The world is full of average people. They’re everywhere.
Average people of average height and average weight with average looks.
They do average work at their average job with an average amount of effort.
They have an average marriage to an average spouse with their 2.3 average children, who of course, perform right at the average in school.
They have an average interest in an average amount of average hobbies but quit them within an average amount of time.
There are average artists who spend an average amount of time practicing in order to be accepted by an average amount of people.
There are average athletes aiming for an average amount of playing time on an average team.
Average people living average lives, taking average risks that produce average results an average amount of the time.
Average – the statistical norm or expected value
We live in a world full of people striving to be average. I sure hope you’re not.
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Great post. I think a big part of life’s battle is to keep from being pulled back into the average “life”. It is easy to get sucked in by our average society. I love your blog as it has reminded me of all the “above” average stuff I have done and will continue to do, that it has started my wife and I to start our own impossible lists.
Keep up the great work here. I love it.
Peace.
I always like to hear when people start their own lists. Shoot me your link if you have it posted somewhere 🙂
I’m looking to raise the “average”, as I’m sure you are as well 🙂
Keep raising the bar Josh 🙂
On a average day I run from average… I generally win the the race… on average. 😉
Like John Maxwell once said “People don’t pay for average”
They actually do pay for average, the pay is just…well…average 🙂
I agree, but it’s a zero sum game that isn’t sustainable.
It’s definitely not something I would enjoy trying to sustain.
I think perhaps this is why so many people I know think its so strange that I spend so much time working on accomplishing my goals. It just doesn’t fit in with what expected or socially accepted. It took me a long time to just ignore these people and not let them make me feel strange for pursuing my dreams.
Good for you 🙂 The real adventures don’t happen in the average. They happen on the fringe.
Nice post! When there technology isn’t so advance or even dating back to the age of caveman, an average life involves moving around, sourcing for food, being alert to the imminent surrounding. Then we “evolve” and our average life becomes working from a 9-5, moving around becomes a dream, and what we care most is retirement. I’m looking forward to the evolution whereby pursuing the dreams become the “average” (:
That would be something.
So your saying I just need to strive to have 2.4 of a child? Joking of course…
Completely agree, living an average life, when we only get one chance at it shouldn’t be the way we go through this crazy journey.
Haha, 2.3 is just not up to snuff :). Gotta keep up with the Joneses’!
I understand statistically the existence of averages, but I don’t understand people’s desire to associate so strongly with them. I once read an article about how a person is more likely to get a flu shot if their friends did, and much more likely to order healthy food while eating out if the person before them did. Sick!
Damn. If I listened to all the advice I’ve received with respect to averages, I never would have lived in Ghana, owned a motorcycle, taken time off then returned to graduate school…Hell I wouldn’t even be in graduate school because my GRE scores were below the average accepted student’s score.
Great post!
Average isn’t a person. Average is a number. A statistic. People were meant to be more than just a statistic. Good for you going to Ghana. I have to get me there sometime soon. I’ve heard good things.
Great post! It really made me think.
I’ve always been a fan of thinking 🙂
Average!
I have no problem when people are average. Not everybody is the same ,thx God.
But:
Everywhere push you to be average, children are learned to be average. Our brain is washed …They want to make a robots from humans been.
If you are not average and do not fit in average, you are out!
Most people are scared from everything what is not… average
Observe,think and learn…
The problem isn’t with people “being” average, it’s with them “trying” to be average, as if there’s nothing better to shoot for.
What to do, when they PUSH you to be the same,to be average…?
Push back 🙂
Ha,ha,ha :)))
Love it !
You should go next time Jelena. Think about it…
When they “push” you? If it’s work, you learn to play the game of work. And you play it well, doing a very good job at it. BUT, internally, you are YOU. On your off days dress as you would dress being YOU, do the things you would do being YOU. Point is, we never sell out to being “normal” or “average”. We just appear that we have to the “pushers”, until such time as you are free from them, be it moving away from family, changing jobs or retiring.
Hey joel!
Great post!
I have to confess I spent quite a bit of time in my life trying to be average, thankfully I decided to give up and look for the unconventional, unaverage path and have not looked back!
Very inspiring indeed!
🙂
Good for you Anna. Thanks!
I find the word average to be sort of like kryptonite – I don’t like getting anywhere near it. We’ve got work to do, and the world needs more than average people right now. It’s time to stand up and be counted as outliers.
Thanks for providing the platform to have this discussion, Joel. 🙂
So you’re saying you’re superman? 🙂
Haha, not exactly. I’m glad you asked though – your question reminded me of a post I did last year titled ‘I Am Not Superman.’ I just revisited it and it made me smile.
http://www.brandonsutton.com/i-am-not-superman/
But I am definitely looking forward to flying with you in June! 🙂
I see what you did there 🙂 +1 for the pun.
“…the world needs more than average people right now…”
Absolutely right!
May I disagree? I used to think exactly the same – that everyone had to do amazing things (“Do Epic Shit” is what I preached) to earn my respect.
Now I think that there’s a lot of people who prize conformity and stability over all else, believe it or not. They don’t want nor care for the grand adventures that we aim to have. They keep the world humming, and the world needs them too.
You can always disagree (as long as I can disagree with you) :).
I’m not saying that everyone has to do amazing things, but I think shooting for “average” sells yourself way short. I think you owe it to yourself to be extraordinary, whether that means you’re globe trotting or working a 9-5 job you love. Make sense?
Hey Joel!
So I thought about this for awhile.
I like the way you wrote this by the way. Too the point!
Just today I read an article from SAMBA, Seth Godin’s 6th Month MBA program, and like yours it was short and sweet, and that was the very topic the covered. 😛
Anyway, as I said, I thought about what you wrote here for awhile. And then I browsed the comments and read what ANOPENSCROLL said above(interesting name haha) and I do agree with him in regards to his point on certain levels.
But I will say this. I strive to be above average in everything I do. Possibly too much b.c I def. spread myself thin and I seriously barely sleep anymore b/c I’m trying to do so much haha. But its okay! I love it!
Here’s the thing though. I was talking to someone the other day about this kind of stuff. About striving so hard to be not just average that I end up putting so much pressure on myself and its easy to beat yourself up when 1 thing goes a little wrong and suddenly you don’t feel just average, you feel below average.
I think sometimes we forget to pat ourselves on the back at least for giving it the old average try, ya know? Because think of how many people out there don’t try at all. They just don’t care. And that’s fine. That’s them. But, I think there’s a goodness to being just average.
I will say though, that despite what I just said above, the fact is that an average life is still not for me haha.
Okay I hope you enjoyed my rambling. I am quite tired now but I wanted to just say Hi and say a few thoughts before I pass out!
– LAUREN 🙂
Thanks for the thoughts Lauren! I
I don’t think the point is to “beat ourselves up” over being human, but to focus instead on trying to do stuff that doesn’t happen to the “average” person. A lot of people accept things have to be a certain way because that’s what happens to the “average” person, but I think most people have a lot more capability & potential than what we consider the “average” person to have, so most people end up selling themselves short. Make sense?
Your article is “right on”, Joel. Thanx! All my life I have taken strides to stand-out, i.e. not be average. Once or twice I did try to be a part of the societal hamster wheel in work and religion. Try as I may, my heart would never yield to it. I finally accepted that the best strategy was to learn to play “the game” well, giving appearance of being the loyal hard worker, while not ever selling out my soul. Being a free spirit in a suppressing/oppressing world wasn’t always easy nor pleasant. Finally, in Sept. 2009, at age 54, I was able to retire from the rat race. After a difficult year of transition and adjustment (it took nearly the first year to be able to relax), by October of 2010 I reconnected with my true self/nature. Since, I’ve been growing by leaps and bounds, confirming the innate happiness and freedom that I was born with. Blogs such as your help with the confirmation and provide tools and links to use to spread the word. I have been mentoring youth for 22 years, and it’s my passion to help them to retain their birthright and not be put in a box by people, religion, school, government or any entity. I saw the quote the other day that went something like this: “Don’t just think out of the box, think like there is no box.” Thanx again!
Congrats Ricky :). Keep doing great work and helping others 🙂
Hi,
I slightly disagree on “We live in a world full of people striving to be average”. The people that you describe as average are the ones who don’t strive for anything (I don’t think that anyone actually strives to be average).
Anyway, I just learned about Aron Ralston (apparently, I’m good at being behind the curve on stuff that hits mass media). I was watching an interview he gave to the NY Times http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h91Iptsl5CM . And the part that got me thinking was the person he was BEFORE. If you to 1:25 on the video, he said “It was experience of risks for the sake of self-discovery. I had these insecurities of .. if I was adequate enough, if I was good enough ; If I was good at anything. And then in order to feel something I had to be in riskier environments”.
While I applaud trying to do the impossible – and I can relate with his description, there is this question: what is the motivation for not being average, for striving to do something deemed impossible?
I think that (at least in some cases) there is this feeling of insecurity, of wanting to be “good enough”, of being good at something – and we can somehow convince ourselves that we are not good enough…
What is the most astonishing is to look at his profile, he “was a mechanical engineering and French student at Carnegie Mellon University, was a member of the honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. At Carnegie Mellon, he served as a Resident Assistant, studied abroad, and was an active intramural sports participant. He left his job as a mechanical engineer with Intel in 2002 to climb all of Colorado’s “fourteeners””.
Clearly quite a few people would have said that he was good at something ; and if I can extrapolate a little, I would bet you that the reason why he was successful at school and landed a good job at Intel had to do with that long lasting feeling of insecurity, wanting to achieve something that would make him feel that he was “good enough”. Unfortunately, to him “good enough was simply just not good enough”.
What do you think?
Olivier. This is a great comment. Let’s see if I can give it a proper response.
I think there’s this difference between acting out of “insecurities” and acting out of the interest to see what is actually “possible.”
Personally, I spent so much time worrying about my insecurities that I never tried ANYTHING. It took me a while to get far enough along to say screw it, I’m going to try it no matter if I think I can do it or not.
I don’t think I’m trying to “prove” anything to anyone but I sure as heck don’t want to look back on my life and be pissed that I didn’t try to do some crazy stuff just because my mind told me I couldn’t.
I don’t want to be average because I don’t think we were meant to be average. Average is not a person. It’s a statistic. No one is “average.” Average is math, not human. The reason I push people to do the impossible is because so many people limit themselves before they even start.
Does any of that make sense?
I think this is a pretty average post…just kidding! It is filled with above-average awesomeness! Just discovered your blog, but am following you starting…now!
Well I think this is a pretty average comment…so we’re even :). Thanks for checking out the blog Raymond. Hope you stick around!
Thanks for a thought provoking little read. It’s actually a little disturbing to image a world where all people strive to be above average. Who’s going to pick up my trash at the curb on Thursday? Who’s going to serve my kid in the school lunchroom? Who’s going to clean that toilet at the rest stop when I must pause during my above-average adventure seeking lifestyle? Those jobs are simply too average and in post-average world there’s nobody left to do them. Of course…the more than average folk would probably build robots to do these things. But I digress….
It’s interesting to imagine, but wouldn’t that be a good problem to have!?