Thou Shalt Not Be Average

If you can’t tell funny stories about embarrassing mistakes you’ve made, you’re not taking enough chances.Are you letting the fear of failure turn you into a narrow guardian of the status quo?Good judgment comes from experience.Experience comes from bad judgment.I met a woman when I was a boy – I promise I’m not making this up – who had the power to change the future. She taught me how to do it, too.Shall I teach you?The past was written by the choices of yesterday.The future is written by the choices you make today.The key is to do things that matter.You spent your day yesterday. You invested your time. But did you make a difference? Did you bring anyone joy? Did you matter? Or did you play it safe because you were worried that you might make a mistake?I’m not suggesting that you try something new all the time, just 5% of the time.The time to try something new is when:1. you feel itchy that there’s room for improvement,2. you’ve counted the cost,3. you can afford to fail.That’s when you should take a chance. Follow your instinct.Few things turn out as well as we had hoped or as badly as we had feared.You learn a little from small mistakes. You learn a lot from big ones. You learn nothing at all from mediocrity.Failure is never a waste of time. Mediocrity always is. The fear of failure is what keeps you average. Success is the result of taking chances.America is plagued by mediocre primary schools, subpar infrastructure, and dysfunctional government. But somehow, this country manages to get at least one big, important thing right: innovation. That’s the deep magic of the world’s leading economy.”– James Pethokoukis, May 9, 2014Innovation occurs when you take a chance that you might be wrong.We want to encourage greatness in men. We want to encourage ambition. We believe that nobody wants to be sort of gray-normal. Often, the definition of normal is ‘average.’ We live, it seems to us, in an age under the curse of normalcy, characterized by the elevation of the mediocre.”– Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine“When you worry about what ‘might’ happen, you’re living in the shattered wreckage of your future.”– Teresa ShapiroPennie and I will spend April in Paris with the woman who taught me how to change the future.She married my father before I was born.Roy H. Williams