https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPLSixR7fek
You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. It’s been said over, and over. Yet, many of us continue to surround ourselves with inferior people.
(Inferior is subjective as you could argue people have inherent value simply by being human beings, but for the sake of this post we’ll define inferior people as those who produce weak results that could potentially have a run-over effect onto your life.)
You hang out with underachievers at your job, you work out with weaklings to preserve your ego, and you settle for relationships with people below you.
Why? You claim that rich people are arrogant, gym junkies are meatheads, and popular people are douchebags. This isn’t true of course, but by the law of averages all widespread generalizations will have supporting evidence, and if you want something to be proven true your brain’s self-serving bias will find facts to support your conclusion.
In reality, wealthy people generally provide more value to society, gym junkies generally have higher performing brains than their sedentary counterparts, and popular people generally provide more social value than their non-popular counterparts.
See the problem? By holding beliefs that rich people, gym junkies, or popular people negatively contribute to society you’re both restricting yourself access to the highest performing people the world has to offer, and conditioning yourself that health, wealth, and social abundance are negative qualities.
With a belief system like this it’s no wonder most people end up unsuccessful. When you jealously waggle your finger at superior people you unconsciously block yourself from ascending to their level because you believe doing so would be, “Selling out.”
When Someone’s Greatness Makes You Feel Inferior…
When someone’s level of performance makes you feel inferior you have two choices.
- You can either allow their abilities to discourage you.
- You can use them as inspiration and a vision of what’s possible.
The first choice will result in stagnation, and the preservation of your ego. The second, though often more difficult is the attitude that’ll allow you to take your life to the next level.
My Epiphany
The inspiration for this post came from an Italian exchange student in my Spanish class. While we were working on a project together she’d ask questions like,
In this sentence why does the conjunction go here? Does the meaning change if you switch the placement of the verb? Why is this verb regular in this form, and irregular in this form?
I told her not to worry because she was doing fine and she said something along the lines of, “If I don’t figure out the answers to the little questions I’ll never be able to speak proper Spanish.”
In the past I would have felt like I was being attacked, but today I smiled. I’d finally found someone with higher standards than myself. I saw the next level on the ladder of success, and used her as inspiration to further increase my own standards.
She’s 3 languages ahead of me, and living in a country 5,000 miles away from her home. I could call her lucky, or say she has natural talent but what good would that do me?
She’s done things I haven’t yet made happen for myself so instead I’m going to use her success constructively as a vision for what self-discipline is capable of producing.
I’m not going to waste my life talking about how popular people are douchebags, or how I could learn 5 languages if I was naturally gifted. Screw that, I’m going to use every piece of my environment as leverage in catapulting myself as far as I can possibly go.
The question is, what are you going to do?
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