
• Busi­ness Secret Spices 1: Obsession