It’s So Easy to be Average, Find Your Greatness.
I’m not a hardcore sportsball fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I can appreciate the grit and grind that athletes deliver on a daily basis to achieve the “win.” For athletes, the win is crystal clear - it’s a finite, zero sum game. You either end the game, match, or season as the victor or you go home the loser (just humor me by ignoring ties that can happen in certain sports). Athletes will spend years of physical and mental training and have the results come down to a single game or even seconds where an extra push beyond an athlete’s max can help deliver a win. Off the field, in the real world, we don’t really see those split second actions that make or break something. Chuck from accounting isn’t sprinting down the office, breaking a tackle from Sue, and jumping over Todd’s desk to click send on an email to win Tuesday. Yet that doesn’t make the message any less relevant to everyone if you consider the concept of consistent training and improvement over the course of one’s career.
ESPN produced a documentary on Urban Meyer, then coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, that included what I consider to be one of the greatest motivational speeches. The speech is short, but the message is clear - it’s so easy to be average. Take that in and think about it for a second. I’ll wait…now ask yourself this: How many times have you skipped that morning workout to hit snooze and grab a few extra minutes of sleep. How many times have you watched one more episode of Schitt’s Creek (eww David)? How many times have you delayed that email or report because that news article led to a YouTube video, which led to a...you get the point. There’s no shame here among friends, we have all done it. But those micro decisions, our decisions, come at a cost when tabulated over time. It will always be more convenient for us to delay what needs to be done, push only to the boundary of “easy,” or take the path already traveled - and there are times when that is okay. But when those decisions become a habit, we lose the longer-term victory (and future potential) to instant gratification. As Urban Meyer states, “It takes a little something to be special, it takes something special to be a great player.” That little something can be a single decision a day to put the extra effort in, to go beyond what you think your capacity is, to just try.
Improving yourself starts with that active and deliberate decision. The first step is “the commitment” (I know, spooky). Have a goal, know where you are going, and put yourself out there. You’ll be happy to know this is the easy part. Many reach this point and then shut down when they realize the next part involves work (scarier than commitment). Once the commitment is made, you have to follow through! The hundreds of micro decisions you must make each day to support that goal. Salad or cookies, hit the snooze button or workout, hug your partner when you get home or just go upstairs, Netflix binge or answer those lagging emails. The most difficult part of all of this is discipline, staying consistent 98% of the time (come on - we’re only human) or jumping right back into it if you divert. Build the system you need that has the alert if you’re running off the road. If you need someone external, get someone to call you out. If you need to have a checklist to mark it off for the day, do it. Find what helps to hold you accountable. As Urban Meyer asked his players “Did you push yourself to be great today? Did you do it?”. He immediately follows up with “If you didn’t do it, you lost a day. We don’t have many days to lose.” So you have to ask yourself: how bad do you want what you’re working towards?
Like most things in life, moderation is key. You don’t need to be a robot or drive yourself to a level of perfection that is not attainable for more than 37 seconds. The objective is to be better than you were the day before, even if only a little bit. Your biggest competitor should be who you were yesterday - are you smarter than yesterday? Did you learn something new? Do you feel like you took the extra step today that you couldn’t do yesterday? Did you check that one other thing off the list? Taking even a small step each day can propel you forward greater distances than you thought you could do. One step every day. When observed over the course of a few days or a week, you’re not much further than when you started. One step every day for a year is 365 steps, or a bit over 3 football fields.
No matter what you’re working towards, focus inward and challenge yourself to put in the effort to go above average each and every day. Be just a little bit better than you were the day before. Because as Urban Meyer said “If there’s a touch of greatness in there, how cool would it be?”
-Jason