You have to defend your desires with intentional, consistent action.
“The fastest way to lie to yourself about ‘separating yourself’ or wanting to ‘be the best’ is to allow friction to influence and justify your decisions to ‘do what everybody else does.’
You don’t elevate yourself by making the same easy choices the masses of average people make.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
Everybody wants to separate themselves from the pack and be different, right?
Be hardest worker in the room. Show up early. Leave Late. Be the best you can be. It all sounds good, right?
But for most people, that’s all it does: sound good.
Our society is choc-full of people with good, even great intentions.
But when you look at that stadium packed full of the well intentioned and only allow those taking the action componentry of their sentiments seriously to stay, that stadium quickly goes from looking like a weekend NLCS Playoff game to a week day, day game of a (well) below .500 small market team.
But why? Why is it like this? Why can’t people with great intentions just simply execute.
Is it because execution is hard? No.
Execution is simple, it just isn’t easy.
And that’s the issue.
Execution requires effort and the commoner doesn’t like effort, in fact, they resent it.
When they are feeling good, and the lights are on, they can turn it on, but when it comes to the mundane, seemingly boring tasks that don’t “feel good” or lack the “people are seeing me, shock factor” they are nowhere to be found.
They aren’t coming to that work out because they are “busy” (bullshit).
They aren’t staying after practice to hit another bucket of balls because they are tired.
They aren’t setting that meeting before school to discuss areas they can improve in with their coach because it’s uncomfortable.
But get this…
Those mundane, boring, desireless actions are REQUIRED if you want to “separate yourself” or “be the best”.
They aren’t good ideas. They are essential, non-negotiable requirements.
You can’t just say out loud that you want to elevate yourself and then not take the requisite actions required to defend your statement.
If you’re not going to go above and beyond, that’s fine, but in order to not be a liar, you must change your verbiage from “wanting to be the best” to “wanting to be like every other average, undifferentiated person ever.”
If that stings the ego and you prefer the former outlook for yourself, simply adjust your actions to defend your desire.
(Pro Note: Most won’t do it.)
It’s so easy it’s hard.
