Society spins around you a cocoon of average. It tells you your big plans are unlikely or too audacious. It conditions you to stay inside a box instead of breaking out of one. Society teaches your obsession is unhealthy, strange, and even freakish. It tells you to buy a cute house, have a 401 (k), drive an hour commute, and spend evenings watching TV.
Stop toning it down and trading in your big dreams for average. Society has taught you your goals are unattainable and you’ve bought it. Do you just want out of life a steady job, respect of your peers, and a little nest egg for retirement—or do you secretly want to become massively successful? Personally, I want my cake and to eat it too. Why would I want cake if I can’t eat it?
For me, success has never been about just one thing or one achievement. I have always wanted a lot of things. Success in my view is about being great at many things—and I suspect the same is true for you. I’m not satisfied with just having a lot of money, I want it all: health, wealth, family, love, recreation, community, and time to enjoy everything.
Why settle for one color when I can have the whole rainbow?
Society teaches you that you can’t have it all and that you must have balance. It labels people who are obsessed as outliers and freaks. What’s strange to me is that it’s considered normal to settle for a life of mediocrity. Studies by Bankrate.com suggest that somewhere between 62 percent and 76 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Average is a failing formula. People fail because of how they think.
You must rid yourself of average think and get obsessed. If you want a fire, you’ll need some wood. That car of yours sitting in the garage needs gas. Your computer needs electricity. The same is true with your dreams—you’ve got to have fuel. The best fuel to help you get obsessed is your purposes throughout your life.
Maybe today you are just about money. Well, good. Go and get that right. Or maybe you don’t care about money right now and just want to help people. Then go and get that right. When clarifying what you should be obsessed with, the following should be true:
1) It improves the outcome of your life and others’ lives.
2) It moves you to reveal more of your potential.
So what is your potential? Continuing to reach your full potential is the fuel that will allow you to avoid getting lost, complacent, and satisfied. Your purposes in life will continue to grow, mature, and evolve as you do. Regardless of how big your dreams are today, other possibilities within your potential will be revealed to you that will make previously out-of-reach targets look small. When you stop looking forward to accomplishing the next level you are at risk. Don’t be average.
Average tolerates lazy.
People accept the idea of average and to be happy spending their lives trying to buy happiness with borrowed money from credit cards they must pay off with money they earn from a job they hate. People are sold on the idea if they get into the middle class, they’ll be better off than over 80 percent of the world—only to find themselves confused as to why they have no time for their families and no money left over for pleasure.
If you can’t take care of your own dreams, how can you ever take care of your neighbor? If you can’t pay your own bills, how can you help out the person who needs help? If you can’t make your dreams a reality, how are you going to encourage others to? You can’t! Unhappy people can’t teach you how to be happy and the poor can’t teach you how to get rich. Nor can an average person teach you how to be exceptional.
Steve Jobs said: “I want to put a dent in the universe.”
Martin Luther King Jr. said: “I have a dream….”
Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
You know these people because they were obsessed. They weren’t superheroes; they didn’t possess any special powers. They were just totally obsessed. You need to be obsessed with something, but understand that there’s no such thing as obsession lite. There is no need to be balanced. Regardless of your industry, where you live, and what your dream is, obsession is mandatory for huge success. Is there a single person you and I both know the name of who wasn’t obsessed? I doubt it. Victory comes at a price, but so does settling.
Be Obsessed or Be Average.
Take advantage of my 3-day sales boot camp July 21-23 before it sells out, there are very few seats available for this interactive workshop. My best sales guys, including myself—will all be there and first 50 seats to fill get a FREE room.
Be great,
GC
