(lack of) Motivation and Accomplishment

People idolize their favorite celebrities. Whether it be sports, music or movies we all have our favorites. But there is a part of this general pattern of behavior that I find really confusing.

We look at these superstars that have accomplished many great things and we say to ourselves that it is just awesome what they have been able to do. We find ourselves wishing we could do the things that they do or have done. There is a tendency I think to subconsciously demotivate ourselves because of the pedestal we put our idols on.

What is the difference between you and the likes of say Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift or Robin Thicke?  Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods, what makes them worth millions a year more than you? How are Hugh Jackman, Natalie Portman or Chris Hemsworth better than you?

The answers are nothing nothing and they aren't. There is no single person alive that is better than anyone else. We all have the same potential for massive greatness. The only difference between us and celebrities is the current status of our potential.

For the rich and famous, their potential is realized. For the rest of us our potential is unrealized. They have simply taken the steps that we have yet to walk. That's it. There is no other difference. Celebrities are not better than average people. Some of them may be more physically attractive but that often has more to do with fashion and makeup than genes.

If you take away the popularity and "status" celebrities are just normal people, many of whom are not all that bright. And as such we should relate ourselves more directly to them. If there is no difference between you and all the celebrities out there, then there is no reason, other than lack of motivation for your results to be any less than theirs.

We should be copying the things that they have done to become successful instead of wistfully gazing up at the pedestals we have placed them upon. We should use their success as the template and model for ours. If those once normal average humans can rise above the crowd so can we.

 Many people are of the opinion that if everyone is special and unique it means nobody is. But that idea is completely ridiculous. That's like saying a party with one cool person and a bunch of chumps is a better party than one where everyone is awesome. I don't know about you but i'd much rather hang out with the second crowd.

We all have talents and abilities that we can and should be using to get ahead in life. Now I am not saying everyone can be a rock star, which is good because not everyone likes rock (BLASPHEMY!). But everyone can certainly be truly great in at least one area of their life. And every person who isn't is selling themselves and the world short.

What is your biggest accomplishment to date?  What will it be ten years from now? And did this post change your outlook at all?

What about your potential?

Most people tend to go through life doing what I call sandbagging, just doing the minimum that is needed in order to survive. But then, they tend to complain about their lot in life, about how it is so much less than it could be.

Each and every single one of us has greatness within us. It is not something that we have to learn or something that we need to cultivate. It is there inside just waiting to get out. If every person stopped letting fear run their lives and making them play small the world would be a much different place.

Psychologist William James, put it this way. “Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and behaves below his optimum".

Note here that he was talking about not a specific person, but people on the whole. All of us.

And such eloquent verbiage. Powers which we habitually fail to use. That makes it sound, and rightly so, that we have great talents and skills that we could easily use to make our daily lives so much better, if only we chose to.

If this is true, why don't we? Basically, the answer is fear. We know what life is like right now and even though it may not be pleasant, as long as we don't do anything new, it will likely stay relatively the same. We fear what we don't know, even if there is every likelihood and indication that the change would be for the better.

You would think that the fear would be of failure. But nine times out of ten what we fear is success. See, we already know about failure, it is an old friend, one that we have spent quite a bit of time with. But wildly fantastic success, now that would be a completely new adventure, into a scary unknown future.

Failure can be controlled even guaranteed. Success can too, but its hard to understand someone describing the light to you, if you have been blind your whole life. Just as a person who has lived their whole life with excruciating pain every single moment may want to wake up one day without being in pain, it is not something that they can truly understand much less imagine.

But who are the people that do manage to use these powers and abilities that lie dormant within all of us? Celebrities, artists, scientists, athletes, the rich and famous, successful people everywhere. They are the less than one percent of the population that conquer their fear of success, and fear of the unknown. The ones who pull back the curtain and let their full light shine out onto the rest of the world.

They are the people that choose to stop sandbagging and decide to start letting their awesomeness out. They are the people who start giving one hundred percent all the time and not holding back.
Join the one percent. Trust me.

You will be amazed by just how much more you can achieve than your ever thought or believed was possible. No one can say what your true potential really is. But for most of us, it is many hundreds maybe even thousands of times what have already achieved.