Average Is the Enemy

Average is the enemy.

Let me tell you what I mean.

Here’s what being average in America means:

• 80 percent of people are in debt
• 73 percent of people are overweight
• 50 percent of people are divorced

Here’s another thing about average: Average does not have options. 

When you’re average, if your car breaks down, your day is ruined. If you have one bad month in your business, you can’t meet payroll. Average keeps you stuck.

As Ritz-Carlton Founder Horst Schulze puts it, “Average is the bottom of good and the top of bad.”

So how does average happen? We don’t start out being average. In fact, we start out being below average in anything we do.

Babies aren’t born being great at walking. No one is born a great trial lawyer. 

When we start any new endeavor, we’re typically full of ambition but aren’t very good at what we do. We eventually reach the point of average on the bell curve, and that’s where most of us get stuck. 

Once we get stuck, that’s where we stay as our ambitious soul begins to die.

Here’s how the ambitious soul dies: 

1. You get stuck.
2. You get frustrated.
3. You start to settle.
4. You justify settling.

You become a victim of circumstance, which then leads to a life of settling. 

Though you may not be happy in your relationships, your health, your income, or yourself, you continue to settle. As long as you’ve got Netflix, football, and Game of Thrones, you’ll be okay.

Here’s what I want you to remember when you’re getting comfortable on the couch with your shows, justifying your life of settling: 

You either get paid for decisions you made years ago, or you pay for decisions you made years ago.