Tall Poppy Syndrome
photo credit: Catherine Reznitchenko Dans les champs
Ever tried to exceed at something, push yourself to the limit and then have people around you try to cut you down? Yeah, there’s a name for that – the tall poppy syndrome.
This phenomenon, much like the crabs in a bucket phrase, is sometimes referred to as the politics of envy.
In places where one or two poppy’s, flowers or other seemingly successful, tall flowers would show up in a field, the “playing field” would be leveled, by making sure all poppy’s were the same height.
Of course, when a couple of them are much taller than the rest, it’s easier to chop them down to the height of the others than it is to get the others to grow.
You probably have experienced this at some point, whether it was making your impossible list, pushing yourself, deciding to lose weight, get six pack abs or do another physical or mental challenge that pushed yourself out of your comfort zone.
As you grew, others get jealous. They’ll want to pull you down or cut you back down to height.
So What Do You Do?
Here’s the thing about tall poppy syndrome – it happens because people are jealous and when you push yourself to get better, it makes people realize that there are things that they’re not doing that could make their life better.
Part of them might not want you to succeed, because if you do, then it means that maybe there is something that they could do that they haven’t done already to get themselves out of their situation.
Welcome to IMPOSSIBLE
If you couldn’t tell by the name – IMPOSSIBLE is a place where we’re all about pushing your limits and doing the impossible. Pushing yourself and doing the uncomfortable, difficult things and knowing that it’s going to be hard.
Because here’s the reality.
In life people are going to try to cut down the tall poppy’s because they make them feel uncomfortable.
GOOD.
Instead of worrying about them, surround yourself with people getting stronger, getting faster and looking to do something IMPOSSIBLE.
Hint – if you’re reading this, you’re seconds away from joining tens of thousands of people committed to that.
But it’s not easy (if it was, everyone would do it).
So that’s what IMPOSSIBLE is all about. The place for the people willing to push themselves, embrace the suck and do something impossible with their life. To get stronger, mentally and physically so we can live the hell out of the one life that we’ve got.
If you want to get started, you can join tens of thousands of readers doing the same and join the email list and get challenged to to push your limits, and do something impossible – every single day.
See you on the inside.
