nah
Being OK with not being extraordinary
271–280 of 396 posts
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#272[deleted]
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#273or "overcoming narcissism" ?
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#274I feel there is a common trait of extraordinary people that anyone can develop and it pays dividends. That trait is industriousness. When you listen to interviews from successful people like Elon Musk all the way through to Arnold Schwarzenegger, they all talk about working hard. Terry Toa almost failed the general exams at Princeton due to slacking off, and it was a valuable lesson for him. I don't care how gifted y…
I call bullshit on the idea that industriousness is entirely learned. You can definitely improve it but research shows a significant part of it is genetic.
Link to that research? I'm not familiar, and brief Googling indicates that "Learned Industriousness" is a thing.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#275The internet has made everyone feel inadequate as it's easy to compare yourself to people you see on the internet. Couple of things to keep in mind if your comparing yourself: 1. There aren't as many uber successful people out there as the internet makes it seem. It's far fewer than you think. Lets take a simple example of dudes who go to the gym and are strong. Instagram makes it seem like all dudes bench press 400…
> There aren't as many uber successful people out there as the internet makes it seem. I live in a city with two elite universities (guess which one). They're literally all around me . Getting into either of those is my definition of "uber successful", with many of them being more successful at 17 than I'll ever be in my life!
Weird definition of uber successful. They'll probably have steady employment but their mental health/personal anguish is probably distributed similarly to the rest of the population
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#276I tried this for a few months after a few big projects didn't pan out. Tried forcing myself to focus only on the things in front of me, without allowing my mind to wander toward ideas for future grandeur. For me, that experience was horrible.
I've got to have something big in the pipeline in order to feel a purpose in life. Otherwise it is just a bunch of work with no point.
Maybe that's not the point that this article is trying to make. Maybe it's saying to be okay with not having already achieved greatness, or to be okay with the potential of never achieving greatness. Both of these are fine. Or to base your metric of greatness on someone else's who is unequivocally better at that measure than you are. You definitely don't want to do that. But I think it's a mistake to pigeonhole yourself as a person who absolutely cannot achieve greatness. You have to try.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There aren't as many uber successful people out there as the internet makes it seem. I live in a city with two elite universities (guess which one). They're literally all around me . Getting into either of those is my definition of "uber successful", with many of them being more successful at 17 than I'll ever be in my life!
Weird definition of uber successful. They'll probably have steady employment but their mental health/personal anguish is probably distributed similarly to the rest of the population
I have steady employment too. But I don't have society giving me unlimited external validation. Instead, people think I'm subhuman for where I work and went to school.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your definition of "fairly common" is something like a ~1% chance, then sure.
Certainly more common than Michelangelo-level artists! I think the OP's point was that you don't need to be the absolute best in your field, or even that close, to be rewarded handsomely.
Agreed. And this makes not even being close even harder for me.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#279The two heuristics I use for this difficulty:
1) Recognizing "Comparison is the thief of happiness"
2) Recognizing that the internet burnishes these peoples' successes and hides their difficulties and shortcomings and suffering.
I don't see the full picture, and looking at the picture wouldn't make me happier anyway.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#280> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…
Coincidence; I discovered Cavestory few days back and I'm currently playing now.