Sunday Story…Mired in Mediocrity

One of my favorite sayings is this: “Everyone wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die.” There is work to be done to discover how good you can be. There is a price that has to be paid to pull you from the mire of mediocrity. The price is a simple one. You have to apply yourself full out; with intention and intensity to getting what it is you want and where you want to go.

The fact is most people only pay lip service to being great. They bemoan lost opportunities and wonder how the Kobe Bryants, Peyton Mannings, and Tiger Woods could not be great at their every outing, while lying on the couch never making that first step toward their own greatness.

The human machine is designed for survival. This body we live in is going to do everything it can to be as efficient as possible under whatever circumstances we put it in. This body isn’t designed for a high level of fitness, it is designed for mediocrity. And in this day and age we have made survival much too easy. We aren’t hunting or foraging for food. We aren’t worried about our next meal (most of us) or whether we will have shelter or not. Our day to day survival does not depend on our physical performance any longer.

It is easy to stay average, to live a life that does just enough to get by and survive. If you want to live up to your potential you are going to have to get up and start working at. We weep for people who have no physical opportunities, yet we sit on our rears and allow our own opportunities to slowly, surely and happily dissipate. We have such good excuses…too old, too fat, too tired, too whatever. The fact is we are just happy to get by, to survive and leave greatness up to someone else.

You have greatness living in you. You have the potential to be so much better than you are today. You can define better however you want. Your potential is lying dormant and it is going to stay in hibernation until you awaken it. Somewhere deep inside you are afraid to awaken this dragon of achievement. You know, your body knows it is going to hurt, it is going to be difficult, and it might even be a quest that you will fall short of achieving.

You can’t be great if you don’t try. You can’t be great if you don’t start. You can’t be all you could be if you don’t put aside your fears and decide that heaven is worth dying for.

Here is a piece of good news: your physical potential does not die until you do. So whatever your current state is you can make it better. Your potential to be better grows as you get better, like a well that continues to refill. Unless we try to get really good, super hero good we will never know how close you might get. You might even know you can never get there but you keep doing everything you can to get there anyway. Because being mired in mediocrity is a fate worse than death.

Get out and strive to be the best you possible. And guess what…You will be great.

Namaste

John Mariotti

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