Whatever we might think — or whatever we might have been taught, to the contrary — most of us will never get anywhere near the achievements of the "great people" we look up to.
While they definitely can serve as inspiration, there is only one who gets to be "best in the world." Professional athletes are 1-in-thousands and chances of becoming that one are slime to none.
I choose not to see that perspective as a negative attitude, but rather I look at it as being in touch with the reality of the world around me. At the same time, I can still feel inspired by those who are the best at whatever they do.
Somewhere along the way, we have learned to view the old saying that "it's more important to participate than to win" as some kind of sign of weakness or failure. But it's really not, as long as we have done our best, right?
After all, if we considered ourselves to be failures unless our performance equaled the very best in the world, chances are we would never undertake anything at all.
And it would be silly if I never played basketball unless I thought I could be as good as Michael Jordan, or I never wrote a blog post unless I was as popular and successful as the very best and most successful creator here on Hive.
While it is almost impossible to live without comparing ourselves to others, comparisons can also be deadly. We can hold ourselves to standards we have no hope of ever achieving, and then become depressed and despondent because we feel like we're failing to live up to our expectations.
The second thing that can happen is that we end up taking everything in life so seriously that we completely forget to have fun! And that would be a shame.
And so, I'm just going to plug along and keep doing "as well as I can," regardless of what anyone else might be doing.
I suppose the lesson here is that "ecellence" is whatever we decide that it is, not what someone else tells us.
Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
As always, a 10% 