Greatness is a good thing, but you have to fight for it.
Here are three things that will keep you visionaries on your toes in your quest to live your dreams. (My thanks to Hugh Macleod for his artwork that says so much that words can't.)
Comfort
We love our warm blankets, hot coffee, and comfort food. I love pizza and cupcakes. What's yours?
However, greatness isn't about maintaining the status quo. It's about changing it. People love using the red pen to mark up and talk about how bad something is but they don't have the courage to make it better. Create. Be an artist or an actor/actress. Be the one who has the courage to push and live on the edge. That's greatness.
Group Think
Diverse thinking and views drive difference and helps the creative process. In fact, crowdsourcing is great. However, use it for idea generation and data collection but not for decision-making. Remember, you aren't going to make everyone happy. Birds of a feather, flock together. Boring! At the end of the day designing to the lowest common denominator never gets you greatness. Be the white penguin. The decision is yours.
Ignorance
"That's how it's always been done." No, that's how it's been done because people don't know any better. They posses a blind ignorance instead of curiosity. They say things are "good enough" because they don't know any better.
Have you ever said to yourself: "That's what I'm supposed to be." No, that's how you had planned it to be... but life happened. You thought you were supposed to do one thing and learned you were better or became something you needed to become by taking a detour. Greatness is about making the invisible, visible and driving new ways to see things. It's also about life's detours.
Anything worth it is worth fighting for...including greatness.
So my friend, push aside the warm blanket, become the white penguin and open your mind to a curious world of learning. Anything else is just mediocre. Know what I'm sayin?
What are the other things we need to know about in our fight to be great?
Editor's Note: I'm taking off a few days this week and will resume with alphabet soup next week. I will be participating as one of 40 leaders in the Center for Houston's Future Leadership Forum and need to reserve brain energy. Look for some great posts from others pacing this life trying to find their way, a throwback post, and links to some of my professional crushes and their great stuff.
