To be above average…

Do you fear of being an average person? Average developer? Average partner? Average parent? Average leader? Do you believe that by constant improvement, setting higher and higher goals, working hard, having clear vision, waking up at 5:00 a.m. you will finally become above average and maybe, if anyone could measure it, somewhere in the top 1%?

I know, I’m guilty of this thought pattern myself. For years I’ve been told (or I was telling myself) that my goal in life is to seek mastery, become great programmer, solve 1024 Leetcode questions, create Youtube channel (or, at least, a a humble podcast), engage in local community, have a blog, be slim, eat healthy, cook healthy, learn just a few Spanish words a day, create one digital ilustration a day, read with my kids before they go to sleep, read at least one chapter before I go to sleep, use challenging weight during my 3 x 40min x week dumbells trainings, do bible study (somewhere between morning meditation and journalling), and do Marie Kondo decluttering being on ketogenic diet during intermittent fasting protocol.

I hear you. I know what you are thinking. I even hear you laughing a little bit at me :) And you are right. I was raised exactly as the society wanted: educated, obedient, goal-oriented, self-motivated, striving for perfection and never satisfied with who I am.

It took me over a decade of research, self-observation, self-experimentation, journaling, meditating and measuring to finally come to a very simple conclusion:

I am average.

The crisis

And then came the crisis that usually comes when you are over 40. Your identity, plans, self-worth, philosophy, spirituality - everything you are - collapses fast. And you can either survive the breakdown and grow (using therapy, medication, mindfulness, nature, sport, whatever it takes) or you can fall apart…. I don’t know how it feels like, because, fortunatelly, I chose to survive and grow.

This is really a story for another book, but one of the most liberating mental shifts I needed to do was to accept me being average. But before you go away, listen to this:

How to survive

Being average requires you to focus on four stoic virtues:

Courage

Do you know that courage is one of four cardinal stoic virtues? Next to temperance, wisdom and justice, it is the path that you should follow in everyday choices.

You could ask: how the hell being average goes with being virtuous? If you are average, then you are just doing nothing, eating cookies and watching Netflix, right?

Sometimes, yes :)

But usually being average means:

• showing up and doing what you are supposed to do (at your job, at boring parents meeting in your kids’ school, at the gym)
• forcing yourself to do hard things and being prepared to fail (that’s what I needed to learn)
• failing, and starting all over

Temperance

I know my limits. I know my past. I remember the choices I made and those choices led me to where I am today. I’m grateful for what I have. I don’t want to “want” too much.

All the productivity advice on the internets are:

• given by handsome, white men (have I ever considered the work of all the invisible people behind the scene?)
• who are not mothers and wifes
• who seem to be wealthy, healthy and wise

I love to watch their videos. They give science-based, simple rules. They look awesome, talk awesome and have an awesome business. And I need to understand how unrealistic their lifestyle (assuming they practice what they preach) and advice is, how diffrent their situation. And I’m probably not the target persona of their content.

Justice

I need to find balance between my needs and the needs of others (believe me, this is hard for a wife of one and a mother of three). I also need to carefully invest my time. Take responsibility of my values. Don’t let others tell me what is important. I am average, I choose to be average - I cannot hide for a week in the cave to work on my next business idea or to write a book simply because there are people around me that I’m still supporting and I will not say no to them. End of story.

Wisdom

My wisdom can be summarize in a few words:

• I try to learn from wise people. Some of them are long dead. Some are still alive.
• I think about what I’ve read / seen / listened to. I let the seed grow in my heart / mind.
• I experiment with philosophies, approaches and ideas. Some won’t work. It’s ok.

Summary

Certain level of calmness and self-awareness comes from reading, thinking, internalizing and experiencing. If you see gray hair when you loook in the mirror, you might come to a conclusion that it simply comes with age.

The process of becoming yourself, or perhaps creating yourself or exploring your potential is usually painful, complex and hard. It would be great if you had a supportive soul, a couch, a friend or a good therapist, but you may also make a great progress with a “private teacher” that speaks from the pages of some good old books (stoics or authors of the Bible).

Whatever your path is, make sure you don’t seek validation, you go your own path, you don’t compare yourself to others. You just follow the path of virtues, every day, doing small steps, forgiving yourself, trying again, trying again, fallin and trying again. Do not apply the measurements the world wants you to use.

Try to be useful to others, take care of yourself, find joy in simple pleasures, calm down your ambition if you start to see it is eating you from inside (or follow it if you see it allows you to do great things). Think.

Be good.

Inspiration

• https://matt.sh/new-developer-shapes